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How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critical social functions. We argue that a sole focus on aggregate systems neglects the important differences in how cyber threats are experienced and dealt with by individuals. Second, we draw on insights from social resilience and disaster management literature to establish a better link between individuals and cyber systems. We focus on two key aspects of cyber security that highlight its social nature: vulnerability and uncertainty. Instead of thinking of cyber security as a “technical problem + humans,” we suggest cyber security should be conceptualized as a “social problem + technology.” We conclude by highlighting three ways forward for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners: interdisciplinary research, public debate about a set of normative questions, and the need for an uncertainty discourse in politics and policymaking., Journal of Risk Research, 26 (7), ISSN:1366-9877, ISSN:1466-4461

Despite growing awareness and research into experiences of gender and sexual minorities, their needs and capacities are often overlooked in crisis response and disaster risk reduction. Billy Tusker Haworth, Scott McKinnon and CSS' Christine Eriksen summarize extant knowledge and identify areas for growth in the field of disaster geographies., Trotz des wachsenden Bewusstseins und der zunehmenden Erforschung der Erfahrungen geschlechtlicher und sexueller Minderheiten werden ihre Bedürfnisse und Fähigkeiten bei der Krisenbewältigung und der Eindämmung von Katastrophenrisiken häufig übersehen. Billy Tusker Haworth, Scott McKinnon und CSS Forscherin Christine Eriksen zeigen den derzeitigen Wissensstand auf und identifizieren Bereiche, die in der Katastrophengeografie noch ausgebaut werden müssen., Geography Compass, 16 (11), ISSN:1749-8198

In the aftermath of a firestorm, many survivors will spend time with the ruins of their homes, fossicking through the rubble or simply being present with the transformed space. Through a series of ...

Die Auswirkungen von Katastrophen auf Menschen variieren zwischen verschiedenen sozialen Gruppen auf verschiedenen räumlichen und zeitlichen Ebenen. In diesem Buchkapitel geben Dale Dominey-Howes, Scott McKinnon, Andrew Gorman-Murray und CSS Forscherin Christine Eriksen einen Überblick über das langsam aufstrebende Forschungsgebiet und analysieren die unterschiedlichen Erfahrungen von Menschen mit diversen sexuellen und genderspezifischen Hintergründen in Bezug auf eine Reihe von Katastrophen, die sich in verschiedenen soziopolitischen Kontexten und insbesondere in Australien und Neuseeland ereignet haben., The effects of disasters on people vary between different social groups at a range of spatial and temporal scales. In this book chapter, Dale Dominey-Howes, Scott McKinnon, Andrew Gorman-Murray and CSS' Christine Eriksen provide an overview of the slowly emerging field of scholarship and analyze the differing experiences of sexual and gender diverse individuals in relation to a series of disasters occurring in different sociopolitical contexts and in Australia and New Zealand in particular., Routledge Handbook of Environmental Hazards and Society, ISBN:978-0-367-42714-6, ISBN:978-1-032-27770-7, ISBN:978-0-367-85458-4

Home and contents insurance is integral to household and community resilience against disasters. Yet many households are underinsured. While causes for underinsurance have been widely resea...

This paper examines humour as an emergent theme within a long-term study of the gendered terrain of wildfire management. It analyses a set of semi-structured interviews that the study utilised to facilitate in-depth conversations with firefighter women about everyday gender relations, politics and practices within the New South Wales National Parks and Wildfire Service, Australia. The narrative analysis unpacks the dual function of humour as an explanatory tool during interviews, and as an everyday practice to negotiate adversity within the patriarchal stronghold of wildland firefighting. The study shows: a) how humour masks widespread occurrences of gender discrimination, and b) that the use of humour to negotiate gendered relations in everyday practices, and to describe embodied gendered identities, makes a difference for firefighter women's experiences of normative workplace culture. The paper concludes that humour enables flexibility and personal disclosure, which opens up strategies for managing, upholding, resisting, and living within and against asymmetric gendered power relations.

