Community safety and engagement

Bob Cechet from Geoscience Australia, project leader of the Risk Assessment and Decision Making project, talks about his research at the Bushfire CRC annual conference at Darwin 2010.

This discussion paper considers the use of research reviews to inform policy making and practice. In particular, it outlines some of the shortcomings of traditional narrative literature reviews and discusses principles of systematic review, which may be drawn on to make reviews more useful for some policy makers’ and managers’ purposes. While the paper considers this topic broadly, its intended audience is people involved in the Australian fire and emergency management industry.

Project Goal
This research project aims to support the fire and emergency management sector to make
decisions about sharing responsibility for community safety. It will identify alternative ways of
framing responsibility

A collection of reports examining the legal basis underpinning The Prepare, Defend or Leave Early policy in various states.

Community Fire Unit (CFU) initiatives in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory are increasing in popularity and cost. This report measures the effectiveness of the scheme in achieving key community bushfire safety goals. It also identifies likely challenges facing the movement as numbers grow and new issues arise.

An assessment was carried out utilising a range of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, including: 10 agency interviews; 670 Community Fire Unit member questionnaires; 50 public questionnaires and 4 focus groups.

This PhD project aims to identify important couple/marital judgment and decision-making processes that influence survival-related decision making under the threat of an imminent bushfire. These decision making processes will be of two kinds: (i) long-term planning and preparation decisions; and (ii) action-decisions under conditions of imminent threat.

This resource contains a collection of material from the Evaluation of Community Safety Programs Project. It contains two large PDF's which include a number of the reports and presentations as well as background resources for the Community Education course.