Fire and Flood Resilience

This week I finished up at Minderoo Foundation. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be part of the Fire and Flood Resilience Mission, the amazing team I had the privilege to work with and the generosity and national platform Minderoo created to do such important work for the country.

In the aftermath of the 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires, we set out on an audacious goal to lift Australia's resilience to bushfire and flood disasters by becoming a world leader in disaster resilience. We worked alongside governments, corporations and not-for-profit partners and collaborators to create a blueprint for addressing hazard risk, vulnerability and exposure modelled around the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.?

We launched three collaborative moon shot programs:

• FireShield with the goal for Australia to be able to detect and mitigate dangerous fires within an hour
• Resilient Communities with a goal to lift the most vulnerable communities to be on par with the most resilient to fires and floods
• Healthy Landscapes with a goal to half the hazard risk in the most fire and flood prone regions

In the last few years, we have seen the national conversation move with a heightened awareness and focused investments in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. We have seen the creation and bolstering of State emergency management agencies and the creation of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the Disaster Ready Fund and the National Emergency Management Stockpile. There is greater coordination and collaboration across all sectors with events such as the National Preparedness Summit becoming an annual feature improving public-private partnerships.

Along with our partners and collaborators, our team has been able to invest in systemic shifts and innovations that will continue to help lift Australian Communities. Some of our work, in collaboration with partners included:

• A national emergency housing program that has provided accommodation to over 300 victims of bushfires and floods as they rebuild their lives and livelihoods (NSW Reconstruction Authority, SA Housing Authority, Australian Portable Camps)
• XPrize Wildfire: A competition with an US$11M prize purse designed to transform how fires are detected, managed and fought. Mobilising innovators around the world to detect fires from space in real-time using earth observation and autonomous systems (XPrize)
• Spark National Bushfire Simulator: Supported acceleration of Australia’s first national?bushfire?prediction and simulation platform (AFAC)
• Australian Fire Danger Rating System: Supported national acceleration, harmonisation and improvements to a common platform for all fire agencies across Australia?to demonstrate fire danger rating to the community (NSW RFS, AFAC)
• Burnett-Mary Regional Environmental Account: Australia’s largest set of natural capital accounts spanning 5.6 million hectares and?implementation of associated nature-based solutions?safeguarding environmental, cultural, and community assets from fire and flood risks (Burnett-Mary Regional Group)
• Resilient Communities Framework: A system of community leadership and empowerment for the development of action based resilience plans
• The Resilience Canopy:? A nation-wide network of partners and communities investing in developing resilience through locally led frameworks and practitioner training (Resilient Co.)
• Australian Resilience Corps: Mobilised thousands of corporate volunteers to carry out risk reduction activities in at-risk communities around the country (NRMA, Disaster Relief Australia, Habitat for Humanity, Parky Care, Trees for Life, Rotary WA)
• Resilient Australia Lesson Plans: Development of disaster resilience lesson plans for school aged children delivered to over 80,000 students (Cool.org)
• Bushfire Data Challenges Program: Invested in the development of a national bushfire data commons to aggregate standardised fire history data for research and modelling (Australian Research Data Commons)

Australia's economic cost of climate-related disasters is estimated to be $38 billion a year. With a x9 payback for every dollar spent on preparedness and resilience, the economic argument is clear for the sector to continue making progress and shifting investments into this space and I will, no doubt, continue to support this sector either personally or professionally.

Special thanks to the team:

Adrian Turner Mary Goh Karen O'Connor Kate Powl Milica D. Rania Poullos Matthew Chesnais Nadine De Santis Jamie Loyd Mellanie Somers Brianna Sanders Lee Goddard Marco Dandolo Peter Leihn Tom Davies Margaret Moreton Alicia Darvall Danielle Butters Mark Tazewell Chris Milne Mal James Shannon Taylor Deepak K Dr Madelon Willemsen , Lochlan Morrissey Priyanka Dharmapalan Christian Chelvan Katie Ciesla, Kim Wilke and many others...

Special thanks to partners and collaborators:

ARDC, AFAC, AIDR, NSW RFS, ACT RFS, NEMA, Australian Space Agency, NSW Resconstruction Authority, SA Housing Authority, Accounting for Nature, Burnett-Mary Regional Group, NRM Regions Australia, The Resilience Canopy, Resilient Co., Resilient Cities Catalyst, XPrize, Disaster Relief Australia, Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, Australian Red Cross, IAG, NRMA, Habitat for Humanity, Greening Australia, BCG, KPMG, Australian Portable Camps, Risk Frontiers, Paul Ramsay Foundation, Moore FoundationEnvironmental Defence Fund, Google Foundation, Cool.org , Organge Sky and many others...