@article {bnh-8283, title = {Development of a national set of Community Service Announcements for flood risk}, number = {706}, year = {2021}, month = {11/21}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

This report details a five-month utilisation project linked to the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC {\textquoteleft}Flood Risk Communication{\textquoteright} core research project[1]. The project aim was to deliver a nationally agreed set of public flood risk messages, informed by research and agreed by a national working group comprising SES representatives from all Australian states and territories.

Specifically, the messages developed in this project are {\textquoteleft}Community Service Announcements{\textquoteright} (CSAs) intended for initial use by ABC Emergency. These CSAs would typically be used in radio broadcasts during or in the lead up to, significant flood or storm events.

These CSAs are messages of around 30 {\textendash} 60 seconds duration; however, they may be combined to produce longer segments. In rolling emergency broadcasts, they provide breaks between status updates and warnings from the relevant state or territory emergency services and on-the-ground reporting. These flood CSAs contain public safety information about flood risks, desired behaviours and calls to action, and sources of help or support.

The project was highly collaborative, made possible by the creation of a Flood CSA working group (CSA WG). The CSA WG comprised representatives of all state and territory emergency service agencies with responsibility for response in floods, mostly State Emergency Services (SES), along with a representative of the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), and representatives from the CSA product end user {\textendash} ABC Emergency. This group was facilitated and supported by the report author and research Chief Investigator (CI) who also worked to incorporate research informed insights into the messaging, and a partner investigator (PI) from the research end user organisation, the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC).\ 

The project comprised three stages: scoping; co-development; testing and finalising.

  1. SCOPING - this stage used consensus decision-making to identify and prioritise message topics and content areas.
  2. CO-DEVELOPMENT{\textendash} this stage involved message drafting and iterative review by the CSA WG to agree a provisional set of CSA messages.
  3. TESTING AND FINALISING {\textendash} this stage involved testing of the CSA messages through a series of focus groups with the public and a final round of review and refining based on their feedback to produce the final set of CSAs.

The final stage in this project is the end user production of the CSAs, i.e., professional recording and implementation ready for use. This last stage is outside the scope of the BNHCRC-funded project.

This report included details of the approaches taken and the outcomes in Stages 1 to 3.

The scoping stage of the project included use of a survey to aid the consensus process. Following agreement on the main content areas the second stage was co-development. In this stage the CSA WG was divided into small cross-jurisdictional {\textquoteleft}cluster{\textquoteright} groups to draft messages in two or three content areas, and this was followed by a whole-of-group iterative review process. A set of 26 provisional CSA messages were produced at the end of this stage.

In the final stage the ABC end user produced a set of first-pass audio recordings of each CSA. These were used for message testing with the public. Seven virtual focus groups were run with a total of 39 members of the public. Sample demographics were collected during this process to ensure national coverage across the sample and inclusion of a mix of genders, ages, and flood exposure. In addition, based on CSA message content, important sample characteristics were monitored to ensure inclusion of relevant target audiences in the sample, i.e., parents of younger children and youths/teenagers, drivers, large and small animal owners, and people living in rural locations.

Message testing included assessment of initial impressions, message understanding (words, structure), message ambiguity (intent, confusion), and relevance/utility to self and other. Focus group feedback was then fed back into a final set of edits for a last series of reviews and refining to produce the final set of agreed CSAs.

Nationally agreed Community Service Announcements

The final set of Flood CSAs comprises 26 messages. This includes messages that can be used in all phases of flood and storm events, although the majority are designed for use during an event. The messages cover a broad range of flood risk content including the need to prepare and leave early, risks associated with driving in floods, storms, and flash flooding, playing, and having contact with floodwater, issues for a range of animal owners, and safety considerations when cleaning up after flooding.

Following finalisation of the CSAs, these messages were approved by the AFAC SES Community Safety Group on 28 October 2021. These messages and the approach taken to develop them has now been written into an AFAC Procedural Guideline, which was endorsed by AFAC Council on 28 October 2021 and is available via the AFAC website[1].

