Selena Kyriakidis, Lauren Poynter, Hayley Jenkins, Chelsea Hardy, Sofe Hackett and Mackenzie Burchett

Billy Blue School of Design, Torrens University

A humanitarian response: The South East Queensland flood disasters

The South East Queensland Rainfall & Flood Event from the 22nd of February to the 7th of March 2022 has had devastating and irreversible effects on SEQ communities.

Environmental destruction, property depredation, and lives lost have resulted in traumatic psychological outcomes and large-scale financial calamities. This trauma has eroded values and support systems, social values, traditions, and attachment to a location, ultimately influencing communities prone to facing and responding to natural disasters (Jogia et al., 2014).

These factors were compounded during the event as communication between the government & the community was infrequent and contradictory. Considering this level of destruction, the Insurance Council of Australia have estimated the 2022 QLD and NSW foods to be Australia’s costliest ever food event, wrapping around $3.35 billion in insured losses across 197,000 claims (Cai, 2022). As communication links and infrastructure was damaged and disrupted, some economic activities came to a standstill. While programs, checklists and educational assets were available to the public, connection and offline access were limited. Highlighting that the services have not been utilised to their full extent and/ or that the user experience was inadequate. This furthered the disconnect and has led to distrust between the general public and the government (Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist, 2022).

Our group was invited to develop solutions to reduce the primary impact and secondary implications of natural disasters. We aimed to explore, understand, and generate a human-focused solution to better support food-affected communities while addressing community readiness, support and recovery efforts.

Mark Ellis

Bond University

Climate change and coastal erosion, planning for risk and resilience

As the world moves into a climate-affected future, there needs to be a shift in urban planning for coastal communities to address the increasing climate risk of coastal erosion. In addition, governments must look beyond coastal engineering adaptations to facilitate the long-term resilience of property owners in coastal zones in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner.

The Reserve Bank of Australia states that approximately 3.5 % of dwellings in Australia already fall under the category of high risk, and Queensland has 10 of the 20 suburbs with the highest rate of coastal retreat.

Is it time to start the discussion on how the Planning framework can implement managed retreat and climate receiver cities to cater for displaced residents due to coastal erosion and inundation?

Tony Jarrett

Central Queensland University

Volunteer fire-fighters as expert partners supporting bush fire disaster resilience in Primary School

As those agencies grapple with enacting inevitable inquiry recommendations following are series of horrendous fire seasons around the world, you could be forgiven for thinking that the bush fire problem and solutions to it is by adults for adults alone.  Not so. Children and youth need to be involved in all aspects of learning about and understanding natural hazards and disaster risks in our environment. Children and youth are not passive recipients of adult direction when exposed to natural hazards events such as bush fire.

There are many instances where teachers seek to collaborate with expert partners to enliven teaching and learning and enhance student learning opportunities. In NSW, the Geography Syllabus K-10 includes the Stage 3 (Years 5 and 6) bush fire unit of study ‘How can the impact of bushfires on people and places be reduced?’ There are numerous instances of volunteer fire-fighters being invited into classrooms as ‘expert partners’ in connection with this Stage 3 unit of study.

This Poster will detail my current research examining the contributions NSW Rural Fire Service volunteer fire-fighters make to student learning about natural hazards and particularly bush fire.

Two Case schools are part of this research. One school is conducting the Stage 3 unit in 2022 which will demonstrate contemporary teaching and learning approaches. The other Case will reflect on the conduct of the unit of study in 2016. The qualitative research will include use of semi-structured interviews, observations and focus groups with teacher, student, NSW RFS experts and parent/carers participants.

Grace O’Connor

Griffith University

Investigating the characteristics, lived experiences and capacities of local food producers within short food supply chains that enable fair and just transitions to sustainable food systems.

This research argues that formalising short food supply-chains, such as developing more inclusive governance frameworks, is critical in enabling fair and just transitions to sustainable food systems where local food producers thrive while feeding our communities, regenerating the environment and improving social-ecological resiliency.

RESEARCH QUESTION: How do the characteristics, lived experiences and capacities of local food producers within short food supply chains impact fair and just transitions to sustainable food systems?

Ahmed Qasim

Griffith University

Using digital technology to share and trade local food and improve community food resilience.

This research argues that digitally-supported sharing and trading of local food, empowers local food access decision-making and improves local community food resilience.

RESEARCH QUESTION: How can digital technology empower citizens to share and trade local food, and improve community food resilience?

 Lynn Lue-Kopman

Griffith University

Investigating how school gardens can build adolescent youth and community resilience to natural disasters food system insecurity

This research argues that digitally-supported sharing and trading of local food, empowers local food access decision-making and improves local community food resilience.

RESEARCH QUESTION: How can digital technology empower citizens to share and trade local food, and improve community food resilience?

Kristy Livock

James Cook University

Why won't people listen? Communicating risks about an event people may not realise they are vulnerable to.

Risk communication aims to provide people with the information they need in order to make informed decisions about possible danger. But what happens when someone does not perceive that there is a risk or believe they are personally vulnerable? My research seeks to understand why people may underestimate the risks associated with an event that has occurred infrequently in the past but is more likely to happen in the future.

This information can then be used to improve the structure and efficacy of future risk communication.

