SEMINAR: Adapting to Living with Bushfire and Earthquake Hazards: Integrating household, community and societal influences

When disaster strikes, a significant influence on risk is the degree to which people have developed the plans, accumulated the resources and developed the competencies to increase their capacity to cope with and adapt to the consequences of hazard events such as bushfires and earthquakes (the biggest earthquake in Australian history was in WA). Thus, identifying the plans, resources and competencies required to cope and to adapt, and communicating this to people, are significant risk management objectives. However, despite the efforts and resources committed to encouraging people to adopt protective and resilience resources, level of readiness remain low. Neither living in high risk areas nor providing people with information about risk and preparedness ensures that people act on this information and prepare. This paper argues that it is not information per se that encourages preparedness. Rather it is how people interpret hazards, mitigation measures, and sources of information that determines levels of adoption of protective measures and resilience resources. This seminar discusses the findings of recent empirical work identifying why people decide to prepare or decide not to prepare. It will discuss the evolution of a model that demonstrates how preparedness is a function of how people interpret information in social contexts. Specifically, it will discuss how beliefs about the effectiveness of protection measures, sense of community, active participation in community life, community leadership, social responsibility, community problem solving characteristics and people’s relationship with sources of hazard information (e.g., fire agencies) interact to influence preparedness decisions and levels of adoption. Analyses of data from bushfire and earthquake hazards in Portugal/Australia and New Zealand respectively inform discussion of the applicability of findings to different hazards and countries. In addition, comparison of data on a frequently-occurring (bushfire) hazard with that from an infrequently-occurring (earthquake) hazard affords an opportunity to test the theoretical prediction that the role of trust in risk management is a function of hazard frequency and community familiarity with the hazard. The findings in both locations highlight the role of mainstream community characteristics and competencies in risk management. Consequently, the implications for developing public education programs that integrate risk management and community engagement strategies are discussed.