This is AIDR calling

This has occupied a lot of time this month. I attended the Higher-Risk Weather Summit in Canberra, along with more than 200 senior staff from government departments, state governments, emergency services organisations, business and not-for-profit. Bringing people together to brief them on the current situation and test arrangements is a significant undertaking. Although AIDR attended as an observer, we had opportunities to share our knowledge of disaster impacts and practices, while strengthening important networks. 

Following on from the summit, AIDR held its first ever Higher-Risk Weather webinar, designed to reach out across our stakeholder group. We had over 1200 registrations, with more than 600 attending, making it our largest ever webinar.

Excellent presentations from the Bureau of Meteorology set the scene for the upcoming months. We shared a range of AIDR resources that might be useful to people, and then settled into a deep dive on inclusive evacuation centre planning, with Gender and Disaster Australia, Australian Red Cross, People with Disability Australia, Multicultural Emergency Management Plan, University of Western Sydney, and the Centre for Excellence in Youth and Disasters present on inclusive practice. It was a well-received webinar and sparked a lot of lively conversation.

Natural Resource Management Australia Regions held their annual conference in Canberra as well (spending a lot of time in my old stomping ground and took my folding bike to get around). It was excellent to hear about the work that is being done in disaster resilience, nature-based solutions for disaster risk reduction, and ecological recovery. I was honoured to be part of a fireside chat with Sarah Hoyal on how we can work more closely to integrate natural values management and disaster resilience. The questions from CEOs afterwards were excellent and prompted much further thinking on the topic.

As AIDR is part of AFAC, the Reconciliation Action Working Group met with the AFAC Leadership Team to progress the development of an Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan. Facilitated by the fabulous Yorta Yorta Woman, Karen Millward, we were energised to start further embedding reconciliation into the work that we do.

The UK Cabinet Office COBR Directorate and the UK Resilience Academy reached out to us to understand more about how we manage the Australian Journal of Emergency Management. We had a lively and valuable exchange of knowledge and practice. This meeting has sparked further interest in sharing knowledge about doctrine and handbooks.

I have started work on an AIDR submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry in Civil Preparedness. This is an area of work sparked by the increasing geopolitical instability and uncertainty. As civil resources would be stretched in any conflict, self-organisation of communities, that which we see in our community-based disaster resilience models, is going to be paramount. It has been an interesting process so far, speaking with former colleagues who are now working in Ukraine (one of my conversations was cut short because of an alert of an incoming drone), and also reaching back into the past with family members who experienced World War 2.

We start to look forward to 2027, and what we hope to achieve in the last year of this contract. Much of it will be consolidation of some of the changes that we have made and looking to further develop our capability development and networking opportunities. We are in the process of finalising our annual stakeholder survey. It is a fascinating process because I always want to ask lots of questions, and I am then asked why, and what are you going to use it for! Our stakeholders telling us what we are doing well and not so well, and what is needed will certainly help us going forward.

One of my favourite jazz bands, The Catholics, returns with a fabulous new album, Shelter. Its upbeat nature certainly gets you in the mood for getting things done.