In this paper, CSS’s Christine Eriksen, Florian Roth, Linda Maduz and Tim Prior propose a re-examination of the dynamic relationship between affluence and vulnerability —a complex association defined as the Affluence–Vulnerability Interface (AVI). A more nuanced understanding of the AVI can (1) problematize the notion that increasing material affluence necessarily has a mitigating influence on social vulnerability, (2) extend analysis of social vulnerability beyond low-income regions to include affluent contexts and (3) improve understanding of how psychosocial characteristics influence people’s vulnerability. In diesem Papier schlagen die CSS Forscher Christine Eriksen, Florian Roth, Linda Maduz und Tim Prior eine erneute Untersuchung der dynamischen Beziehung zwischen Wohlstand und Verwundbarkeit vor — eine komplexe Verbindung, die als Affluence-Vulnerability Interface (AVI) definiert wird. Ein nuancierteres Verständnis der AVI kann (1) die Vorstellung problematisieren, dass zunehmender materieller Wohlstand notwendigerweise einen mildernden Einfluss auf die soziale Verwundbarkeit hat, (2) die Analyse der sozialen Verwundbarkeit über einkommensschwache Regionen hinaus auf wohlhabende Kontexte ausdehnen und (3) das Verständnis dafür verbessern, wie psychosoziale Merkmale die Verwundbarkeit von Menschen beeinflussen. ISSN:0165-0009 ISSN:1573-1480

This paper explores how people in southeast Australia impacted by bushfire make sense of such threatening experiences. It focuses on three post-fire studies of residents affected by bushfire to a point where the fire threat was imminent, and where perceptions of luck was an emergent, yet pivotal, theme during interviews in explaining outcomes of the events. Despite differences in the severity of residents’ experiences in terms of exposure, duration, and loss of life and property, narratives of luck were common across the interviews. The study results both enforce and challenge dominant paradigms of luck as something that is simultaneously “external” and “out of control”. Using trust, hope and agency as axes of analysis, we argue that it is the act of infusing personal agency with the energy of trust and hope that is often expressed as “luck” in post-event sense-making. This enables many residents to be forward-looking, and for the threat to be a transformative experience. It also provides opportunity for enhanced dialogue on risk communication.

Wildfires impact upon populations where development has occurred within or adjacent to natural vegetation. Even with extensive management interventions in the landscape, wildfires will continue to impact upon some properties. Residents in wildfire prone areas need to prepare themselves and their properties. Studies have found cost is one of the main reasons there is a generally low level of preparation by residents. In this study, we quantify the cost for residents to prepare themselves and retrofit their property for wildfire in an intermix and interface community. We combine this with semi-structured interviews to identify limitations to preparedness and willingness to contribute to a shared cost scheme with local government. Wide variation in the level of preparedness was found for the five case study homes in the intermix area and the five in the interface area with intermix houses being better prepared than those at the interface. All buildings were found not to comply with any building standards for wildfire resilience, despite most being considered to have the highest level of wildfire exposure. The total up-fronts cost to prepare residents and their homes ranged from approximately $8500 to $47,000 with an average of $24,600. Based on these figures, the financial investment required was significantly higher than residents felt they were able to cover. Ultimately, the choice to live in a wildfire-prone area will always involve the acceptance of some risk, regardless of the construction of the property and preparedness of the household.

This chapter explores how alliances between people, plants and fire encompass new but recurrent cycles of life. It begins with considerations of the long histories of fire, plants and people in Australia and circles out to narratives drawn from the Canberra firestorm of 2003. It employs a methodology of connecting narratives of bushfire survivors with the stories explored within artworks. We unpack the ways storying and world-making are expressed over time and in different modalities. We think about how Australian photographer Harold Cazneaux’s iconic image of resilience and photographer Rosemary Laing’s photographic constructed image of a domesticated forest environment linger alongside descriptions of devastation and acceptance. The narratives and artworks extend our understanding of human relationships within ecosystems of forests and fires. We look at parallel relationships of humans to fire to plants to other species like fungi and beetles, and consider the ways in which humans coexist with plants within environments that are changing at rates sometimes difficult to comprehend.