The ABC has also finalised the production of the CSAs and these were distributed and available for broadcast from 8 November 2021.

Although the CSAs were created in response to a request by the ABC, and with their involvement, there is the opportunity for other broadcasters to use them too. It is important that those interested in using these CSAs consult the local State Emergency Service agency on which messages will be broadcast to ensure that this messaging complements and reinforces emergency services{\textquoteright} communications during the flood/storm emergency.

}, keywords = {communication, community service announcements, Emergency, flood risk}, issn = {706}, author = {Mel Taylor} } @article {bnh-7791, title = {Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering - annual report 2019-2020}, number = {638}, year = {2021}, month = {01/2021}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project is a three-year project being jointly undertaken by researchers at RMIT University, the University of Western Australia, and Curtin University for the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNHCRC). Now in its final year, it is the core project in the BNHCRC{\textquoteright}s research cluster on Sustainable Volunteering. The goal of this cluster is to improve the long-term sustainability of the emergency management volunteer workforce and better engage the potential of volunteering to build disaster resilience in Australian communities.

The Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project has two broad aims, each of which is addressed by a targeted package of work:

The project complements other active BNHCRC research projects, especially in the emergency management capability cluster (e.g. Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability and Catastrophic and cascading events: planning and capability projects). It also draws from work in two completed projects: the Bushfire CRC Volunteerism project (2003-2010) undertaken by researchers at La Trobe University (Birch, 2011) and the BNHCRC Out of uniform: building community resilience through non-traditional volunteering project (2015-2017), which was a precursor to the Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project based at RMIT University (B. J. McLennan, Kruger, Handmer, \& Whittaker, 2017; B. J. McLennan, Whittaker, Kruger, \& Handmer, 2017).\ 

This Annual Report communicates the key activities and achievements of the Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project in the 2019-2020 financial year. This was the third year of the project (see also B. J. McLennan et al., 2018). The research phase of the project is due to end in December 2020.

}, keywords = {Emergency, sustainable, volunteering. recruitment}, issn = {638}, author = {Blythe McLennan and Patrick Dunlop and Darja Kragt and Djurre Holtrop and Maryl{\`e}ne Gagn{\'e} and Aleksandra Luksyte and Hawa Farid} } @article {bnh-8139, title = {Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering {\textendash} final project report}, number = {695}, year = {2021}, month = {08/2021}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {MELBOURNE}, abstract = {

The Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project was jointly undertaken by researchers at RMIT University, the University of Western Australia, and Curtin University for the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (CRC). It is the only core project in the CRC{\textquoteright}s research cluster on Sustainable Volunteering that is in active research phase. The goal of this cluster was to improve the long-term sustainability of the volunteer workforce, and better engage the potential of volunteering to build disaster resilience in Australian communities.

The Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project had two broad aims, each of which was addressed by a targeted package of work:

The project complemented other active CRC research projects, especially in the Emergency management capability cluster (e.g. Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability and Catastrophic and cascading events: planning and capability projects).\ It also drew from work in two completed projects: the Bushfire CRC Volunteerism project (2003-2010) undertaken by researchers at La Trobe University and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Out of uniform: building community resilience through non-traditional volunteering project (2015-2017), which was a precursor to the Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project based at RMIT University.\ 

This Final Report communicates the key activities and achievements of the Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project in its entirety from July 2017, up to March 2021. It also describes a range of follow-on utilisation activities being undertaken from July 2020 to June 2021.

