This is AIDR calling

Often, I am asked at family functions, or maybe at the pub, so what do you do? I shift awkwardly, thinking, how do I explain AIDR?

‘We are a disaster resilience institute.’

‘Oh, so you do training?’

‘No, not exactly.’

‘You do research?’

‘Well, no, not exactly.’

‘What do you do then?’

After throwing words around like ‘best practice guidelines’, ‘conference’, ‘publishing journals’, and ‘webinars’, people either say ‘that’s interesting’, eyes glazing, or move on to the football.

We have spent time this month looking at what it is that we do, and how we describe ourselves. More will come on that in coming months, but we are really trying to join up the offerings we have so that they are not siloed and are complementary. This is the exciting focus of our planning.

As the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference 2025 fades in the rear-view mirror, the 2026 conference appears in the distant horizon. We’ve been considering the feedback from this year’s conference, and our stakeholder survey, to think about how we can showcase great practice and great translation of research into practice. We are also interested in how we continue the conversation around changing mindsets. Later in the month, we’ll be calling for your abstracts.

I’m a big fan of the international work that is done to reduce risk. I always look forward to International Day of Disaster Risk Reduction (IDDRR), as it is an opportunity to shine a light on the positive efforts to reduce risk. Often, we take a negative view, ‘we must do more, we must invest more’, without understanding the great work that is being done.

I was pleased to be able to host my first IDDRR webinar with Jimmy Scott from Queensland Reconstruction Authority, Paul Box from CSIRO, and Natalie Eagleton from the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal. They all showcased the great work they are doing. My colleague, Dr Mayeda Rashid, was able to expertly manage the panel session.

Another fascinating Spotlight Series webinar was held in October. This webinar featured an old colleague, Mark Duckworth from Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies. Mark explored the question ‘do governments trust communities?’ - a question most of us working in the community development field have been posing for many years. This was an immensely interesting, dense, but engaging topic. It is always fantastic watching the engagement in the chat. You know the content is hitting the mark when the chat window is going off.

I was really pleased to have a very fruitful conversation with Dave Smith, the CEO of Disaster Relief Australia (DRA) and his colleague Anthony Birch, sharing information about our priorities and looking at how we can collaborate more. DRA has strong engagement with communities and is able to bring a wealth of insights and knowledge to help us improve practice. We look forward to their input in the Community Recovery Handbook.

While we are on the topic of the Community Recovery Handbook, the team have been doing a lot of scanning, scoping, thinking about the structure and scope of the handbook. It has been very exciting to see how it is shaping up. This fits within a broader framework for the handbooks and changing how we organise them.

I’ve been fortunate to be on the national judging panel for the 2025 Resilient Australia Awards. What strikes me is the quality of projects that are being undertaken to reduce risk and build resilience. It has been very hard to separate many of the projects, and I am looking forward to announcing the winners later this month at the Resilient Australia National Awards Ceremony. Our big challenge is how we take this wonderful practice and share it and embed it so that future practitioners can use it.

I mentioned last month that next year is the 40^th anniversary of the Australian Journal of Emergency Management (AJEM), and its forerunner The Macedon Digest. I’ve taken on the task to review each decade for each edition next year (aka read every article of AJEM). It has been fascinating to see practices that many people think are recent developments (i.e. community-led recovery) as emerging 40 or so years. It makes me often think, do we have enough knowledge, and we just need to embed it?

The Bleak Squad’s excellent album, Strange Love, has been accompanying me as I’ve navigated the bumps of the month.