This chapter reflects on collaborative world-making and storying in the Anthropocene. Throughout this book, we have traced the ways people, plants and fire coexist in an era marked by uncertainty and change. We have followed experiences of ruin and regeneration that underpin new understandings of the world today. In building on these new understandings, we are intentionally not offering answers or solutions in this concluding chapter. Instead, in writing together, we seek to embed and embody the stories we have told of the fiery environment—as it has already been experienced and as it is imagined for the future. Looking at the artworks, and listening to the narratives of survivors, we are reminded that nature is formed through the agency and interdependencies of humans, nonhumans (flora and fauna), elemental and material ecologies. Like the alliances we (humans) are a part of, the world we make in this book will exist into the future through stories of grief and survival, acts of care and elemental images of transformation.

This chapter turns to the material traces left on both people and plants by fire. Harnessing the occult technique of Kirlian photography, artist David Haines captures the cosmic aura of plants gathered in the Wollemi National Park in New South Wales. Nearby, in the Southern Highlands ceramicist Sandy Lockwood harnesses fire to make works that describe the experience of weathering and the aesthetic experience of living amidst geological and human history. Lockwood’s work helps us explore how the alliances are imprinted into history. Haines and Lockwood both respect fire as a nonhuman element. They create fire-objects that offer a way to see beyond our usual material limitations. The return of survivors to a place that fire has passed through often means sifting through ash for small remains. In the hands of survivors fire-objects are a gift. The discovery of much-loved jewellery imprints itself onto surfaces beyond the body in the narratives of loss, hope and grief. By focusing on traces of fire and regrowth that are layered in time, understandings of place emerge through purposeful objects and embodied relations between fire, plants and people.

This chapter focuses on the different ways that humans and plants sense transformation, and how a practice of embodied uncertainty focuses our understanding of the alliances between people and plants. Emergent human and nonhuman relationships are experienced through different sensory modes, and are enhanced by fire. In this chapter we embrace the shared experience of fire by plants and humans, and map bodily ways of knowing and sensing the presence of fire in works by Max Angus, Kathy Temin and Hossein Valamanesh. Tracing emotional presence through the senses, we suggest that thinking through the alliances helps to connect people with broader understandings of transformation by fire and in plants. This points to the way that fire pervades all our senses and relationships, and how we feel our way towards future alliances with plants in an era of environmental change.

This chapter examines how the three sets of alliances of fire, plants and people break down the perceived dominance of human agency in the Anthropocene. Humans have been a catalyst for change. We have harnessed and consumed (like fire) but we have not done it alone. Aboriginal artist Yhonnie Scarce’s Death Zephyr (2017) meditates on the impact of British nuclear testing on people and plants at Maralinga in South Australia. This disaster is situated in the environmental history of the Atomic Age—from Nagasaki and Hiroshima to Chernobyl and Fukushima—and the curious emergence of ‘Involuntary Parks’ where humans cannot tread but plants and fire have flourished with time. Artist Susan Norrie’s multi-screen video installation Undertow (2002) shows the, at times, seemingly apocalyptic global impacts of humans and fire on forests and livelihoods; nothing is left untouched. These works address elemental ways of knowing the world and take us beyond human time. It is not a horror story—there is a sense of critical hopefulness throughout these reflections on multispecies storying, world-making, living and being with the environment.

This chapter examines how fire-plant-people alliances mark time through ruin and regeneration. By being-with and revisiting the charred remains of the past, the narratives of bushfire survivors and the work of artists who examine the direct experience and collective memory of fire enable us to consider the role of time in the shifting relationships between people, plants and fire in Australia. Inspired by the watercolour sketches of volunteer firefighter Sharon Field, we turn to themes of witnessing and show how individuals are living with ‘the rhythms and extremes of the earth’ (Clark, Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet. London: Sage, 2011). We discuss the series of paintings artist Fred Williams made during and after fires swept through his studio in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria in February and March 1968. The chapter ends with a consideration of Aboriginal installation artist Jonathan Jones’ examination of regeneration after the loss of innumerable Indigenous cultural materials in Sydney’s Garden Palace fire of 1882. These narratives and artworks help us to think about the material experience of fire and plants witnessed through a human lens.

