NATURAL HAZARDS RESEARCH AUSTRALIA
INTRODUCING NATURAL HAZARDS RESEARCH AUSTRALIA Australia has a new national centre for natural hazards resilience and disaster risk reduction: Natural Hazards Research Australia. New research is now underway, with plenty of exciting funding opportunities already available.
PHOTO: MATT PALMER / UNSPLASH
DR RICHARD THORNTON CEO, Natural Hazards Research Australia
A new chapter in Australia’s national natural hazards research began in July last year with the establishment of Natural Hazards Research Australia (the Centre). The Centre is now up and running, extending 18 years of collaborative research from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and its predecessor, the Bushfire CRC. Funded with $85 M over 10 years from the Australian Government, along with contributions from partners, the Centre’s role is to work with partners and the community to produce usable research that creates safer and more resilient communities. The impacts of natural hazards in Australia are predicted to become more extreme and frequent in the future, so this is an important opportunity to produce research that underpins Australia’s National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework with the best available evidence and knowledge. The Centre is an important step forward as Australia continues to use research to 22
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think strategically about how we make communities—our built and natural environments—safe and sustainable to the effects of natural hazards. Since beginning in July, we have been busy working with the government and our partners to develop a strategic natural hazards research agenda for Australia. We’ve also been establishing all the programs and processes that a national centre needs: governance and staff, nodes in states and territories, initial research programs, an education program, funding opportunities, fresh branding, a media presence and much more.
Governance and location
The Centre is a not-for-profit company, limited by guarantee and registered as a charity through the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. A refresh of the Board will be completed by mid-2022. We are establishing new advisory structures to ensure the voices of our end user partners are at the forefront of all we do. This includes advisory panels—including an End User Advisory Panel and an International Research
Advisory Panel—and refreshed Board committees with external advisors that will inform our Board and guide the direction of the Centre. The Centre is a national entity and does not have a headquarters as such, but we will have staff established in ‘nodes’ within several major cities to ensure that we can regularly engage with our partners and keep our work grounded and locally relevant. We currently have nodes in Queensland, NSW and Victoria, and we are continuing discussions with other states and territories.
Partners at the core of our research
Our research approach is highly collaborative—we conduct research with our partners, for use by our partners and the community. This builds on the highly successful processes and practices of the previous CRCs, which have seen the findings of every major research project used by our partners for the benefits of the community, representing a more than six-fold return on every dollar invested. As such, we have regular discussions
