This is AIDR calling

I hope the new year started well for you all. The country has had its fair share of challenges since the last time we were last in touch. This continues to keep us focused as we look to ways of taking harm out of the system.

The AIDR team started the year reflecting on the year that was and focusing on our annual plan for 2026. Now that we have a full year of the new program behind us, we can better see what’s ahead and map out the rhythm of our work. It’s an exciting time for us.

The program is shaping up well, and we are awaiting final touches and approvals. We are looking at bedding down what we started in 2025. I’m not afraid of us being a little predictable and boring in a world that has entered a hyper frenzy of change. Our focus remains strongly on disaster risk reduction and resilience, where we will continue to improve ways of targeting our efforts to building capability in local government, local social infrastructure, and social inclusion. We also seek to expand our engagement and connect with those responsible for natural values and biodiversity.

The Resilience Matters webinars and Spotlight Series will return. We will finalise the Community Recovery Handbook, review the Lessons Management Handbook, and start work on a Foundations of Disaster Resilience Handbook and the Disaster Risk Reduction Handbook. We continue to offer masterclasses helping people improve their ability to manage disasters, and are exploring masterclasses in risk reduction, systems thinking, and recovery. We will be looking at better ways to mobilise the existing knowledge that we have on the Knowledge Hub – all 20,000 items – to place in the hands of people helping communities prepare, respond and recover from disaster. We celebrate the Australian Journal of Emergency Management (AJEM) turning 40 this year, and we also look to celebrate 70 years of disaster management education in Australia. All of your old favourites like the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference, the Possibility Lab, and the Resilient Australia Awards will return. We are reviewing the Volunteer Leadership Program in line with our new focus on risk reduction and resilience and our school’s education activities.

There’s been a couple of pieces that have really piqued my interest over summer. An interesting paper by Jane McAdam and Thomas Mulder on reframing evacuations as an anticipatory strategy presents a real shift in thinking where the evacuation process can be seen in more positive way than a last-ditch scramble for safety. I read a paper in AJEM led by Jenny Hou and published January 2024, about a humanist approach to disaster resilience, which prompted consideration about the philosophical underpinnings of our work. Emergency management is very technocratic: see problem, fix problem. However, what is the underlying ‘why’ of our work?

Recently, dust storms have reemerged on my radar, with the storm in western NSW and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction posting about it at the same time. This is a little known and poorly understood hazard. A new newsletter from Ruth Bradney on the ethics of AI in has also prompted a flurry of excited thinking and interest, particularly with the title of Ethical AI wasn’t designed for disasters.

I finished my summer reading, Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry, which is a haunting account of the 74 children who died at the Okawa Elementary School because of the 3/11 Tsunami. The children died because of the decisions of adults – they did not evacuate to higher ground despite the pleadings of many of the older children.

A poignant moment towards the end of the book was when one of the young survivors said:

‘He talked about the word, gareki, meaning rubble or debris and used to refer to the detritus of the tsunami. To most people it was a neutral colourless term, unthinkingly employed but for Tetsuya, it hurt to hear, “Our possessions,” he said, “are now called gareki. Until the disaster they were part of our life. Now, they continue as memories.”’

As we talked with UNICEF and Centre of Excellence-Young People and Disasters during the month, this tragedy reminded me how we need to incorporate the voices of children and young people in disaster risk reduction.

2026 is set to be a big and busy year for us all. We are committed to meeting your needs as we all face the mounting challenge of reducing disaster risk in a volatile world.

The death of Rob Hirst from Midnight Oil truly marked the end of an era. Kosciusko remains one of my favourite songs.