This paper examines vulnerability in the context of affluence and privilege. It focuses on the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm in California, USA to examine long-term lived experiences of the disaster. Vulnerability is typically understood as a condition besetting poor and marginalized communities. Frequently ignored in these discussions are the experiences of those who live in more affluent areas. This paper seeks to more closely explain vulnerability at its interface with affluence. The aim is to challenge uncritical explanations of vulnerability. We also offer alternative ways of conceptualizing vulnerability as a material condition and social construct that acknowledges broader cultural, ecological, and economic conditions, which may offset, maintain or deepen true risk exposure. Drawing on in-depth interviews with residents and emergency service managers, the paper presents a suite of vulnerability categories that intersect to create two concomitant and competing conditions. First, vulnerability is variegated between households within communities, including those in more affluent areas. Second, household vulnerability is collectively altered, and oftentimes reduced, by the broader affluent community within which individual households reside. By paying closer attention to the Affluence–Vulnerability Interface the paper reveals a recursive process, which is significant in the context of building more disaster resilient communities.

In this Research Note, I reflect on researcher trauma in the discipline of geography, and explore ways to build a framework for researcher self-care by facilitating conversations about mental health in collaboration with Human Research Ethics Committees, Professional and Organisational Development Services and Workplace Health and Safety units.

Wildfire has resulted in significant loss of property and lives. Residents can improve the probability of survival of structures and themselves by undertaking suitable preparation. Only a small proportion of residents adequately prepare for wildfire with monetary and time costs cited as significant impediments. Few studies have quantified the monetary and time costs for residents to prepare. Here we use an online survey to estimate the extent to which cost drives the probability of a resident undertaking preparatory actions. Cost was found to be a significant driver if preparatory actions were being undertaken primarily for wildfire, but not if the preparatory actions were partially or primarily for other purposes, e.g. landscape maintenance. Approximate average costs for a resident to prepare for wildfire was $AUD 10,000, with a subsequent annual maintenance cost of $AUD 1000. Largest costs were related to altering landscaping features, e.g. fencing, positioning of garden beds. The paper argues that risks from landscape features could be reduced through further development of guidelines or standards for building in fire prone landscapes. Overall, two primary factors were found to predict the extent of preparation of a resident – planned future actions and their risk perception. Residents who intend to evacuate in the event of a wildfire are less likely to prepare than those that plan to stay and defend, which points to a problematic gap between official advice to prepare regardless of intended actions and public tendencies to only prepare if they intend to stay and defend.

Our world is increasingly experiencing wildfires that are both more frequent and intense. This is exacerbating the risk of wildfire disasters, particularly on the wildland-urban interface where ongoing development and population growth is exposing greater numbers of people to potential damage and loss. There is also increasing evidence that children are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of wildfires. While the earliest studies can be traced back to southeastern Australia in the mid-1980s, the last decade has seen a surge of child-focused research in fire-affected communities. This contribution synthesizes the key findings of that research to provide an overview of the known impacts of wildfire on children - from fatalities and injuries to adverse effects on physical and mental health, educational achievement, family functioning, and social connectedness. It also highlights how a shift toward participatory research methodologies is providing increased understanding of how children are impacted by and cope with wildfires. While knowledge gaps remain, the existing research provides a strong foundation for the ongoing development of evidence-informed policy and practice that serves the specific needs of children before, during, and after wildfire events.