}, keywords = {Emergency, recruitment, sustainable, volunteering}, issn = {695}, author = {Blythe McLennan and Patrick Dunlop and Darja Kragt and Djurre Holtrop and Maryl{\`e}ne Gagn{\'e} and Aleksandra Luksyte and Hawa Farid} } @article {bnh-7793, title = {Supplementing emergency warning messages to encourage readiness to act: the effect of colours and icons}, number = {640}, year = {2021}, month = {01/2021}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Current Australian emergency warning messages that have been refined to match evidence-based practice strongly encourage community members{\textquoteright} readiness to act on emergency instructions (Greer, Dootson, Miller \& Tippett, 2019). Given the written elements of warning messages are optimised to encourage readiness to act, this research examines the effect of adding icons and/or colours to official warnings. In this research, we draw on a socio- psychological model of precautionary adaption (Grothmann \& Reusswig, 2006) underpinned by Protective Motivation Theory (PMT; Rogers, 1975, 1983; Rogers \& Prentice-Dunn, 1997) to investigate whether emergency warning messages can be further optimised by adding colours and/or icons to encourage even higher levels of readiness to act on emergency instructions.

In order to achieve the aims of this research, an online survey was conducted in which participants were exposed to one of 16 mock emergency warnings about either a bushfire or a riverine flood and were then asked a series of questions relating to their demographic characteristics, message comprehension and effectiveness, threat appraisal, coping appraisal, protection motivation and maladaptive coping behaviour. Mock emergency warnings were developed using existing end-user emergency warnings to improve realism and maximise the usefulness of the findings, as well as building on previous QUT-conducted BNHCRC research (see Greer et al., 2019). A total of 2,482 Australians living across all states and territories were recruited to participate in the research. Participants were recruited by the Market Research firm Dynata. Approximately 150 participants responded to each of the 16 stimuli.

Overall, the research results show that adding colours and/or icons to the Evacuate Now (Bushfire) message creates improvements, albeit small ones, in message comprehension, effectiveness, perceived probability and perceived self-efficacy. The other three messages showed no improvement (or loss) in message comprehension, effectiveness, threat appraisal, or coping appraisal as a result of adding colours and/or icons.

}, keywords = {colours, Emergency, icons, messages, readiness, warning}, issn = {640}, author = {Dominique Greer and Paula Dootson and Sophie Miller and Vivienne Tippett} } @inbook {bnh-8209, title = {Animal Welfare and Disasters}, booktitle = {Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics}, year = {2020}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, organization = {Oxford University Press}, chapter = {Animal Welfare and Disasters}, abstract = {

Public policy around animal welfare in disaster management is a new field, both in practice and in research. Early studies in the 1990s paved the way for a wider and more internationally focused approach to the challenge of protecting both people and animals during disasters, with some countries introducing specific legislative instruments to afford animals better protection in such events. Such reforms are largely motivated by the recognition of the bond humans often have with animals, and the likelihood that they will behave in a way that is protective of them, even at the risk of compromising human safety. However, the issues around animal disaster management and the associated policy are complex and are best categorized as a wicked problem.

Production animals are generally highly vulnerable to disaster due to high stock densities and lack of hazard mitigation. However, it is the lack of human{\textendash}animal bond that leaves these animals largely without disaster-risk-reduction advocacy. In contrast, companion animals that enjoy the paternalistic protection of their guardians benefit from greater rights, and their advocates have a stronger voice to effect change in public policy through democratic processes. This article looks at the historical development of policy and legal reform of animal disaster management in a global context and draws upon numerous studies to provide evidence-based arguments as to why animals matter in disasters and why there are significant public safety and political benefits in protecting them.

}, keywords = {animal, crisis analysis, disaster, Emergency, evacuation planning, hoarding, lessons, pet, search and rescue}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1528}, url = {https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1528}, author = {Glassey, Steve} } @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-7005, title = {Emergency management communication: The paradox of the positive in public communication for preparedness}, journal = {Public Relations Review}, volume = {46}, year = {2020}, month = {06/2020}, abstract = {

Government emergency management agencies use public communication to inform and educate around risks such as floods, fires, storms, and earthquakes with the aim to help communities understand how to prepare for these emergency events. This study of government communication relating to emergency management preparedness examines an Australian context to understand the types of messages preparing community members for natural hazards. Findings suggest that agencies employ a two-track approach combining warranting and engagement messages. Yet a deeper look at the messages suggests a {\textquotedblleft}paradox of the positive{\textquotedblright} that overemphasizes the capacity of local agencies to respond to crises and underemphasizes citizen shared responsibility. Implications for the paradox of the positive in other national contexts and public relations theory building are also discussed.

