Episode 297: From Beavers to Buybacks: How Nature Shapes Disaster Preparedness with Andrew Gissing

Episode notes

What does it really mean to build disaster resilience in a changing world?

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.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

Australia faces a growing wave of natural disasters, from cyclones and floods to heatwaves and wildfires. In this episode, Andrew Gissing , CEO of Natural Hazards Research Australia , shares how his team is using research, science, and collaboration to strengthen community resilience and reduce disaster risk at every level.

Andrew explores what it means to think decades ahead, using evidence-based approaches to anticipate risk before disaster strikes. He discusses the rise of nature positive disaster reduction, where biodiversity and engineering meet to protect lives and property. From mangrove restoration and cultural burning to beaver-inspired water management, Andrew illustrates how working with nature can create lasting safety and sustainability.

He also dives into assisted relocation, resilience mapping, and why proactive planning beats reactive recovery every time. Andrew’s message is simple yet powerful, reminding us that optimism, courage, and collaboration can help communities thrive through change.

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

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 0:47 Catching up with Andrew Gissing
3. 1:27 What Natural Hazards Research Australia does
4. 3:09 Nature-positive disaster risk reduction
5. 4:59 Beavers, coyotes and the Great Barrier Reef
6. 6:49 The State of Disaster Resilience report
7. 9:06 What is risk?
8. 10:18 Disaster relocation and buybacks
9. 14:24 Come with big, bold ideas
10. 15:32 Optimism for the next decade
11. 16:15 Words to live by: just have a go
12. 17:07 Tim Tams, Vegemite and footy

Questions answered in this episode

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

Andrew Gissing says it's the national natural hazards research capability for Australia that works with emergency services, planning organizations, infrastructure organizations, and government at all levels to build research-based, evidence-based solutions for addressing future natural hazard risk. The organization focuses on being ahead of ready, foreseeing risk and thinking about solutions decades ahead.

Hear it at 1:39

What are nature-positive disaster risk reduction solutions?

Andrew Gissing explains these are investments that focus on increasing and protecting biodiversity across the globe while also achieving benefits for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Examples include restoring mangroves to reduce storm surge risk, planning species for green firebreaks around homes, cultural burning practices, and water-sensitive cities using nature-based solutions.

Hear it at 3:25

How do beavers help reduce fire risk?

Andrew Gissing says research shows that beavers building beaver dams increase the groundwater level and moisture content in the soil, which reduces fire risk. The dams also affect vegetation and create a natural fire break in the landscape.

Hear it at 5:26

What is disaster relocation and why is it needed in Australia?

Andrew Gissing describes disaster relocation as identifying homes at high disaster risk that get hit repeatedly and using buyback programs to relocate those communities. He says some communities are living in a constant state of recovery after being hit over and over again, which has massive socioeconomic impacts.

Hear it at 9:09

What is Andrew Gissing's advice for approaching disaster resilience work?

His mantra is just have a go. He says it's easy to think about obstacles, but you should be agile, learn from what doesn't work, keep leaning forward, and work with great people to build strong change.

Hear it at 16:33

Transcript

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

Ep 297 transcript

From Beavers to Buybacks: How Nature Shapes Disaster Preparedness 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].

[0:04] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 conference in Chiefs, engineers, researchers, and innovators, we explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting to a rapidly changing world. From climate resilience and community-led adaption, to the rise of new technologies like satellites, AI, and simple tools designed for the field, to the importance of mental health, diversity, and global collaboration. These episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. Enjoy. Grateful to be sitting alongside now. I think the first repeat-down-under in-person podcast with R, Well, the pleasure is all mine, Andrew.

[1:00] Andrew Gissing: Well, no, thank you.

[1:01] Kevin Sofen: So what's going on? Anything been happening since the last time I saw you?

[1:05] Andrew Gissing: Well, we've had lots going on here in Australia. You know, we keep on getting hit by more disasters. We've had Cyclone Alfred come and look at Southeast Queensland this year. Had floods on the mid-North Coast,. Heat waves. We've had floods on the mid-North Coast, heat waves. and we're really looking for the solutions to make sure that we keep our communities sustainable, safe and resilient into the future.