This paper presents findings from a gendered analysis of resident responses to the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires (wildfires) in Victoria, Australia. One hundred and seventy-three people lost their lives in the bushfires and more than 2000 houses were destroyed. Previous research on Black Saturday has largely focused on issues of resident preparedness and response, with limited consideration of the role of gender in household decisions and actions. This paper examines the gendered dimensions of risk awareness, preparedness and response among households affected by the bushfires. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with over 600 survivors and a questionnaire of 1314 households in fire-affected areas. Analysis revealed that women more often wanted to leave than men, who more often wanted to stay and defend property against the bushfires. Nevertheless, findings suggest that broad-brush characterisations of staying to defend as a masculine response and leaving as a feminine response are misguided. Although some women expressed a strong desire to leave, others were resolute on staying to defend. Equally, while some men were determined to stay and defend, others had never considered it an option. Despite this, the research identified numerous instances where disagreement had arisen as a result of differing intentions. Conflict most often stemmed from men's reluctance to leave, and was most apparent where households had not adequately planned or discussed their intended responses. The paper concludes by considering the degree to which the findings are consistent with other research on gender and bushfire, and the implications for bushfire safety policy and practice.

This paper examines how the availability or scarcity of water influenced the survival related decisions of households during the October 2013 State Mine Fire in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. Narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 18 households impacted by the bushfire revealed that drought conditions in the months preceding the bushfire left many households dependent on non-reticulated water supplies vulnerable at the time the fire threat became apparent. Despite considerable preparations for water storage and usage during the fire, “weak links” in planning (e.g., top-ups, failure of pumps, generators and hoses) meant water was not accessible when needed most. This paper discusses a gap in bushfire safety scholarship on water usage and everyday trade-offs amongst residents in areas independent of reticulated (mains) water supplies. Findings suggest a need for more detailed and consistent information in official bushfire safety advice on storing water prior to a bushfire and effective water distribution systems for household defence and fire fighting.

This paper aims to raise awareness of vicarious trauma amongst disaster researchers, and suggests ways to prevent vicarious traumatisation from happening and/or reaching incapacitating levels. The paper examines the potential of mindfulness practice, grounded in Buddhist meditation, as a set of contemplation tools through which optimal level of functionality can be maintained or restored. The relevance of the emphasis in mindfulness on understanding suffering, non-attachment, non-judgement, and full participation in the present moment are related to the context of disaster research. The paper demonstrates the potential for increased researcher resilience through acknowledgement and understanding of impermanence, as well as skilful observation of external and internal phenomena in trauma without forming attachment to the pain and suffering.

A major issue for bushfire management arises when residents decide to leave a safe area and enter the fire zone to rescue or defend their property, pets, loved ones or other assets. Here, we use statistical and narrative analyses of data from an online survey and semi-structured interviews with residents affected by the 2013 “Red October” bushfires in New South Wales, Australia. The survey results revealed that of the 58 % of respondents who were not at home at the time the threat became apparent, 65 % indicated that they attempted to get home prior to the arrival of the fire front. In doing so, many endangered themselves, their family, friends and emergency services personnel. This paper discusses the shortcomings of bushfire survival plans and official risk communication, which do not cater well for household units that are divided or unattended when a bushfire starts. Findings suggest that to enhance bushfire safety and preparedness, emergency managers should acknowledge and speak more directly to the specific constraints to action for particular social groups at the wildland–urban interface, including families with school-age children, commuters and absentee landholders.

This paper examines landscape preferences of residents in amenity-rich bushfire-prone landscapes in New South Wales, Australia. Insights are provided into vegetation preferences in areas where properties neighbor large areas of native vegetation, such as national parks, or exist within a matrix of cleared and vegetated private and public land. In such areas, managing fuel loads in the proximity of houses is likely to reduce the risk of house loss and damage. Preferences for vegetation appearance and structure were related to varying fuel loads, particularly the density of understorey vegetation and larger trees. The study adopted a qualitative visual research approach, which used ranking and photo-elicitation as part of a broader interview. A visual approach aids in focusing on outcomes of fuel management interventions, for example, by using the same photo scenes to firstly derive residents' perceptions of amenity and secondly, residents' perceptions of bushfire risk. The results are consistent with existing research on landscape preferences; residents tend to prefer relatively open woodland or forest landscapes with good visual and physical access but with elements that provoke their interest. Overall, residents' landscape preferences were found to be consistent with vegetation management that reduces bushfire risk to houses. The terms in which preferences were expressed provide scope for agency engagement with residents in order to facilitate management that meets amenity and hazard reduction goals on private land.

