@article {bnh-8112, title = {Disaster resilience in Australia: A geographic assessment using an index of coping and adaptive capacity}, journal = {International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction}, volume = {62}, year = {2021}, month = {08/2021}, abstract = {

This paper reports a national-scale assessment of disaster resilience, using the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. The index assesses resilience at three levels: overall capacity for disaster resilience; coping and adaptive capacity; and, eight themes of disaster resilience across social, economic and institutional domains. About 32\% of Australia{\textquoteright}s population (7.6 million people) live in an area assessed as having high capacity for disaster resilience. About 52\% of Australia{\textquoteright}s population (12.3 million people) live in an area assessed as having moderate capacity for disaster resilience. The remaining 16\% of Australia{\textquoteright}s population (3.8 million people) live in an area assessed as having low capacity for disaster resilience. Distribution of disaster resilience in Australia is strongly influenced by a geography of remoteness. Most metropolitan and inner regional areas were assessed as having high capacity for disaster resilience. In contrast, most outer regional, remote and very remote areas were assessed as having low capacity for disaster resilience, although areas of low capacity for disaster resilience can occur in metropolitan areas. Juxtaposed onto this distribution, themes of disaster resilience highlight strengths and barriers to disaster resilience in different communities. For example, low community capital and social cohesion is a disaster resilience barrier in many metropolitan areas, but higher community capital and social cohesion in outer regional and some remote areas supports disaster resilience. The strategic intent of a shared responsibility for disaster resilience can benefit from understanding the spatial distribution of disaster resilience, so that policies and programmes can address systemic influences on disaster resilience.

}, keywords = {Composite index, disaster resilience, indicators, National scale assessment, Systemic risk}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102422}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420921003836?via\%3Dihub}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Peter Hastings and Graham Marshall and Judith McNeill and Richard Stayner and Sonya Glavac} } @article {bnh-7138, title = {The Australian Disaster Resilience Index: a summary}, number = {588.2020}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Natural hazards, such as bushfires, cyclones, floods, storms, heatwaves, earthquakes and tsunamis, have always occurred and will continue to occur in Australia. These natural hazards frequently intersect with human societies to create natural hazard emergencies that, in turn, cause disasters.

The effects of natural hazards on Australian communities are influenced by a unique combination of social, economic, natural environment, built environment, governance and geographical factors.

Australian communities face increasing losses and disruption from natural hazards, with the total economic cost of natural hazards in Australia averaging $18.2 billion per year between 2006 and 2016 (Deloitte Access Economics, 2017). This is expected to almost double by 2030 and to average $33 billion per year by 2050 (Deloitte Access Economics, 2016). The social impacts of disasters are also substantial. Costs associated with social impacts may persist over a person{\textquoteright}s lifetime and can be greater than the costs of tangible damages (Deloitte Access Economics, 2016).

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of some natural hazard types in Australia (BOM \& CSIRO, 2018). An increasing population, demographic change, widening socio-economic disparity, expensive infrastructure and the location of\  communities in areas of high natural hazard risk also contributes to the potential for increasing losses from natural hazards.

There are two prominent schools of thought about the influence of natural hazards in human societies:

This resilience perspective has been adopted in the Australian Disaster Resilience Index, with the aim of better understanding and assessing the disaster resilience of Australian communities nationwide.

As such, disaster resilience can be understood as a protective characteristic that acts to reduce the effects of, and losses from, natural hazards. Resilience arises from the capacities of social, economic and government systems to prepare for, respond to and recover from a natural hazard event, and to learn, adapt and transform in anticipation of future natural hazard events.

