Episode 262: The Importance of Community Connection and the Role of Governance in Resilience with Beck Dawson

Episode notes

Here’s how to build community resilience:

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:

Why resilience is a community effort

How to shape decisions on land use and rebuilding after disasters

How the role of governance can be a major obstacle, and what to do about it

Hear from Beck Dawson - the Chief Resilience Officer for Greater Sydney.

Beck dives into the critical importance of resilience and risk management in urban environments. She describes resilience as a community effort, emphasizing that true resilience means working together and looking out for one another.

Beck highlights the need for collective collaboration and open dialogue among various stakeholders to make informed decisions on land use and rebuilding after disasters. She also discusses governance challenges as a significant barrier to achieving long-term resilience. Despite these obstacles, Beck is encouraged by the growing awareness and commitment to addressing resilience challenges across Sydney.

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

Episode Resources:

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro from the IFE booth at AFAC 2024
2. 0:47 Beck Dawson joins
3. 0:56 The Chief Resilience Officer for Greater Sydney
4. 1:46 What resilience means
5. 2:08 100 Resilient Cities and keeping each other safe
6. 3:12 How community dialogue informs decisions
7. 4:09 Land use and rebuilding after disasters
8. 5:45 Proactively managing fire risk
9. 7:09 Collaboration across stakeholders
10. 8:45 Tim Tams
11. 9:13 What excites Beck about the future
12. 10:37 The biggest obstacle: governance
13. 11:19 Final words
14. 12:04 Raygun and wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is the role of a Chief Resilience Officer in Greater Sydney?

Beck Dawson explains that her job is to work with 33 local governments across the city to talk about resilience, risk, adaptation and planning, and figure out how to coordinate and work together to keep communities safe.

Hear it at 0:56

How does Beck Dawson define resilience?

She says resilience really means being connected, how communities, institutions, rules and structures, and money flowing are all connected together to collectively keep people safe.

Hear it at 1:51

How did Greater Sydney identify what communities need for resilience?

Beck Dawson says they went out and did community engagement and deliberative democracy sessions all over the city. Communities told them what mattered, what keeps them strong and safe, and what they will do differently. They also did a technical assessment of what risks are coming.

Hear it at 2:18

What is cultural burning and how is it used in Sydney?

Beck Dawson describes cultural burning as a process where cultural leaders are given the opportunity to drive and manage bushfire burning with cultural knowledge. It helps build cultural capacity while working with fire agencies to proactively manage fire risk.

Hear it at 4:34

What is the biggest obstacle to building resilience in Sydney?

Beck Dawson says governance is categorically the main challenge, including managing between agencies and different communities, understanding different governments, and figuring out how to cooperatively fund problems that are distributed across many different actors.

Hear it at 10:42

Transcript

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

Ep 262 transcript

The Importance of Community Connection and the Role of Governance in Resilience with Beck Dawson

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Beck Dawson

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. these fascinating insights from leaders around the world on how we can build a safer and more resilient future. Beck Dawson, Chief Resilience Officer for Greater Sydney, discusses building community resilience through collective collaboration. She highlights governance challenges, the importance of open dialogue among stakeholders, and why resilience is a team effort. All right, Beck Dawson, how you doing today?

[0:50] Beck Dawson: Really well, thanks Kevin, great to be with you.

[0:53] Kevin Sofen: Great to be with you. So what brings you to AFAC? Why are you here today?

[0:56] Beck Dawson: So I'm the Chief Resilience Officer for Greater Sydney, which is one of the biggest cities in Australia, and our job here is to understand and work with local governments, there's 33 of them running across the city, to talk about resilience and risk and kind of adaptation and planning, like how are we going to coordinate and work together to keep our community safe.

[1:15] Kevin Sofen: So it seems like you have nothing to do or talk about when you're in Australia here.

[1:18] Beck Dawson: Yep, a few risks to manage, right?

[1:20] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I heard not only just a natural disaster dynamic, but then someone that told me somewhere in Australia, you can walk 10 feet and you've got like five things that'll potentially kill you.

[1:30] Beck Dawson: And it's interesting in a city context, particularly here in Sydney, you know, heat is actually the most dangerous and challenging thing and it's compounding with other things, for example, and you know, it can clash over to fires of all sorts of kinds, you know, drought and water conditions and risks, so they're often connected together as well.

[1:46] Kevin Sofen: So when you say the word resiliency, what does that mean?

[1:51] Beck Dawson: Yeah, it really means, and we talk about it in really planned terms to the community about being connected. So how our communities, institutions, the rules and structures that we have, and to some extent money flowing, all connected together to actually understand how we're collectively keeping safe.

[2:08] Kevin Sofen: And to expand on that, collectively keeping each other safe from different stakeholders, from the communication top to bottom, how are you doing that?