In this paper, we examine the concept of embodied uncertainty by exploring multiple dimensions of uncertainty in the context of risks associated with extreme natural hazards. We highlight a need for greater recognition, particularly by disaster management and response agencies, of uncertainty as a subjective experience for those living at risk. Embodied uncertainty is distinguished from objective uncertainty by the nature of its internalisation at the individual level, where it is subjective, felt and directly experienced. This approach provides a conceptual pathway that sharpens knowledge of the processes that shape how individuals and communities interpret and contextualise risk. The ways in which individual characteristics, social identities and lived experiences shape interpretations of risk are explored by considering embodied uncertainty in four contexts: social identities and trauma, the co-production of knowledge, institutional structures and policy and long-term lived experiences. We conclude by outlining the opportunities that this approach presents, and provide recommendations for further research on how the concept of embodied uncertainty can aid decision-making and the management of risks in the context of extreme natural hazards., Journal of Risk Research, 21 (3), ISSN:1366-9877, ISSN:1466-4461

This article explores the potential impact of training and employment with wildfire management agencies on the retention of Indigenous fire knowledge. It focuses on the comparative knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards in connection with “modern” political constructs of fire in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, and California in the United States of America. This article emphasises the close link between cross-cultural acceptance, integration of Indigenous and agency fire cultures, and the ways in which knowledge types are shared or withheld. While agency fire fighting provides an opportunity for Indigenous people to connect and care for country, it simultaneously allows for the breaking of traditional rules surrounding what knowledge is shared with whom in the context of Indigenous cultural burning. By highlighting how privilege intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and age, this article demonstrates how greater cross-cultural acceptance cou...

You live in the bush. You live by the rules of the bush, and that's it.' These were the reflective words of Mrs Dunlop upon seeing the blackened rubble of her home, which made headline news the morning after the first, and most destructive, fire front tore through the Blue Mountains in New South Wales on 17 October 2013 (Partridge and Levy, 2013). While seemingly a simple statement, it goes right to the heart of heated public and political debates past and present over who belongs where and why in the fire-prone landscapes that surround Australia's cities. Bushfire is a constant and ongoing part of Australian history, ecology and culture. The love of a sunburnt country, the beauty and terror of fire, and the filmy veil of post-fire greenness described in the century-old poem 'Core of My Heart' (Mackellar, 1908) are still apt depictions of Australian identity today. Yet longer fire seasons and an increase in extreme fire weather days with climate change add both uncertainty and urgency to Australia's ability to coexist with fire in the future (Head et al., 2013).

This paper examines the embodied experiences of coping, caring and believing by disaster recovery workers in Australia in the context of the growing frequency and intensity of disasters, especially bushfires. The study draws on three concepts: faith as performative, embodiment, and the ‘holding environment’ as a system that shapes coping capacity. Faith emerges in the study as having two modalities (introspection and group-communion) that are not synonymous with religious adherence. Instead it is linked to the holding environment, which comprises the strategies that individuals and groups have developed to cope with risks and exposure, through their embodied responses, and the observed responses of others, to the impact of potential and actual harm. The holding environment provides mental, spiritual and physical spaces and practices where disaster recovery workers can safely confide, reflect, debate, grow and heal. These processes, in turn, provide anchor points and sense of purpose. They also accentuate the individual and collective choices we face in terms of mitigating and adapting to growing social and environmental uncertainty with climate change.

The consequences of wildfires are felt in susceptible communities around the globe on an annual basis. Climate change predictions in places like the south-east of Australia and western United States suggest that wildfires may become more frequent and more intense with global climate change. Compounding this issue is progressive urban development at the peri-urban fringe (wildland–urban interface), where continued infrastructure development and demographic changes are likely to expose more people and property to this potentially disastrous natural hazard. Preparing well in advance of the wildfire season is seen as a fundamental behaviour that can both reduce community wildfire vulnerability and increase hazard resilience – it is an important element of adaptive capacity that allows people to coexist with the hazardous environment in which they live. We use household interviews and surveys to build and test a substantive model that illustrates how social cohesion influences the decision to prepare for wildfire. We demonstrate that social cohesion, particularly community characteristics like ‘sense of community’ and ‘collective problem solving’, are community-based resources that support both the adoption of mechanical preparations, and the development of cognitive abilities and capacities that reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience to wildfire. We use the results of this work to highlight opportunities to transfer techniques and approaches from natural hazards research to climate change adaptation research to explore how the impacts attributed to the social components of social–ecological systems can be mitigated more effectively.

