More than 60 people from Natural Hazards Research Australia’s (the Centre) Tasmanian knowledge network gathered at the Crowne Plaza in Hobart at the end of October, celebrating longstanding research partnerships and looking towards even stronger natural hazards resilience and disaster risk reduction research outcomes.
Centre Board Chair, Iain McKenzie shared recently delivered strategic imperatives, highlighting the importance of collaboration with stakeholders across the Centre’s broad knowledge networks to collectively reduce the impacts of natural hazards on Australian communities.
Attendees were welcomed by Tasmania Fire Service Commissioner Jeremy Smith, who shared insights about the way the longstanding partnership between Tasmania Fire Service and the Centre and its previous iterations continues to be of value to Tasmanians, the service and other key Tasmanian stakeholders.
Jen Fry, Chair of East Coast Tasmania Tourism provided a different perspective on the impacts of more frequent and severe natural hazards, outlining the tourism sector’s keen interest in natural hazards research and the research and partnership opportunities that exist to address the increasing operational challenges faced by tourism operators in Tasmania and around Australia in her keynote address.
Emphasising the Centre’s commitment to leading impactful research and fostering partnerships that drive innovation in disaster resilience, Centre CEO Andrew Gissing updated attendees about the Centre’s initiatives and achievements of the past 12 months, as well as plans to continue developing and delivering research that is useful, useable and used.
A showcase of new, established, innovative and useful research and researchers included Nina Rogers (University of Tasmania (UoT) and Centre PhD student) presented findings from her PhD project looking at local government leadership for climate change adaptation planning and implementation; Prof David Bowman (UoT and the Centre) provided an update of the Bushfire risk at the rural–urban interface project; and Dr Carla Mooney (Bureau of Meteorology (the Bureau) and the Centre) provided an overview of Centre-Bureau flood research collaboration.
The audience significantly contributed to the rich tapestry of questions and commentary throughout the formal presentations and Q & A section, covering topics such as: the challenges of communicating natural hazard risks to transient populations such as tourists; how best to engage with small business tourist operators on future climate driven risks and shared responsibility for addressing those risks; building better capability in different teams within local councils to understand natural hazard risks; and how to navigate this with their communities.
The Centre thanks our Tasmanian stakeholders attending, contributing and supporting this event and the Centre. Preparations for the next Stakeholder Forum are already underway, which will take place in Sydney in February next year.