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Background
The Early Insights for More Resilient Communities project has focused on developing a tool that will allow regions to visualise changes in community resilience sooner and recognise that climatic events are not isolated, but can have longer lasting impacts a community’s resilience, especially if events are occurring more frequently.
Funded by the Australian Government’s Agricultural Innovation Hubs Program Grant, the project is a collaboration led by the University of Canberra with Charles Sturt University, the Australian National University and the University of Wollongong.
"A project of this scale involved a lot of collaboration and that could not have happened without Southern NSW Innovation Hub bringing us together. We are very grateful for that.”
Professor Jacki Schirmer, Project Lead, University of Canberra
Monitoring resilience
Launched in June 2024, the Early Insights for More Resilient Communities dashboard allows communities to track the impacts from an event across nine domains. In the pilot version available now those domains include financial resources, social support, government and community organisations, personal skills and local infrastructure.
The data available via the dashboard will help individuals, groups, and communities to recognise changes in their resilience early and tailor a proactive response from support services when needed.
It takes the idea that subtle changes in a community’s resilience can reveal important insights about what may lie ahead, or what is needed to secure positive outcomes in the future.
Outcomes
“Like a good data tool? It's always a good starting point in better understanding how communities tick. The new Early Insights for More Resilient Communities is another useful tool in better understanding how communities in NSW are faring; particularly with regard to indicators like 'community capacity to cope with challenges' (in regard to Natural Hazard Resources), that recognise the current level, and change, or loss over time.”
Nina O'Brien, Disaster Resilience and Recovery Lead, FRRR (Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal)
The key benefit of the dashboard is that it leads to better informed and more resilient communities. With timely information available to everyone, vulnerable communities can be identified and interventions can be implemented by organisations and governments.
Project lead, University of Canberra Professor Jacki Schirmer explained that monitoring the resilience of communities is more important than ever.
“With increasing numbers of communities across Australia experiencing consecutive natural hazard events and having little time between events to recover from the previous event or prepare for the next, it’s vital that we recognise that disaster preparation, response and recovery are not actually distinct and separate stages, and that we must measure resilience across all parts of the cycle.
“This tool allows us to identify changes in community resilience sooner so support services can tailor solutions where they are needed to assist individuals, groups and communities to work through change.
Professor Schirmer said, “Ideally, what we’d like to see as an outcome of this project is funding support flowing where it needs to go in our rural communities, so they are not only better prepared for change in general but also ready to face major events and recover well."
This project is part of the Australian Government’s Agricultural Innovation Hubs Program.