}, keywords = {communities, Disaster risk reduction, emergencies, Emergency, Natural hazards, people, resilience, risk, risk reduction}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-6-4}, issn = {588.2020}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7099, title = {The Australian Disaster Resilience Index: Volume I {\textendash} State of Disaster Resilience Report}, number = {492}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Australian communities face increasing losses and disruption from disasters. Disaster resilience is a protective characteristic that acts to reduce the effects of, and losses from, natural hazard events. Disaster resilience arises from the capacities of social, economic and government systems to prepare for, respond to and recover from a natural hazard event, and to learn, adapt and transform in anticipation of future natural hazard events. This assessment of disaster resilience estimates the status of these capacities and shows how they are spatially distributed across Australia.

Composite indices are frequently used to summarise and report complex relational measurements about a particular issue. The Australian Disaster Resilience Index measures disaster resilience as a set of coping and adaptive capacities. Coping capacity is the means by which available resources and abilities can be used to face adverse consequences that could lead to a disaster. Adaptive capacity is the arrangements and processes that enable adjustment through learning, adaptation and transformation. Eight themes of disaster resilience encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access) or to adapt, learn and solve problems (social and community engagement, governance and leadership). Across the eight themes, 77 indicators were used to compute the Australian Disaster Resilience Index in 2,084 areas of Australia, corresponding to the Statistical Area Level 2 divisions of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The Index was then used to undertake the first nationally standardised assessment of the state of disaster resilience in Australia. Disaster resilience is reported at three levels: an overall disaster resilience index, coping and adaptive capacity sub-indexes and themes of disaster resilience that encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards and to adapt, learn and solve problems (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access, social and community engagement, governance and leadership).

Volume I (this volume) assesses the state of disaster resilience in Australia, using the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. Volume I gives a brief overview of the design\ and computation of the index, then assesses the state of disaster resilience in\ Australia at different levels: overall disaster resilience, coping and adaptive\ capacity, and the eight themes of disaster resilience. Volume I also presents a\ typology of disaster resilience that groups areas across Australia that have similar disaster resilience profiles.

Readers interested in the results of the assessment of disaster resilience in\ Australia should focus on Volume I.

}, keywords = {ANDRI, disaster resilience, state of disaster resilience}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-1-9}, issn = {492}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7466, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: a system for assessing the resilience of Australian communities to natural hazards - final project report}, number = {621}, year = {2020}, month = {10/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Disaster resilience is a protective characteristic that acts to reduce the effects of, and losses from, natural hazard events. Disaster resilience arises from the capacities of social, economic and government systems to prepare for, respond to and recover from a natural hazard event, and to learn, adapt and transform in anticipation of future natural hazard events. This project developed the Australian Disaster Resilience Index to assess, for the first time, the capacity for disaster resilience in communities across Australia.

Disaster resilience in Australia

The assessment of disaster resilience using the Australian Disaster Resilience Index shows that communities in Australia do not all have the same capacity for disaster resilience. About 52\% of the population live in areas with moderate capacity for disaster resilience, about 32\% in areas with high capacity for disaster resilience and about 16\% in areas with low capacity for disaster resilience. Analysis of the distribution of disaster resilience in Australia revealed:

Australian communities are also affected by various factors which enhance or constrain their capacity for disaster resilience. The particular combination of factors that influence capacity for disaster resilience differs from place to place. This generates a heterogeneous and complex picture of the factors associated with disaster resilience in Australia. Analysis of the distribution of the eight theme sub-indexes revealed:

}, keywords = {adri, assessing, communities, Natural hazards, resilience, system}, issn = {621}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac} } @article {bnh-7101, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Volume II {\textendash} Chapter 1: Design of the Index}, number = {493}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

In this chapter

Section 1.1 Presents the conceptual basis of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.

Section 1.2 Describes the structure of the index, including its hierarchical structure, and the themes of disaster resilience.

Section 1.3 Outlines the spatial resolution and areas of Australia included in the index.

}, keywords = {ANDRI, computation, disaster resilience, index design}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-2-6}, issn = {493}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7102, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Volume II {\textendash} Chapter 2: Indicators}, number = {493}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

In this chapter

Section 2.1 Describes the method used to identify and select indicators for the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.