[1:27] Kevin Sofen: So the organization you work with, Natural Hazards Research Australia, in a lot of this key work. Tell me kind of in the high level again, what is Natural Hazards Research Australia? What a some of the work that you lead and tell me more about that?

[1:39] Andrew Gissing: Yeah, so we're the National Natural Hazards Research capability for Australia. We do work globally though lots of people use our work across the world. But we're focused here in Australia working with industry participants, emergency services, planning organisations, infrastructure organisations, health organisations across the scheme of government from local to federal etc to build out research based evidence based solutions to be a dressing future natural hazard risk and we know that we've got our worst natural hazard risk here in Australia and across the world, we can see the costs of disasters increasing and the challenges that we're going to have. So through research and science, being able to build out these bold solutions which can help to address, we call it, and I spoke to you about this last time, we call it about be ahead of ready, right? This whole concept of foreseeing risk and being ahead of the curve and thinking about decades and that's the solutions that we're really Australia website, so naturalhazards.com.au to find out more about the various projects that we're doing, whether or not it's about better prediction systems around fire behavior or looking at seasonal outlooks of flooding, or whether or not it's about understanding about building resilient communities through buyback programs or retrofitting of homes, or whether or not it's about social research about how communities are experiencing disasters and recovering and various tools and solutions. We've got a fairly wide and diverse portfolio of work.

[3:09] Kevin Sofen: So a lot to unpack within all that, but especially with some of the literature that I'm holding here and something that we've talked about last year, I think in some capacity was Nature-Based solutions, but particularly this term I hadn't seen before, nature-positive disaster risk reduction solutions. What does that mean?

[3:25] Andrew Gissing: Yeah, we're great at inventing new terms all the time, aren't you? Like, it sounds great. But what it's really focusing on is there's a whole nature-positive a movement, which is global, which is getting a lot of funding. And it's basically saying, OK, well, you know, we can be looking at biodiversity and the focus on increasing and protecting biodiversity across the globe. But at the same time, look at the benefits for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction and be aligning all these and achieving all this through this nature-positive investments scheme as well. So, this is some thought leadership work that we did with Suncorp and Ins, based down under here in Australia last year, it's available on our website, but yeah, really looking at the key benefits of investing in nature to reduce disaster risks. and you know, these can the many, you know, whether or not we're reducing storm surge risks by getting restoration of mangroves or looking at the species that we're planning terms of green firebreaks around our homes, et cetera, looking at the benefits of cultural burning practices. I know that's a big thing in the US as well, you know, looking at how we can be using the knowledge of First Nations people to be better managing our landscapes there as well, you know, water sensitive cities, using nature-based solutions. There are so many ways that we can be working better with nature to be reducing our disaster risk. And I think what we're seeing is, and it's really positive too, that this integration of a, more of a engineering approach with also a nature-based approach as well. Cause we can't just remove sort of some of our traditional stuff. It's about mixing and finding the best solutions for the local risk context.

[4:59] Kevin Sofen: you did say the word engineers and of course nature's engineers, I know oftentimes are looked at as beavers, and beavers ability to engineer landscapes. and I know sometimes that beavers give various people headaches from the fact that they create dams with this term, what I see here, beaver-based restoration, beaver acting, beavers, a positive dynamics of what beavers can provide to nature-based resilience. Give us more contacts on what that means.

[5:26] Andrew Gissing: I'm not an expert, but I appreciate them. But yeah, this is a great case study out of the research literature, where beavers building beaver dams, increasing the groundwater level, so the moisture content levels in the soil, and reducing fire risk. There's a consequence vegetation, et cetera, and that natural fire break in the landscape. So again, sort of like, we need to understand the natural physical processes when we're disturbing them, but also how we can restore them for building disaster reduction into the future.

[5:55] Kevin Sofen: It's brilliant. Yeah. And I think little nuance examples of there's one other one that even Colorado with looking at the role that coyotes sort of relived homeostasis by just letting nature do its thing.

[6:10] Andrew Gissing: Yeah. And like another great example in Australia, like, you know, we've got this a greatBarry Reef in Queensland, Northern Australia. You know, it's an amazing asset for reducing disaster risk to the Queensland coast because it's acting to help as a storm surge barrier, right?. So the importance of not only restoring nature but protecting nature to maintain its disaster risk reduction benefits is going to be fundamentally important for Australia in the future. Because, you know, if we lost the reef, we'd have significantly So that's what we're investing in the protection of these things.