}, keywords = {community engagement, Emergency, natural hazard, Paradox of the positive, preparation, Public communication}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2020.101903}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S036381112030028X}, author = {Kim Johnston and Maureen Taylor and Barbara Ryan} } @article {bnh-7293, title = {Legal Complexities of Entry, Rescue, Seizure and Disposal of Disaster-Affected Companion Animals in New Zealand}, journal = {Animals}, volume = {10}, year = {2020}, month = {09/2020}, abstract = {

With the increasing societal expectation that animals are afforded greater protection in emergencies, the legal process from entering a property to rescuing a companion animal, through to how to dispose of such animals if they remain unclaimed has not been well examined in New Zealand. It is hypothesised that the legal framework for such a response is flawed. In this study, each phase of animal disaster rescue is evaluated against four key statutes that may apply in each phase, in that does any statute provide clear end-to-end provisions with clear legal authority to do so? The study found that all statutes evaluated contained flaws and that the current legal provisions are insufficient to provide clear authority for the sequential process of undertaking the rescue of animals during emergencies. A major flaw was discovered in the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, a key statute, that provided for the seizure of property and animals but omitted a procedure for the disposal of such seized things leaving them all in legal limbo. It is recommended that animal disaster laws be updated to be more animal inclusive. The method also may be applicable to assist evaluating animal disaster management legal frameworks in other countries

}, keywords = {animal, disaster, disposal, Emergency, law, rescue, seizure, welfare}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10091583}, url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/9/1583}, author = {Glassey, Steve} } @conference {bnh-6529, title = {Emergency volunteer retention: can a culture of inclusiveness help?}, booktitle = {AFAC19 powered by INTERSCHUTZ - Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Research Forum}, year = {2019}, month = {12/2019}, publisher = {Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience}, organization = {Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Given increasingly diversified communities and the importance of attracting and retaining all volunteers irrespective of their demographic background, it is important to increase the representativeness of volunteers by promoting diversity. We surveyed emergency services volunteers from Western Australia to examine (a) whether and why culture of inclusiveness plays an important role for volunteer retention and (b) whether and why female volunteers have different perceptions of inclusivity culture in their units. Our findings demonstrated that climate for inclusion played a vital role for volunteer retention because in such climates they felt connected and related to others, and felt freedom to express themselves professionally. Despite the importance of climate for inclusion, male and female volunteers viewed this climate differently and experienced different outcomes. Female volunteers perceived marginally lower levels of climate of inclusion than men. As hypothesised, female volunteers felt more connected to their teammates in inclusive climates integrative of differences. Unexpectedly, female volunteers{\textquoteright} relatedness needs were less likely to be fulfilled in inclusive climates where they were included into decision-making.

Download the full non-peer reviewed research proceedings\ from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Research Forumhere.

}, keywords = {communities, Emergency, volunteers. diversity and inclusion}, url = {https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/australian-journal-of-emergency-management-monograph-series/}, author = {Maryl{\`e}ne Gagn{\'e} and Aleksandra Luksyte and Patrick Dunlop and Djurre Holtrop and Darja Kragt and Hawa Farid} } @article {bnh-5610, title = {Emergency volunteering shared learning network}, number = {478}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The Emergency Volunteering Shared Learning Network (EVN) was established in September 2018, with the following goals:

The EVN was initially set up as a 6-month pilot project, sponsored by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNHCRC) in conjunction with the Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering research project.1 The EVN is convened by Blythe McLennan and Tarn Kruger from RMIT University.

The purpose of this report is to document the activities of the EVN during the pilot period, evaluate their impact and share learnings with the network{\textquoteright}s members as well as other BNHCRC researchers and end users. The report will also help to inform decisions about the next steps for the EVN.

}, keywords = {Citizen action, disaster, Emergence, Emergency, Informal volunteerism, resilience, volunteering}, issn = {478}, author = {Blythe McLennan} }