[2:18] Beck Dawson: Yeah, so here in Sydney, we're part of a program called 100 Resilient Cities, which was originally a Rockefeller funded program of the US, and we worked as a whole city to bring the 33 local governments together to talk about community risk actually in the city. So in the program I run, when I say risk and the challenges, we're talking about the community's challenges, not a government's challenges or not a kind of organisation's challenge, but the community. And we did that by going out and doing community engagement sessions and kind of deliberative democracy sessions with communities all over the city. And they really resoundingly told us what mattered to them. And so what keeps their community strong? What keeps it safe? And what are they going to do differently? And then we also did a technical assessment and said, well, what are the things that are coming at you? Are you ready for those? And talked together about, well, in priority order, what's going to matter? What matters to you? And what are the big things that you need to be ready for that you probably don't know about yet?

[3:12] Kevin Sofen: So how did that dialogue in terms of really getting in the weeds and having a cup of tea with the stakeholders, how did that, How does that help inform your decisions on the actions you take?

[3:25] Beck Dawson: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. We talk in the sector a lot about sort of a benevolent process of where we're going to keep people safe, but actually with the kind of scale of challenges we've had here in Australia, if each individual community is not working together to keep themselves safe and work together on that, then they're not, we're not really having the right conversation because we can't do the Big Brother rescuing mission at the scale we are increasingly needed to do it and that's been shown in the big disasters we've had here in Australia, several of them here in Sydney. And so how do we transition from, oh we're all going to save you, to actually you all need to save yourselves. And that's really the conversation that we're trying to have with those communities and start to explore, well what does that transition look like for everybody.

[4:09] Kevin Sofen: And there's obviously just a lot of different factors at play here and one of the biggest ones is just a human relationship with the land and land use and ultimately how we plan that from an urban planning perspective and then how do we rebuild ethically and effectively after disasters. This whole land use conversation. Expand on that.

[4:34] Beck Dawson: Yeah I can start maybe with just talking about First Nations land and understanding of country here in Australia. It's really one of the most important pieces, most resilient community here in our country and definitely the, you know, the people that we should be learning from the most and working with in terms of understanding that holistic approach to understanding the risk of a place for humans, but also for the environment, right? So we have a lot of caring for country protocols starting to come through in the services and particularly through emergency management frameworks, but also in land use and planning and decisions. So some of those have been about understanding, for example, how do we do bushfire burning with a cultural knowledge lens over it? So how are we taking out fire load, but in a cultural burning process where the cultural leaders of that place might be then gifted the opportunity to, and enabled in those places to drive and manage that process. And that's really helping them to build their cultural experience and their communities, capacity to work that through, but also working with fire agencies and emergency services to change the way that we're understanding and actually proactively managing fire risk through the layers of the different services and organizations.

[5:45] Kevin Sofen: I love the word, the phrase you said, proactively managing fire risk and then you know again let's say it's right now it's September 2024 in proactively managing fire risk. What does that look like? You've painted the picture in terms of some examples but like practically managing fire risk and the different stakeholders you're involved with over the course of the next 6, 12, 24, 48 months, what does that look like?

[6:12] Beck Dawson: Yeah so in Sydney we're talking about those risks at a structural level and trying to understand we've gone far enough to know we need to change some of the rules. So when we're talking about land use planning how many people are we now going to put in harm's way because of the way that we're designing roads in and out of locations into places that are going to be on a marginal edge with a bush fire zone, for example. What other rules or structures do we have around the managing those edges? How do we put them in place so we've got buffer zones and other things like that? We've looked at those things. We haven't implemented them structurally across the whole system. And how do we also put in place cultural burning in all the places we need to also do that proactive management and fund it properly? So we're moving from knowing that we know how to do these things to actually practically how do we deliver them in a way that's consistent, structural, part of the machinery, and we're kind of getting really, you know, practiced like we are with other things that we do in emergency management.

[7:09] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. And something that you had alluded to earlier, and then I just love within what you talked about from the short term and long tail stuff, but is this collective collaboration and this idea of continue to just work horizontally, vertically, different stakeholders, reaching across the aisle, all those things. I'm interested in kind of how, when you hear that collective collaboration, you know, and bringing people to the table and again, using that to make better informed decisions around land use, around rebuilding to be more resilient and be truly adaptive. How is that tied into the framework of how you approach your job?

