Episode 261: Addressing Climate Change and Natural Hazard Risks with Andrew Gissing

Episode notes

The big question that we all want the answer to: how should we tackle climate change?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

In this episode:

How the 'Be Ahead Ready' report encourages forward-thinking strategies in disaster risk management

The potential of personalized warnings and technology to improve community engagement and planning

The need for collaboration between public and private sectors

Hear from Andrew Gissing - the CEO of Natural Hazards Research Australia .

Andrew talks about the pressing challenges of climate change and natural hazard risks in both Australia and the United States. He emphasizes the importance of aligning efforts and resources to better support first responders and protect communities. A key focus is the 'Be Ahead Ready' report, which promotes innovative thinking in disaster risk management, including ideas like personalized warnings and leveraging technology for more effective engagement and planning.

Andrew also highlights the crucial role of public-private partnerships in driving innovation and ensuring effective resource allocation. The conversation touches on ongoing research projects and the need to address the challenge of relocating communities that are at risk from natural hazards.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

Episode Resources:

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro from the IFE booth at AFAC 2024
2. 0:52 Andrew Gissing joins
3. 1:34 Same challenges in Australia and the US
4. 2:20 Sharing lessons and the ahead of ready report
5. 3:21 How the report sparks debate
6. 5:41 What surprised Andrew in the findings
7. 6:28 Working with business
8. 7:04 What Natural Hazards Research Australia does
9. 7:40 What comes next for the research
10. 8:54 How others can collaborate
11. 9:32 Upcoming events
12. 10:19 Cold mornings and a short ski season
13. 10:42 What the IFE means to Andrew
14. 11:35 Final words: patience, hard work, purpose
15. 12:12 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is Natural Hazards Research Australia and what does it do?

Andrew Gissing says Natural Hazards Research Australia builds capability and policy change to create safer, more resilient and sustainable communities through research, science and innovation. The organization administers funding to over 300 researchers across Australia doing projects tasked by end-user organizations.

Hear it at 7:17

What is the Ahead of Ready report about?

Andrew Gissing explains the report encourages big thinking for the future of disaster risk management. It gathered ideas from 300 stakeholders in Australia and also used AI to explore future scenarios, covering eight different ideas around data, AI, policy and measurement to help agencies think beyond the last disaster and prepare for future challenges.

Hear it at 3:50

What is an example of future technology the report discusses?

Andrew Gissing describes personalized warnings using digital twins, where engagement with individuals would be super personalized rather than generic weather warnings for an area. He also mentions augmented reality apps that could walk around someone's home and identify missing wildfire preparations, even calling tradesmen to fix issues.

Hear it at 3:50

Why does Andrew Gissing emphasize public-private partnerships for disaster management?

He says the speed of change keeps ramping up, and innovation in the business sector is enormous. Governments need to identify capabilities that the business sector can perform better than government, such as rapid impact assessment after disasters using remote sensing and data collection.

Hear it at 5:50

What policy area is Natural Hazards Research Australia focused on regarding climate change?

Andrew Gissing says a big conversation is about where to build future communities and what to do with communities already at significant risk. This includes discussing relocating and buying back communities. The Australian government is already spending about 1.5 billion dollars on buyback and retrofitting projects after recent floods, and demand will only grow as communities become more exposed.

Hear it at 7:59

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 261 transcript

Addressing Climate Change and Natural Hazard Risks with Andrew Gissing

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Andrew Gissing

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to a mini Smart Firefighting podcast series, recorded live at the Institute of Fire Engineers booth during the 2024 AFAC Show Down Under in Sydney, Australia. Throughout these conversations, we dive into critical issues like fire safety, emerging technologies, diversity in the fire service, and innovative solutions for emergency response. fascinating insights from leaders around the world on how we can build a safer and more resilient future. Andrew Gissing, CEO of Natural Hazards Research Australia, discusses the challenges of climate change and natural hazards in Australia and the United States. He emphasizes the importance of innovative disaster risk management, public-private partnerships, and addressing community relocation challenges. All right, we are rolling here at AFAC sitting alongside Andrew Gissing with the Natural Hazards Research Australia. What's up, Andrew?

[1:01] Andrew Gissing: Kevin, good to be on your podcast.

[1:03] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well, I was giddy last night and excited when you said you had listened to another podcast before, so I appreciate you being a listener.

[1:10] Andrew Gissing: No, all the way from here in Australia. You're clearly making it globally.

[1:13] Kevin Sofen: I mean, one podcast at a time, we're over the 300 threshold now, so just making it, doing it one brick at a time.

[1:20] Andrew Gissing: Well, it's great to have you here.

[1:21] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it's good to be here. I will say I really do enjoy the Australian spirit, the vibe, the dynamic, the kind of, the not taking yourself too seriously and a little bit of self-deprecating humor and just fun, good people.

[1:34] Andrew Gissing: Yeah. But I think one of the important things is that we've got similar challenges too.

