8 SEPTEMBER 2020

FEATURED PROJECT
Ready for anything: Identifying novel, community-led solutions for evacuation centres

It is estimated that over 18,000 Australians were displaced during the bushfire season and stories of heroism, sacrifice and community spirit emerged from all evacuation centres along the coast of NSW, providing water, shelter, first aid, oxygen therapy among many other services to displaced communities.

However, many of the buildings used as evacuation centres lacked in core infrastructures such as power, communications, water, and information. The UOW Global Challenges call for research into disaster and crisis resilience inspired a team of researchers to come together to tackle this problem.

We spoke to researcher Dr Jonathan Knott, Research Fellow at AIIM to learn more about the project and the research team’s aspirations.

Regional campus research support

The UOW regional campuses are located in Moss Vale CBD, West Nowra, Batemans Bay (Hanging Rock) and Bega CBD. All Global Challenges research teams are welcome to utilise the campuses for any component of your projects, such as:

• meetings
• "zoom bases" for community members without technology
• interviews with staff and students from these communities
• reach out to regional researchers located at these campuses
• disseminate information to local communities/organisations.

Bega and Batemans Bay campuses have also donated their 2020 UOW Vice-Chancellor's special award funds (total $4,000) to help support the Global Challenges Disaster and Crisis Resilience research special initiative. This could support, for example,  researcher accommodation in these locations, local catering for focus groups/interviews, local photography, admin support or printing.

Please contact the campus managers to discuss any/all of the above.

• Bega: Samantha Avitaia - sharris@uow.edu.au
• Bateman's Bay: Jaimey Facchin - jaimey@uow.edu.au
• Shoalhaven: Teresa Bourke - tbourke@uow.edu.au
• Southern Highlands: Stephen Lowe - slowe@uow.edu.au

Bermagui Badja Fire Edge Community Connection facebook group

Manager of the Bermagui Badja Fire Edge Community Connection Facebook Group has encouraged our researchers to join this private group. The group exists to enable the Bermagui community to share experiences, monitor wellbeing, identify concerns and develop joint actions and a collective future vision to increase the community’s resilience. The project is initiated by The Crossing Land Education Trust with the support of Bermagui RFS and SES.

Online tools available to teams

Thank you to all researchers who took part in the online survey distributed in the last newsletter. We want to ensure we are taking a collaborative and cohesive approach to research in vulnerable communities and have therefore created a number of online tools to share information, ideas and resources across teams. 

We have set up a special initiative Webex Group and OneDrive folder. To gain access please email globalchallenges@uow.edu.au.

For more information and project support email Tasch Arndt (above), Research Officer Building Resilient Communities Challenge at narndt@uow.edu.au. For the full team's contact information our website.

If you have an update to share about your project in the next newsletter please email globalchallenges@uow.edu.au.