Section 2.2 Lists the indicators used in the index themes, including the source of each indicator and how it was calculated.

Section 2.3 Justifies the relationships between indicators and disaster resilience for each theme in the index, using a literature review.

Section 2.4 Describes the method used to disaggregate some of the indicators to an SA2 resolution.

}, keywords = {ANDRI, computation, disaster resilience, index design, indicators}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-2-6}, issn = {493}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7103, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Volume II {\textendash} Chapter 3: Computation of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index}, number = {493}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

In this chapter

Section 3.1 Reviews the development and use of composite indexes and methods for computing composite indexes.

Section 3.2 Describes the rationale for, and the statistical computation of, the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.

Section 3.3 Describes the methods used to compute the typology of groups of SA2s with similar disaster resilience profiles.

}, keywords = {ANDRI, computation, disaster resilience, index design}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-2-6}, issn = {493}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7104, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Volume II {\textendash} Chapter 4: Statistical outputs: ANDRI, coping capacity and adaptive capacity}, number = {493}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

In this chapter

Section 4.1 Presents the statistical outputs and results for the overall Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.

Section 4.2 Presents the statistical outputs and results for the coping capacity index.

Section 4.3 Presents the statistical outputs and results for the adaptive capacity index.

}, keywords = {adaptive capacity, ANDRI, computation, coping capacity, disaster resilience, index design}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-2-6}, issn = {493}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7105, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Volume II {\textendash} Chapter 5: Statistical outputs: disaster resilience themes}, number = {493}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

In this chapter

Each section presents the statistical outputs and results of one disaster resilience theme.

Section 5.1 Social character.

Section 5.2 Economic capital.

Section 5.3 Emergency services.

Section 5.4 Planning and the built environment.

Section 5.5 Community capital.

Section 5.6 Information access.

Section 5.7 Social and community engagement.

Section 5.8 Governance and leadership.

}, keywords = {ANDRI, computation, disaster resilience, index design, statistical output}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-2-6}, issn = {493}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7106, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Volume II {\textendash} Chapter 6: Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis}, number = {493}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

In this chapter

Section 6.1 Explains the role of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis in composite index construction.

Section 6.2 Describes the uncertainty analysis applied to the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.

Section 6.2 Describes the sensitivity analysis applied to the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.

}, keywords = {analysis, ANDRI, computation, disaster resilience, index design, sensitivity, uncertainty}, isbn = { 978-0-6482756-2-6}, issn = {493}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-7100, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Volume II {\textendash} Index Design and Computation}, number = {493}, year = {2020}, month = {07/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Australian communities face increasing losses and disruption from natural disasters.\  Disaster resilience is a protective characteristic that acts to reduce the effects of, and losses from, natural hazard events.\  Disaster resilience arises from the capacities of social, economic and government systems to prepare for, respond to and recover from a natural hazard event, and to learn, adapt and transform in anticipation of future natural hazard events.\  This assessment of disaster resilience estimates the status of these capacities and shows how they are spatially distributed across Australia.

Composite indices are frequently used to summarize and report complex relational measurements about a particular issue.\  The Australian Disaster Resilience Index measures disaster resilience as a set of coping and adaptive capacities.\  Coping capacity is the means by which available resources and abilities can be used to face adverse consequences that could lead to a disaster.\  Adaptive capacity is the arrangements and processes that enable adjustment through learning, adaptation and transformation.\  Eight themes of disaster resilience encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access) or to adapt, learn and solve problems (social and community engagement, governance and leadership).\  Across the eight themes, 77 indicators were used to compute the Australian Disaster Resilience Index in 2084 areas of Australia, corresponding to the Statistical Area Level 2 divisions of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The index was then used to undertake the first nationally standardised assessment of the state of disaster resilience in Australia.\  Disaster resilience is reported at three levels: an overall disaster resilience index, coping and adaptive capacity sub-indexes and themes of disaster resilience that encapsulate the resources and abilities that communities have to prepare for, absorb and recover from natural hazards and to adapt, learn and solve problems (social character, economic capital, emergency services, planning and the built environment, community capital, information access, social and community engagement, governance and leadership).