[6:49] Kevin Sofen: And so I'm seeing this next report, The State of Disaster Resilience Report. This is probably, I don't know, a 36-page nice report. What is the state of disaster?

[7:00] Andrew Gissing: this data set in Australia, you guys got stuff in the US, we call ours the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. It's based upon a whole bunch of data, looking at attributes of resilience across our local communities. It's nationwide, you know, people can go to our website and look at the data if they're interested in it as well, and we can provide some data to them too if they want to Commonwealth Treasury and what we call our measuring what matter statement is the measure of climate resilience in Australia. So that's an incredible amount of impact that this research is having, but it's really useful for local councils, state councils to be understanding the level of resilience across our community. And one of the key findings is really the difference between the resilience of urban communities and more rural communities. And we're finding there the more remote and regional communities have lower levels of resilience than what we're finding in more metropolitan communities as well.

[7:56] Kevin Sofen: This may sound like a little, not quite a spelling bee, but I'm curious. [inaudible 8:05]

[8:26] Andrew Gissing: aspects, not just the physical aspects of natural hazard, but the social aspects and the various systems that make those up as well, you know, from an economics perspective, an infrastructure perspective, environmental perspective, but also the capacity of communities to respond to disasters, prepare for disasters. Like, you know, I often talk about that one of our biggest challenges in Australia is not only just understanding our resilience and our risk, but also understanding the capacity of our local councils are those folks that are developing local plans for disaster reduction, to actually write the grants, develop the plans, but then to implement, because they're the key areas that we need to be focusing on to on to be able to move forward in the future.

[9:06] Kevin Sofen: Next word, in your words, what is risk? What is risk?

[9:09] Andrew Gissing: So, you know, I'm going to go for really technical definitions. Lots again, lots of definition. But from an actual hazard perspective, you know, it's a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. I come from a background too of catastrophe loss modeling. And that's certainly, you know, the context of those models being built. But, you know, your corporate definition, you know, the effect of uncertainty on objectives. But yeah, particularly from a disaster risk reduction perspective, I think that framing of the hazard, the exposure and vulnerability is really quite useful because it enables you to understand what the key drivers are that you can have some leverage on. And particularly, you know, thinking about our next potential topic which, we can talk about, which is disaster relocation, which is a exposure aspect. Like here in Australia, just like the US, unfocused, I was reading some great research from North Carolina the other day about how much floodplain development you'd had in the US. I think it was 850,000 new homes being built over the last 20 years on floodplains, which is an awful amount. That's happening here in Australia. Probably not the same numbers because we've got a lower population base, but we've still got lots of new development going in, increasing exposure, increasing that risk across the country. So, one of the things that we've been thinking about too is we've got communities are getting hit over and over and over again, and like you think about that in the future that's having massive impacts on those communities, particularly from a socioeconomic perspective. And some of these communities, it's just dreadful to say, are just living in a constant state of recovery. And I just hate to think about those people and how they're living. Looking at how government can be identifying these homes, having sort of a national policy and safe-based policies to be able to have great frameworks there of and also have significant life safety risks and how

[11:26] Kevin Sofen: the [inaudible 11:28]

[11:56] Andrew Gissing: The key success of this [inaudible 12:00] They've had a sign erected to say, we will not be moved. And it's ultimately the thing about communities, recognizing a risk, and communities a [inaudible 12:39] and you know it's just a lot more difficult to do a post event but you know there's more political will potentially after the event and there might be greater community recognition as well so there's definitely some key drivers that but yeah proactive is the way.

[13:08] Kevin Sofen: I mean yeah it's never easy to accept that where you're living and where you spent your life is maybe not the best spot location to be and I imagine that's got to be a hard reality for many.

