Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Research Network

Most research into disaster risk reduction (‘DRR’) focuses on losses arising from bushfires and natural hazards (‘BNH’) and how to avoid losses in the future. Very little research considers situations where losses have been avoided by effective DRR practices.  An analogy might be air crash investigation.  Lots of research has been undertaken into why planes crash and this has made plane travel much safer.  But the studies of why people fail to prepare for disasters have not led to a dramatic improvement in DRR behaviour.  It is argued that in addition to studying why people don't prepare (= 'crash') we should study why they do (= 'fly well').  This project will focus on a rare example where DRR behaviours contributed to averting devastating loss of life.  The island of Simeulue 150 km off the coast of Sumatra was the first location struck by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami but reportedly lost only a handful of lives, whereas in neighbouring Sumatra 3% of the population died.  The research will apply an ethnographic approach and grounded theory tools to investigate the social and environmental contextual factors that led to this amazing outcome.  Having identified the cultural drivers of disaster risk reduction behaviour on Simeulue, the project will seek to identify opportunities to apply lessons for risk communication and DRR in Australian contexts.