Volume II (this volume) describes in detail the computation of the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. This includes resilience concepts, literature\ review, index structure, data collection, indicators, statistical methods, detailed\ statistical outputs, sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analyses.

Readers interested in the technical aspects of the Australian Disaster\ Resilience Index should also consider Volume II. Volume II is comprised of six\ chapters:

Chapter 1: Design of the Australian Disaster Resilience Index

Chapter 2: Indicators

Chapter 3: Computation of the Australian Disaster Resilience Index

Chapter 4: Statistical outputs: ADRI, coping capacity and adaptive\ capacity

Chapter 5: Statistical outputs: disaster resilience themes

Chapter 6: Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis

}, keywords = {ANDRI, computation, disaster resilience, index design}, isbn = {978-0-6482756-2-6}, issn = {493}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-6988, title = {A typology of disaster resilience in Australia - annual report 2018-19}, number = {576}, year = {2020}, month = {06/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The themes that influence disaster resilience in different locations in Australia are summarised using a typology.\  A typology identifies SA2s (Statistical Area 2 divisions of the ABS) that have similar characteristic patterns of theme sub-index values, and places these SA2s together into groups.\  Thus, the SA2s within a group are similar to each other, but each group has a different disaster resilience profile.\  The profile associated with each group can then be used to understand disaster resilience in local communities and the strengths and opportunities for enhancing or improving disaster resilience.

Cluster analysis revealed five disaster resilience profiles in Australia.\  The SA2s within a group all have a similar profile {\textendash} that is, they have similar disaster resilience strengths and constraints.\  Most SA2s fall into Group 4, and these are largely in metropolitan Australia.\  In comparison to other groups, areas within Group 4 are best placed overall to cope with and adapt to complex change associated with natural hazards.\  Areas in Group 3 are largely in regional and remote areas.\  Areas with this disaster resilience profile have an enhanced pro-social setting, but face constraints from economic capital, planning and the built environment, emergency services, information access and governance and leadership.\  Areas with the Groups 1 and the Group 5 disaster resilience profile are constrained by community capital and social character.\  Areas with the Group 2 disaster resilience profile are largely inner regional areas with reduced access to information and telecommunications services.\  Variation in the strengths and constraints on disaster resilience suggests that place-based strategies need to be applied to support the different dimensions of disaster resilience.

}, keywords = {ANDRI, annual report, disaster resilience}, issn = {576}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and James McGregor and Sonya Glavac and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Peter Hastings and Graham Marshall and Phil Morley} } @article {bnh-4215, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: annual project report 2016-17}, number = {326}, year = {2017}, month = {09/2017}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

What is the Problem?

In 2010, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) adopted resilience as one of the key guiding principles for making the nation safer. The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (Australian Government 2011) outlines how Australia should aim to improve social and community resilience with the view that resilient communities are in a much better position to withstand adversity and to recover more quickly from extreme events. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 also uses resilience as a key concept and calls for a people centred, multi-hazard, multi-sectoral approach to disaster risk reduction. As such each tier of government, emergency services and related NGOs have a distinct need to be able assess and monitor the ability to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters as well as a clear baseline condition from which to measure progress.

Why is it Important?

Society has always been susceptible to extreme events. While the occurrence of these events generally cannot be prevented; the risks can often be minimised and the impacts on affected populations and property reduced. For people and communities, the capacity to cope with, adapt to, learn from, and where needed transform behaviour and social structures in response to an event and its aftermath all reduce the impact of the disaster and can broadly be considered resilience. Improving resilience and thereby reducing the effects of natural hazards has increasingly become a key goal of governments, organisations and communities within Australia and internationally.

How are we going to solve it?