[1:39] Kevin Sofen: Right. So, same, but different.

[1:41] Andrew Gissing: Yeah. Took you with climate change, you know, changing wildfires in the U S the same that they are here in Australia and the worst in natural hazard risks that we're facing, you know, same in the U S same in North America, same here in Australia.

[1:53] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. And it ties a lot to Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell's comments about Fire Service One Voice, but particularly Global Fire Service One Voice and how we all share the same problems. And instead of a bunch of different groups working on the same exact thing and disjointed efforts, how do we continue to align and share and join forces to be able to deploy the minimal amount of resources we have to make more positive change and deploy these minimal resources to making the best impact to help first responders and the community at large?

[2:20] Andrew Gissing: Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that we've been thinking a lot about, not only sharing international lessons through community practice, et cetera, but thinking about transformational change in disaster risk management here in Australia and globally. We launched a report that people could find out our website could be ahead of ready. And it's all about encouraging big thinking for our future. We know that so many different emergency management agencies across our country. They're excellent what they do, but we tend to focus on the last disaster, you're responding to the inquiry recommendations of the last disaster, and thinking about the next season as opposed to thinking, well, what's our future society going to look like, how these megatrends impact you upon it, the impacts of climate change, future development, future growth as our societies build. What does that mean in terms of future disaster scenarios? What capability do we need to be building now? What policy changes do we need to be inspiring to make sure that we are ahead of ready for the future?

[3:21] Kevin Sofen: I love that phrase, ahead of ready. And it's kind of like the other phrase I've heard throughout my life is, the best disaster is the one that doesn't happen. So there's part where it's, hey, how can we prevent disaster? But then all the other one is, we know some disasters will happen. How do we make sure we're ready to be able to respond? So tell me more about this report And ultimately how it accomplishes, you know, even just like, what is the report? You know, I love the concept of it, but how is it going to help with even, you know, accomplish that getting ahead of being ready? Yeah.

[3:50] Andrew Gissing: Well, it's all about sparking debate, right? Sparking conversation, letting people know it's, it's okay to start saying, okay, well, what are we going to be doing in two decades time? Because it's important to start thinking about that now, as opposed to later when we've got all these issues, right? So what the report does, it outlines a bunch of ideas that we gathered through 300 stakeholders here in Australia, also used some AI to ask some AI about exactly what some of the big ideas for the future were as well. Brought those together, there's eight different ideas in the report. Some of them relate more to data and AI, some more to policy, some more about how we better measure things. So, give you some examples. One of them is about personalised warnings. So, using the future that we might all have digital twins in the future, our own personal digital trends and how can we be using those such that the engagement that we have with individuals in our community can be super personalized. That our warnings are tailored, not just generic to say here's a weather warning for a certain local government area, that it's actually tailored to the individual circumstances, that person's living, their home, etc. And that's on a warning side, but imagine that too from a wildfire engagement perspective, you know, pre-season. You know when you've got sensing your augmented reality and be able to walk around somebody's home, for example, and say, you know, have an app that says, okay, here are all the things that you're missing in terms of your wildfire planning for this season and by the way, here's all the places to get them. In fact, you want me to call the tradesman now to come and fix all those sort of things up, that's sort of the future where we could go with warnings and engagement with some of the emerging technology, as well as better forecasting systems for hazards, or a better autonomous tasking of assets and autonomous assets through robotics and other means as well.

[5:41] Kevin Sofen: So just going back to your report for a second, what surprised you from your findings and was there anything that the AI uncovered that surprised you?

[5:50] Andrew Gissing: Well, I think the AI just enables some of the human thinking to become a bit more creative. I think one of the big things in the future though, here in Australia, perhaps more internationally, is the speed of change, right? And that's not necessarily surprising, but I think that just keeps on ramping up and ramping up so much each year. And I think governments around the world have got to be focused on partnerships with the business sector more and more because the innovation that's happening in the business sector is enormous. Such that at events like this, we see some of that, but that's only going to grow and if we are going to be ahead of ready in the future, it's going to be a lot about working with business.

[6:28] Kevin Sofen: When you say working with business, what do you mean by that?

[6:31] Andrew Gissing: So having bigger public-private partnerships, right, so it might be about identifying capabilities that the business sector is best able to perform, rather than government. So take, for example, something like a rapid impact assessment after disasters. Is that something that, with scarce emergency services into the future, that government's best able to provide, or is it something that a commercial organisation could be developing capability, having advanced capabilities around remote sensing and data collection through terrestrial sensing to be better able to do that and have different purposes for that technology during downtime.

[7:04] Kevin Sofen: You'd mentioned last night too, with just your organization, you have, I think you said somewhere like 20 some employees, is that right? And then an army of researchers or different institutions you work with, is that correct?

[7:17] Andrew Gissing: Yeah. So Natural Hazards Research Australia is all about building capability and policy change to create safer, more resilient and sustainable communities across Australia through research, science, and innovation. So we administer funding to researchers across the country, and we've got over 300 researchers across the country doing projects which are tasked by end-user organizations.