[13:21] Andrew Gissing: Oh yeah that place attachment absolutely but you know it's just extensive community as well, and you know, leaving that community, you know, how can those same connections be maintained so you know, things like land swap programs like there's an example again in this report of Grantham, I'm here in Australia after 2011 which they had a horrific flash flood, you know, casualties and deaths, but as a result of that, the local council had a land swap program which enabled people to move to a hill which is just adjacent and maintain a sense of community without having to move to a hill which is just adjacent. tens of kilometers away and that [inaudible 13:59] The best way to work with us is come with big. Bold ideas, right? So, we want to be investing in research, and research shifts the dial, you know, if we just look at it incrementally and we go, okay, well, what do we need for the next five C's enough that we're going to be two. [inaudible 14:46] make life a lot difficult for all our communities, right? We can easily be talking about worsening naturalized risk, climate change, building in the wrong areas, building in the wrong ways, et cetera. But it's the optimism to go, actually, you know what, have the power to fix this. as humans and as communities, we can change the way we plan for the future. We can change our regulations, our legislation. We can be investing in new technologies, looking at the advantages of using big data, AI, these advancements in the intersection of the physical and the digital world of the future and taking advantage of that. And I think with all those opportunities really taking on the next decade with a sense of optimism to say, yeah, we can really shift the dial here.

[16:15] Kevin Sofen: And I've asked this now to everyone that's on the podcast so far and I'm curious in your take with some of your wonderful insights. Is there any quote or words of wisdom that Andrew lives by something that's within your daily life. Or something within your work with natural the hazard research, any sort of words of wisdom or quote that you could share with us?

[16:33] Andrew Gissing: My mantra is really simple. Just have a go, like it's easy sometimes to get out of bed and think about all the things that might be in your way, but just have a go and be a be agile, if it's not being successful in one area, you learn from that and move forward, like never sort of be sort of leaning back and thinking, oh, you know what if, just keep on leaning forward, keep on trying, having a go and working with great people, right And that's the key thing too. The people that you can work with, build relationships with, that you can build, you know, really strong change with.

[17:07] Kevin Sofen: Just have a go. Well, should we have a go? Tim Tams or what?

[17:10] Andrew Gissing: Oh look man, like they've been sitting in front of us and I've been so tempted. Yeah, but I'll eat the whole packet. That's the problem.

[17:16] Kevin Sofen: You'll have none left. Do you have a Tim Tam of choice?

[17:18] Andrew Gissing: Well, you know what? the, I'm not sure if anybody's ever told you this, but the key to eating Tim Tams is not to eat them the way you've got them there is to put them in the freezer and eat frozen Tim Tams. They are delicious.

[17:30] Kevin Sofen: I heard this rumor of putting a Vegemite on Tim Tams too. Is that just a rumor?

[17:34] Andrew Gissing: I've never heard of anybody ever putting Vegemite anywhere near a Tim Tam. I love Vegemite, right? But it's to be eaten alone. It should not be eaten with Nutella or any other form of chocolate. It's its own flavor. put it on some Muddy Grains hosts, you know, it's great for you.

[17:48] Kevin Sofen: Okay. I'm still, I'm just, I'm working on becoming a little bit more Australian in every podcast.

[17:52] Andrew Gissing: Oh, well, you know, come back next year and we can measure, we will have. An index about Kevin's Australian level.

[17:57] Kevin Sofen: So, yeah, well, I'm officially a Bulldog fan now, a Bulldog fan. Well, we'll have to work with him for 14. Who's your football team of choice?

[18:03] Andrew Gissing: Well, you know, I'm from Sydney, so Swans and my team, you know, they're not doing so well, but,

[18:08] Kevin Sofen: Big game tonight where, you know, beautiful, crazy things that happen with, is Essen House playing,

[18:14] Andrew Gissing: Essenen.

[18:15] Kevin Sofen: If they win, the Bulldogs are going to be in eighth place. So, yeah, yeah. Crazier crazy things have happened. Got to love the, got to love sports.

[18:21] Andrew Gissing: Yeah. Well, next time come out for a, bit longer, go to a couple of games, you know, like, yeah, you know, I'm looking to be your first three people, by the way.

[18:29] Kevin Sofen: I think we're well along that path. Well, Andrew, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate all your work you're doing and excited to continue to follow the journey.

[18:36] Andrew Gissing: Kevin, my pleasure.

[18:37] Kevin Sofen: Cheers, mate. And that's a wrap this episode of the Smart Firefighting podcast. If you found value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone and tell us what you enjoyed most. Take care and thanks for listening.