Discovering future disaster management capability needs using scenario planning (#16)
In recent years disaster risk reduction efforts have focussed on disturbances linked to climate variability, seismic hazards, geo-political instability as well as public and animal health crises. Such disturbances combined with uncertainty derived from inter-dependencies between systems of critical infrastructure across urban and rural interfaces have combined to create significant problems for sustaining essential services and community safety for the private and public sector alike. The potential for a rapid spread of impacts, geographically and virtually, can also render a comprehensive understanding of disaster response and recovery needs and risk mitigation options difficult to grasp.
Because of such dispersed and cascading impacts, communities and governments are likely to face series of systemic effects: often appearing concurrently. Such impacts have been categorised as often being ‘outside of the box,’ ‘too fast,’ and ‘too strange.’ Unexpected vulnerabilities and complexities in essential systems can make disaster effects difficult to anticipate and recovery efforts difficult to plan for. While the nature of disasters and their impacts might be called familiar or even regular in some situations can we safely assume that response and recovery capabilities that are available now will suit future disaster contexts?
This paper presents initial scoping and detail of research funded by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre that seeks to define future capability needs of disaster management organisations. It explores challenges to anticipating the needs of representative agencies and groups active in before, during and after phases of complex emergency and disaster situations using capability deficit assessments and scenario planning.
