Dr Melissa Parsons is a river scientist with broad-ranging research interests in river monitoring and assessment, large flood disturbances, river ecology, river and floodplain resilience, building resilience to natural hazards, public policy and water resource management. Melissa works at the interface between theoretical and applied science, examining the ways that theories such as resilience can be applied to deliver management outcomes.
Melissa has worked on several national-scale environmental assessments including the National Carbon Accounting System and the AUSRIVAS river health assessment. Her post-doctoral research examined the ecological effects of the February 2000 floods across southern Africa on the rivers of Kruger National Park. Melissa currently co-leads a project within the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC to develop an Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.
Blog posts on Views & Visions
Project leadership
This project developed an index of the current state of disaster resilience in Australian communities – the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. The Index is a tool for assessing the resilience of communities to natural hazards at a large scale and is designed to provide input into macro-level policy, strategic planning and community engagement activities at national, state and local government levels.
Deliverables include the development of disaster resilience indicators, maps of disaster resilience at multiples scales, a State of Disaster Resilience Report, and examples that use the Index in a natural hazard resilience planning context.