The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index project will produce a spatial representation of the current state of disaster resilience across Australia.\  The index will be composed of multiple levels of information that can be reported separately and represented as colour-coded maps where each point will have a corresponding set of information about natural hazard resilience. Spatially explicit capture of data will facilitate seamless integration of the project outcomes with other types of information. The index and indicators will also be drawn together as a State of Disaster Resilience Report which will interpret resilience at multiple levels and highlight hotspots of high and low elements of natural hazard resilience.

}, issn = {326}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Ian Reeve and Phil Morley and James McGregor and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Graham Marshall} } @conference {bnh-3901, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: assessing Australia{\textquoteright}s disaster resilience at a national scale}, booktitle = {AFAC17}, year = {2017}, month = {09/2017}, publisher = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, organization = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Sydney}, abstract = {

The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index (ANDRI) is Australia{\textquoteright}s first national-scale standardised snapshot of disaster resilience.\  Because of its national extent, the ANDRI takes a top-down approach using indicators derived from secondary data.\  The ANDRI has a hierarchical design based on coping and adaptive capacities representing the potential for disaster resilience in Australian communities.\  Coping capacity is the means by which people or organizations use available resources, skills and opportunities to face adverse consequences that could lead to a disaster.\  Adaptive capacity is the arrangements and processes that enable adjustment through learning, adaptation and transformation.\  Coping capacity is divided into themes of social character, economic capital, infrastructure and planning, emergency services, community capital and information and engagement.\  Adaptive capacity is divided into themes of governance, policy and leadership and social and community engagement.\  Indicators are collected to determine the status of each theme.\  This paper will present a preliminary assessment of the state of disaster resilience in Australia, and the spatial distribution of disaster resilience across Australia.\  We then outline the framing of the assessment outcomes as areas of strength and opportunities for enhancing the capacities for disaster resilience in Australian communities.\  The utilisation of the ANDRI into emergency management agency programs and tools will also be discussed.

}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Phil Morley and Sonya Glavac and James McGregor and Peter Hastings and Ian Reeve and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and Graham Marshall} } @article {bnh-2973, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Annual project report 2015-2016}, number = {187}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

What is the Problem?
In 2010, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) adopted resilience as one of the key guiding principles for making the nation safer. The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (Australian Government 2011) outlines how Australia should aim to improve social and community resilience with the view that resilient communities are in a much better position to withstand adversity and to recover more quickly from extreme events. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 also uses resilience as a key concept and calls for a people centred, multi-hazard, multi-sectoral approach to disaster risk reduction. As such each tier of government, emergency services and related NGOs have a distinct need to be able assess and monitor the ability to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters as well as a clear baseline condition from which to measure progress.
Why is it Important?
Society has always been susceptible to extreme events. While the occurrence of these events generally cannot be prevented; the risks can often be minimised and the impacts on affected populations and property reduced. For people and communities, the capacity to cope with, adapt to, learn from, and where needed transform behaviour and social structures in response to an event and its aftermath all reduce the impact of the disaster and can broadly be considered resilience. Improving resilience and thereby reducing the effects of natural hazards has increasingly become a key goal of governments, organisations and communities within Australia and internationally.
How are we going to solve it?
The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index project will produce a spatial representation of the current state of disaster resilience across Australia. The index will be composed of multiple levels of information that can be reported separately and represented as colour-coded maps where each point will have a corresponding set of information about natural hazard resilience. Spatially explicit capture of data will facilitate seamless integration of the project outcomes with other types of information. The index and indicators will also be drawn together as a State of Disaster Resilience Report which will interpret resilience at multiple levels and highlight hotspots of high and low elements of natural hazard resilience.