Building on a recognised information-to-action gap in wildfire risk communication, this paper examines what being physically and mentally ‘well prepared’ actually means to wildfire agency staff and volunteers in charge of disseminating risk information. Using the results of an open-ended survey conducted in southeast Australia, we examine how a set of preparedness messages is interpreted. The paper demonstrates that the concept of wildfire preparedness is ambiguous, and that being ‘well prepared’ is a complex mix of practical and mental preparedness measures. Many of the individual interpretations of preparedness messages are found to not align with the official outlined intent. In particular, we argue that the lack of a clear definition and engagement with ‘mental preparedness’ in wildfire risk communication has resulted in an inability to clearly relate to, and articulate what it means to be both physically and mentally prepared for wildfire. The survey illustrates how even well-trained wildfire management professionals and volunteers misinterpret relatively uncontested risk messages, and we describe how these misinterpretations might result in dangerous decisions if wildfire threat is realised. The work also reveals three key themes that define different aspects of mental preparedness: emotional control, understanding psychological strain, and the ability to know when and how to implement a wildfire plan. The paper concludes that wildfire risk communication efforts can be improved through heightened attention to the disseminators’ as well as the recipients’ understanding, explanation and adoption of risk information.

Wildfire can result in significant loss of property and lives. Evidence shows that residents can decrease the risk of loss when they stay to defend their property. In order to safely defend a property, residents need to be adequately prepared for the wildfire conditions they face. Residents who wish to evacuate prior to the arrival of a wildfire also need to prepare their property and themselves for such an action. Despite the importance of preparation, there are no clear and quantifiable definitions of what it means to be prepared for different exposures to wildfire. Here we develop a model and definitions of what it means to be prepared for wildfire. The model considers the exposure of the property, the ability of the structure to withstand such an exposure and whether the resident(s) are adequately prepared. Preparation considers the physical and mental capacity of the residents, the condition of the grounds and the equipment available to defend the property. The model and definitions presented here focus on identifying points of weakness that should be addressed. An improved model and definitions will provide a benchmark for those residents who do prepare for wildfire, potentially reducing the risk of loss of property and life. However they are unlikely to address the large proportion of the at risk population that elect not to prepare for wildfire.

Building on an identified need for gender-sensitive approaches to bushfire risk engagement, this paper examines outreach initiatives specifically targeting women’s bushfire awareness and preparedness in southeast Australia. The results of an online survey, together with two workshops with community engagement staff and volunteers from rural fire services, convey perceived aids and obstacles for engaging women. Efforts at engaging women with bushfire risk management are shown to align squarely with efforts to create a more gender-balanced and gender-sensitive environment for bushfire brigade volunteers. The paper demonstrates how gender roles and gendered norms are reinforced by the patriarchal structures that shape everyday life and the on-the-ground application of official outreach policy and practice. This, in turn, results in heightened dimensions of gendered vulnerability to bushfire. Three key pointers to more successful engagement emerge from the analysis: the benefits of hands-on experience and practice, the strength of networks and the imperative of supportive learning environments.

Field trips have long been central to geography, but have been subject to assessment of the role of the ‘field’ in teaching. At the same time, academics face barriers to running field trips. Distance education and enhanced educational access for non-metropolitan students represented such an obstacle at an Australian university. These obstacles were taken as an opportunity to draw on the regional nature of the students and staff to enhance teaching goals, run critically informed field trips by and manage academic workloads. We evaluate the field trips by conducting surveys and interviews with students and tutors, and as an example of innovation within constraints.