June 2024
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Regional communities focussed on their prosperity and resilience now have access to an online tool to visualise the social, environmental and economic features of their community.
Developed as part of the Early Insights for More Resilient Communities project, this new resilience dashboard will be showcased at the second Building Wellbeing into Policy and Action in Australia forum, to be held in Canberra on 26-28 June 2024.
Part of the Southern NSW Innovation Hub's Agricultural Innovation Hubs Program, the Sharing Early Insights for More Resilient Communities project is a collaboration with University of Canberra, Charles Sturt University, the Australian National University and the University of Wollongong.
Project lead, University of Canberra Professor Jacki Schirmer explained that monitoring the resilience of communities is more important than ever.
“Historically, resilience related to natural disasters was based on the idea that natural disasters were singular, rare events that could be understood and managed in several stages, including a clear stage of disaster preparation prior to an event occurring, following by active disaster response, and several stages of disaster recovery.
“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 project focused on developing tools that will allow 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. 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.”
The Sharing Early Insights for More Resilient Communities dashboard covers nine domains, including financial resources, social support, government and community organisations, personal skills and local infrastructure, all of which play important roles in helping communities effectively navigate a wide range of challenges, including natural hazard events.
Southern Innovation NSW Hub Director Cindy Cassidy said the project fills a gap in data and understanding about what to look for when planning and designing solutions for more resilient communities.
“There have been many limitations to the completeness, accuracy, and the geographic scale and coverage of data available to help communities take informed action to improve social, environmental and economic wellbeing. There has also been limited attention given to the idea that changing resilience can reveal important insights about what may lie ahead, or what is needed to secure positive outcomes in the future.
“This dashboard reports on a suite of indicators that can signal early change and inform proactive actions rather than showing change too late, when resilience resources are close to depletion. Our hope is that this data will be used by state and federal government agencies, healthcare providers, local councils and other support services to give them insights into community resilience they haven’t had before, so they can support these communities better.”
The project was funded by the Australian Government’s Agricultural Innovation Hubs Program Grant with in-kind co-contributions from partners, stakeholders and participants in the project.
The Southern NSW Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub is one of eight hubs established nationally through funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund. The SNSW Hub partners are Charles Sturt University (Hub lead), Australian National University (ANU), Farming Systems Groups Alliance, Local Land Services (LLS), NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI), Rural Aid and University of Canberra (UC).