}, issn = {187}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Phil Morley and Graham Marshall and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and James McGregor and Ian Reeve} } @article {bnh-2585, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Conceptual framework and indicator approach}, number = {157}, year = {2016}, month = {02/2016}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Natural hazard management policy directions in Australia {\textendash} and indeed internationally {\textendash} are increasingly being aligned to ideas of resilience.\  There are many definitions of resilience in relation to natural hazards within a contested academic discourse (Klein et al., 2003; Wisner et al., 2004; Boin et al., 2010; Tierney, 2014).\  Broadly speaking, resilience to natural hazards is the ability of individuals and communities to cope with disturbances or changes and to maintain adaptive behaviour (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008).\  Building resilience to natural hazards requires the capacity to cope with the event and its aftermath, as well as the capacity to learn about hazard risks, change behaviour, transform institutions and adapt to a changing environment (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008).\  The shift from a risk-based approach to managing natural hazards towards ideas of disaster resilience reflects the uncertainty associated with predicting the location and impacts of natural hazard events, the inevitability of natural hazard events, and the uncertainty of future natural hazard risks in a changing climate and population.

The emergency management community sits at the forefront of operationalizing ideas of disaster resilience.\  Australia{\textquoteright}s National Strategy for Disaster Resilience champions a resilience based approach to the challenges posed by natural hazards.\  Emergency management and other government agencies involved in hazard management are also adopting principles of natural hazard resilience in policies, strategic planning and community engagement (e.g. Queensland Reconstruction Authority, 2012).\  It is in light of the need to operationalize the concept of disaster resilience that we are developing the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.\ 

The index is a tool for assessing the resilience of communities to natural hazards at a large scale.\  It is designed specifically to assess resilience to natural hazards {\textendash} not derived for another purpose then modified to suit a resilience focus.\  The assessment inputs in several ways to macro-level policy, strategic planning, community planning and community engagement activities at National, State and local government levels.\  First, it is a snapshot of the current state of natural hazard resilience at a national scale.\  Second, it is a layer of information for use in strategic policy development and planning.\  Third, it provides a benchmark against which to assess future change in resilience to natural hazards.\  Understanding resilience strengths and weaknesses will help communities, governments and organizations to build the capacities needed for living with natural hazards.

There are two principal approaches to assessing disaster resilience using an index.\  Bottom-up approaches are locally based and locally driven and are qualitative self-assessments of disaster resilience (Committee on Measures of Community Resilience, 2015). Bottom-up approaches survey individuals or communities using a scorecard consisting of indicators of disaster resilience such as preparation, exposure to specific hazards, community resources and communication (e.g. Arbon, 2014).\  In contrast, top-down approaches are often intended for use at broad scales by an oversight body (Committee on Measures of Community Resilience, 2015) and use secondary spatial sources such as census data to quantitatively derive indicators that describe the inherent characteristics of a community that contribute to disaster resilience (Cutter et al., 2010).\  It is important to align the approach used with the purpose of the resilience assessment because bottom-up and top-down approaches both have a point of spatial or conceptual limitation beyond which conclusions about resilience are no longer valid.\  A framework that outlines the philosophical underpinnings of a project, linked to the mechanisms used to collect and interpret data, can help to scope and define relevant assessment approaches.\  A framework is an important tool for a resilience assessment because it defines the boundaries - the why, what and how - around the evidence that we use to derive our assessment of natural hazard resilience.

In this document we set out the framework for the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.\  The framework outlines the conceptual underpinnings of our approach {\textendash} why we are doing what we are doing {\textendash} then explains what we will assess about resilience using data aligned to our resilience philosophy.\  We then briefly explain howwe intend to measure these data and the indicators that we will collect to form the index.

}, issn = {157}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Phil Morley and Graham Marshall and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and James McGregor and Ian Reeve} } @article {bnh-3233, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Overview of Indicators}, number = {240}, year = {2016}, month = {11/2016}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index is an assessment of disaster resilience at a large, all-of-nation scale.\  It is the first national snapshot of the capacity for community resilience to natural hazards.

The conceptual model outlining the reasoning and design of the index has been reported previously in two publications:

This report overviews the indicators being used in the index, including their justification, source and measurement level.

Once the data for all indicators have been collected and compiled, statistical analysis will then commence to compute the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index.