[7:40] Kevin Sofen: And so what are some of these other, you know, two things. One, now that this report is written, so it's sort of like, A, what next? Then B, kind of this other network of, you know, your internal team and this sort of network of all these academia players, is like, what's sort of next to the next, you know, near, medium, future?

[7:59] Andrew Gissing: Yeah, we've got 67 projects that we're doing at the moment, but another really important area for policy discussion here in Australia is about where we build our future communities. But also, what do we do with communities that are at significant risk already? And one of the big conversations is about relocating, buying those communities back. We've seen that happen during wildfires after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria. And so when we're really looking at worsening natural hazards because of climate change, how are we going to be focusing our resources, governments already spending in Australia about $1.5 billion on buyback and retrofitting projects after recent floods, that demand's only going to grow more and more from a financial perspective as communities become more and more exposed. So we're doing research in that area, putting in research on how to better understand risk, mitigate risk, future workforces, future technology, future capabilities, we really do have an endless agenda for research.

[8:54] Kevin Sofen: I love that. So yeah, get your hands on a few different things, which is awesome. Is there ways or how can other stakeholders outside of Australia and Oceana work or collaborate with you?

[9:05] Andrew Gissing: Yeah, well, first thing is to go to our website. So our website is naturalhazards.com.au. On there, you'll find resources about all the work that we're doing. One of the key things is our regular webinar. So people subscribe to newsletter. They can find out about all our webinars. It's a great opportunity to hear from all our leading researchers about the work that they're doing and really engage with all the information that we're providing that will help build future capability across the sector here in Australia and internationally as well.

[9:34] Kevin Sofen: That's awesome. And then it's what I guess now officially September. What's, you know, the next couple months, the rest of the year, what's top of mind and any plans or other events or things that you're tracking?

[9:45] Andrew Gissing: Oh yeah, we're running a big event next week on Nature Positive disaster reintroduction, looking at all the investment that's coming in the Nature Positive. Here in Sydney in October is the Global Nature Positive Summit, so the opportunities that investment provides for... future disaster risk reduction will be a really important opportunity globally to look at how we can be better reducing disaster risk. But as we move on to later on in the year, it starts to be Australia's high-risk weather season, so bushfires, cyclones, severe storms, heat waves, they're all the things that we'll be looking forward to this summer.

[10:19] Kevin Sofen: I will say, I always just thought Australia was always warm, but it's been moderately cold in the morning, so yeah, you gotta sometimes forget that, yeah, different part of the world and different hemisphere, So it's the reverse.

[10:30] Andrew Gissing: Well, we used to occasionally have a fairly good ski season in Australia, but not anymore this year's ski season. I think it's probably lasted about six weeks. And so all that snow's all been melting away.

[10:41] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, and so to kind of bring it back to the banner we have above our head, the Institute of Fire Engineers. In your words, what is the Institute of Fire Engineers and what's been some of your alignment and partnership with them over the years?

[10:53] Andrew Gissing: I think it's just a great opportunity for collaboration, right? So at events like this and, you know, the IFE running their conference alongside the AFAC conference and the ADAR conference as well, it's really about this collaboration between sectors, getting to know new people, because we know that a lot of disaster management is about relationships and trust. And it's at these sort of events when you get to meet with people, catch up over a bite to eat, that trust and that relationships are really being built. And what we know from our research and knowledge translation perspective is that trust is so important. Events like here where researchers and practitioners can get together, discuss different ideas, discuss new knowledge. That's where that translation really happens.

[11:35] Kevin Sofen: Love that. And then one thing I'd love to throw to you as a final question is, what's maybe a quote or a life motto or something that you live by or something to do with business or any sort of like kind of parting thoughts that you can leave us with here today? today?

[11:52] Andrew Gissing: I think patience and hard work is really important, but just get up each morning and do the best job you can. Accept that there's always going to be some failures along the way, and perhaps you're going to fail more often than you're going to succeed. But at the end of day, be purpose- orientated, be mission-orientated, and a life-fulfilling.

[12:11] Kevin Sofen: Andrew, well said. Well, I, too, struggle and fail every day, and then this has got to continue to learn and apply and align yourself with other bright individuals and organizations that help elevate the game. So just excited to continue. I'm excited to deep dive in your report. I got a 16-hour flight coming up in a few days, so I'm gonna nerd out over it and I hope we can find a way to create some content and build some awareness about the whole report.

[12:37] Andrew Gissing: Well, have a safe flight back. It's been great to have you down here in Australia.

[12:41] Kevin Sofen: I look forward to coming back. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for listening to this episode recorded alongside the Institute of Fire Engineers during the AFAC Show. If you found value in the conversation or learned something new, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out, share your thoughts, and let's keep the discussion going on how we can shape the future of smart firefighting.