Benjamin Springfield

Queensland University of Technology

Predicting bushfire exposure conditions for a building using numerical heat transfer modelling

The number of days with extreme fire weather conditions and the Bushland Urban Interface (BUI) population continues to increase. Thus, BUI has an increased risk of severe damage and destruction to buildings due to bushfires, such as those seen in the 2019/20 black summer bushfires where over 3000 buildings were destroyed. The Australian bushfire standard AS 3959 provides construction requirements for buildings in bushfire-prone areas to ensure the building is sufficiently resilient against embers, radiant heating and direct flame contact experienced during bushfires.

The specific construction level of requirements depends upon the assessed bushfire attack level (BAL), which is determined using local site conditions and empirical equations and indexes. However, this approach is unable to identify critical building elements at risk and design and implement performance-based solutions for likely exposure conditions. This study used numerical heat transfer modelling to simulate a heritage-listed building exposed to a grass fire. Fire dynamic simulator software was used to simulate the grassfire spreading up an inclined slope towards the building.

The external temperature and heat fluxes at critical locations on the building were compared against those given in bushfire design and testing standards. It was observed that heat fluxes varied significantly across the building surface with the exposure levels on the roof being substantially lower than those found in AS 3959. Furthermore, the modelling techniques' potential future developments and applications are discussed.

Sahani Hendawitharana, Anthony Ariyanayagam, Mahen Mahendran and Felipe Gonzalez

Queensland University of Technology

LiDAR-based CFD models for building safety in bushfires

Australian building standards address methods of limiting bushfire building damages in new constructions. However, the bushfire safety of old buildings, especially heritage buildings is not within their scope. These old buildings could have changed their building structure and architecture through additions and remodelling over time using many different building materials. The combined impact of these changes on buildings during bushfires is less known and complex to study.

To address this issue, we have proposed a methodology that uses modern technology to assess the effect of bushfires on individual buildings. This study used ground and airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) point clouds to develop realistic heat transfer models of buildings. These models can then assess the bushfire heat transfer into the buildings, the vulnerable building locations and building damage characteristics under different bushfire scenarios. Therefore, this is a cost-effective, efficient and sustainable solution. Using this proposed methodology, a case study was conducted on an elevated Queenslander house in Samford, QLD. The temperature profiles, wind velocity and pressure distributions of the developed building model were compared against the results of a simplified cuboid building model.

The results showed the capabilities of the model to identify the most vulnerable features of the building compared to the simplified model. Therefore, this study emphasises the applicability of advanced technologies in assessing buildings in bushfire-prone areas to reduce the potential building damages.

Dr. R. M. N. U. Rajapaksha

University of Queensland

Surge Capacity of the Curative  Sector Preventive Healthcare Institutions for the Management of Disease Outbreaks in Kurunegala District, Sri Lanka

Surge capacity is defined as the ability to obtain adequate ‘staff, supplies, structures, and systems’ to provide sufficient care to meet immediate needs of an influx of patients. The aim of the study was to assess surge-capacity of the curative-healthcare institutions for the management of disease outbreak in a major district in Sri Lanka.

A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among all curative-healthcare institutions with inward-care (n=46) from May to September 2019. The data was taken from the disaster management focal point using an interview administered tool, which was formulated using ‘Science of Surge Theory’ and ‘CO-S-TR Model’.

Dr. R. M. Nayani Umesha Rajapaksha

University of Queensland

An Extended Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) Model with Vaccination for Forecasting COVID-19 Pandemic

The role of modelling in predicting the spread of an epidemic is important for health planning and policies. This study aims to apply a compartmental model for predicting the variations of epidemiological parameters in Sri Lanka.

We used a dynamic Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered-Vaccinated (SEIRV) model and simulated for potential vaccine strategies under a range of epidemic conditions using Python programme language. The predictions were based on different vaccination coverages (5% to 90%), vaccination-rates (1%, 2%, 5%) and vaccine-efficacies (40%, 60%, 80%) under different R0 (2, 4, 6). We observed how the above dynamics influenced the SEIRV model without COVID-19 vaccination at different R0 values, and estimated the duration, exposed, and infected populations.

Audrey Cetois

University of Queensland

How to build electricity resilience that build community resilience?

Resilience is often qualified as a buzzword with its conceptual vagueness highlighted in the multitude of published definitions across a range of domains. This study focuses on the meaning of resilience in practice. More specifically, it explores the meaning of community electricity resilience, and the resulting implications for its building. Currently, no system-wide definition of resilience has been adopted for Australia’s National Energy Market, nor has a framework been developed for resilience building. There is an opportunity to develop a definition and framework with a broader focus than the resilience of the electricity system itself - one that prioritises the electricity system components that are the most important to build local communities’ resilience.

In this study, 12 convergent interviews were conducted with energy stakeholders from electric utilities, local government, and the community. Through this process, understandings of the challenges and potential solutions of resilience in practice were uncovered. An important emerging theme pointed at communities’ participation in their resilience building, including their electricity resilience to 1) explore the local and evolving meaning of community electricity resilience in context, and 2) build it to meet the actual community needs. However, most participants highlighted language barriers as being a major challenge when stakeholders from various backgrounds are required to interact. There was also a broad consensus regarding the need to improve capacity towards building resilience in all stakeholder groups and the essential role of intermediaries.