}, issn = {240}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Phil Morley and James McGregor and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Graham Marshall and Ian Reeve and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill} } @article {bnh-2849, title = {Top-down assessment of disaster resilience: A conceptual framework using coping and adaptive capacities}, journal = {International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction}, volume = {19}, year = {2016}, month = {10/2016}, abstract = {

This paper has free open access.

Assessment of disaster resilience using an index is often a key element of natural hazard management and planning. Many assessments have been undertaken worldwide. Emerging from these are a set of seven common properties that should be considered in the design of any disaster resilience assessment: assessment purpose, top-down or bottom-up assessment, assessment scale, conceptual framework, structural design, indicator selection, data analysis and index computation and reporting and interpretation. We introduce the design of an Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index (ANDRI) according to the common properties of resilience assessment. The ANDRI takes a top-down approach using indicators derived from secondary data with national coverage. The ANDRI is a hierarchical design based on coping and adaptive capacities representing the potential for disaster resilience. Coping capacity is the means by which people or organizations use available resources, skills and opportunities to face adverse consequences that could lead to a disaster. Adaptive capacity is the arrangements and processes that enable adjustment through learning, adaptation and transformation. Coping capacity is divided into themes of social character, economic capital, infrastructure and planning, emergency services, community capital and information and engagement. Adaptive capacity is divided into themes of governance, policy and leadership and social and community engagement. Indicators are collected to determine the status of each theme. As assessments of disaster resilience develop worldwide, reporting of their design as standard practice will track knowledge generation in the field and enhance the relationship between applied disaster resilience assessment and foundational principles of disaster resilience.

}, doi = {doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2016.07.005}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420916300887}, author = {Melissa Parsons and Sonya Glavac and Peter Hastings and Graham Marshall and James McGregor and Judith McNeill and Phil Morley and Ian Reeve and Richard Stayner} } @article {bnh-2345, title = {The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: Annual project report 2014-2015}, number = {141}, year = {2015}, month = {11/2015}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

What is the Problem?

In 2010, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) adopted resilience as one of the key guiding principles for making the nation safer. The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (Australian Government 2011) outlines how Australia should aim to improve social and community resilience with the view that resilient communities are in a much better position to withstand adversity and to recover more quickly from extreme events. The recent Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 also uses resilience as a key concept and calls for a people centred, multi-hazard, multi-sectoral approach to disaster risk reduction. As such each tier of government, emergency services and related NGOs have a distinct need to be able assess and monitor the ability to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters as well as a clear baseline condition from which to measure progress.

Why is it Important?

Society has always been susceptible to extreme events. While the occurrence of these events generally cannot be prevented; the risks can often be minimised and the impacts on affected populations and property reduced. For people and communities, the capacity to cope with, adapt to, learn from, and where needed transform behaviour and social structures in response to an event and its aftermath all reduce the impact of the disaster (Maguire and Cartwright, 2008) and can broadly be considered resilience. Improving resilience at various scales and thereby reducing the effects of natural hazards has increasingly become a key goal of governments, organisations and communities within Australia and internationally.

How are we going to solve it?

The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index project intends to produce a spatial representation of the current state of disaster resilience across Australia.\  The index will be composed of multiple levels of information that can be reported separately and represented as colour-coded maps where each point will have a corresponding set of information about natural hazard resilience. Spatially explicit capture of data (i.e. in a Geographical Information System) will facilitate seamless integration with other types of information and mapping and allow the use of the project outcomes in the preparation, prevention and recovery spheres.\  Additionally, the index and indicators will be drawn together as a State of Disaster Resilience Report which will interpret resilience at multiple levels and highlight hotspots of high and low elements of natural hazard resilience.

}, issn = {141}, author = {Phil Morley and Melissa Parsons and Graham Marshall and Peter Hastings and Sonya Glavac and Richard Stayner and Judith McNeill and James McGregor and Ian Reeve} }