A team of researchers at Deakin University recently partnered with local media and natural hazards experts to deliver the Burdekin Aware and Prepared Community Forum.
The forum, held on Saturday, February 24 at Burdekin PCYC, saw community members come together to share their experiences of living through natural disasters and how information was communicated by different organisations.
The project’s lead researcher, Dr Gabi Mocatta, said the team was grateful for the support of the Burdekin community.
“We’ve done some research on how the Burdekin Shire does disaster communication and how well it’s done here, which is one of the reasons we wanted to come to this community,” she said.
“The council-run Local Disaster Management Group seemingly does an amazing job of getting the community resilient and knowledgeable and that’s perhaps a model that can be emulated across other parts of Australia.
“It is a community service that people have done, for their community but also for other places in Australia, so it’s amazing that people make that effort.”
The forum was one of three held across Australia as part of the Awareness, Education and Communication for Compound Natural Hazards project, funded by the Natural Hazards Research Australia, with a forum already held in Dandenong, Victoria and one to be held later this year in Tenterfield, New South Wales.
The data collected from the forum will be drafted into a communication framework, which will seek the feedback of members from the three communities, before a report will be written for Natural Hazards Research Australia to be made available for emergency managers across Australia.
The project is still seeking feedback in the form of an anonymous survey.
Scan the QR code to complete the survey.
Caption: L-R Emergency Management Coordinator Andy Pethybridge, LDMG Chair Lyn McLaughlin, Lead Researcher Gabi Mocatta, Sweet FM Manager Charlie Scuderi, Local Disaster Coordinator Eileen Devescovi and Kirsten Diprose and Erin Hawley of Deakin University
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