5/6/14 Melbourne - Risk Management - Landscape assessment teams

This may be a quick post with no pictures as I wanted to get something up before we leave. We will not have wifi tonight so I will be absent for a day or two.

Learned a great deal yesterday.  Heard from a fellow name Lee who works for DEPI (Dept of Environment and Primary Industry) about Risk Management.  The words he used and the way he spoke about risk were very similar and in some cases identical to what the NIMO teams use when talking about it.  The difference is that when they do risk management here it's about reducing risk from wildfire or bushfire.  It's not about reducing risk to firefighters with better risk-based decision making.  But the process for evaluation and analysis is the same. 

There is also a huge focus on community engagement, even when talking about risk management.  Lee said they are clear with the public that "Risk Management through the use of prescribed burning" is not a panecea.  That burning will not solve their risk problems and, once again, he brought up "shared responsibility."  Its very clear here that the Aussies are very pointed in their community engagement, making clear that while the public can expect them to come when they call, that the agencies have clear expectations of the public that THEY will prepare by making their homes defensible.  Apparently, the losses suffered during the 2009 bushfires, continue to have an impact and the public remains willing to engage and take on its portion of the responsibility.

Community engagement has been a recurring theme here and winds its way through every discussion. It's important enough here in Victria that at the state and regional levels they hve a position called Community Engagement Specialist. This is not a PAO - they have communication and media people to do that work.  This is a person whose job it is to facilitate engagement with the community, like a full time liaison officer and reflective, I think, of the importance they place on doing so.  In fact they have said many times, they are trying very hard,  although not always successful, to engage in new ways; to not go to a community and say "This is what we think you should do," but rather go in and say "This is what WE think. What do you think and what do you want?" They are trying to allow communities to drive the effort, even sometimes scheduling a meeting and allowing the commuity to build the agenda around what  THEY want to talk about.

An interesting effort was the concept of Bushfire Risk Landscape Team.  These are teams of about 6 people, with different specialities: some work in modeling, some weather, some are ecologists, but basically interdisciplinary.  They work at a landscape level, across jurisdictional boundaries, to look at the best way to deal with bushfire preparedness and maintenance of biodiversity.  There is a team that serves urban Melbourne, and one team in each of the other regions.  The regional community engagement specialist work with the team to build relationships in the areas they want to work, plan public meetings and work with the Country Fire Authority in each region to mesh the landscape teams ideas and strategic plans, with those of the local CFA.

All in all a fascinating day, loads of information and a wonderful dinner last night. Today we are off to visit water catchment, or watershed areas about how they deal with fire across those landscapes.