[7:44] Beck Dawson: Yeah, so maybe the simple way to talk about it is the role of in Sydney as a regional facilitator is really important. So having organisations like ours, which is a really small organisation, it's got four staff, it's really working to help collaborate and facilitate those conversations and the process. So the process leads to a resilience strategy for the city that then all the 33 organisations who are servicing and all those places sign up to and work with and endorse and they're part of the process of delivering it. And then over five years, that's a kind of prospectus for all the things we've agreed that we know we need to change and that we work diligently through collaboration actions where we're putting people around a table, we're having more tea and we're certainly sharing food and working out how we're going to solve that problem. It was a great session at the conference this week on the recipes for resilience and it includes food and tables, round tables, whether you're a community member or you're a stakeholder group or whether it's us and just getting the kind of government organisations together, it's not really any different. So putting those processes in place and all the layers are super important.

[8:45] Kevin Sofen: I mean, don't forget Tim Tams are part of that recipe.

[8:47] Beck Dawson: Tim Tams are always part of that.

[8:48] Kevin Sofen: Also, if you want a Tim Tam, they're yours. We've got the dark, we've got the double coat, we've got the dark chocolate mints. Life is good here in the Tim Tam arena.

[8:57] Beck Dawson: Yeah, I was kind of expecting some sort of interesting Hershey type chocolate or something, right?

[9:01] Kevin Sofen: No, Tim Tams are bust. That's just what it is. Yeah, I actually had never had a Tim Tam until I had been sort of, I want to say locked in here. I've been good, I've been selectively put in here, but I liked the Tim.

[9:12] Beck Dawson: And now you've really lived, well done.

[9:13] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, no, I came in American and I left, I'm leaving Australian officially. So what's something that you're most excited about right now in terms of where you're at with your job and then ultimately just kind of in the future of how we continue to truly achieve adaptation, resiliency, what excites you?

[9:32] Beck Dawson: Yeah, look, so I've been doing this job for nine years. It's been a long run and I think what I have learned and seen through that time is when we started and my job began, I actually had to convince people this was something we needed to worry about. I had to describe, define resilience and talk about why it mattered. But, you know, here we are eight or so, nine years later, where we've been doing the next strategy, so the next five-year plans now coming out early next year here for Sydney. This time around, we've seen everyone one of the eight natural disasters and economic and environmental disasters that we thought we predicted were going to happen have happened at scale in Sydney inside five years. Nobody is confused anymore about why we need to do it, who it's for, who we're serving, why we have to try and change the way we act now. So the willingness, the literacy, even just the maturity of everybody's ability to have this conversation is completely different to what it was five years ago. And that's a sad thing at one level. It really shows the scale of change that we are living with and living through, but it also is a much better place from where we can launch ourselves forward to try and solve it together.

[10:37] Kevin Sofen: And on the flip side, what would you say is your biggest obstacle in accomplishing what you just talked about?

[10:42] Beck Dawson: Oh man, governance. Like Sydney's main challenge is categorically governance. I think it's true in a lot of places, managing between agencies, managing between different communities, you know, understanding different governments and how are we going to kind of cooperatively fund some of the problems that we've got to solve, because they sit really distributed across many different actors. So how we decide we're going to hold hands and work together and how we do that consistently and with great grace is the single problem we're going to have everywhere in doing this stuff well, but it's absolutely the future.

[11:15] Kevin Sofen: That's a, well, that's why we need you driving it and continue to be a part of it. So kudos. And final thing I'd love to hear from you is there a particular quote or an insight or words of wisdom that you live by within your job or your daily life or anything like that?

[11:29] Beck Dawson: Yeah, absolutely. So my favorite, you know, Australians are mad on sport. The world knows this and we've just seen it through the Olympics and other places where we play hard. And you know, resilience is the classic thing. It's absolutely a team sport. You cannot do it by yourself. You cannot be resilient in a corner, not caring about anybody else or any other, anyone else's outcomes. So for me, it's absolutely how do you be a team player? How do we all step up to the plate? How do we all take a role in solving the kind of scale of crisis that we have coming towards us? So it's not a crisis when we get there.

[12:04] Kevin Sofen: Well, so I couldn't agree more, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also try and bring up, as you brought up the Australian Olympics today, I was watching in the news of some of the backlash around the story that is Raygun, memorable performance. And actually, when I told my sister I was coming to Australia, she has a little bit idea what I'd do for a career but she was like oh my god thank gosh you're going to Australia I want Jude my son to be Raygun for Halloween you can't buy Australian swag and hats on the internet right now they're all sold out so everyone wants to be Raygun for Halloween

[12:36] Beck Dawson: so join the club we've all got to have a go get on the plate step up let's play together

[12:41] Kevin Sofen: yeah oh that's so great well thanks so fun talking with you really enjoyed talking about all things adaptation and resiliency. And yeah, love to continue to stay in touch and follow all the amazing work you're doing.

[12:52] Beck Dawson: Thanks for the opportunity to catch up.

[12:53] Kevin Sofen: Cool. Thanks, Beck. 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.