Dealing with disaster

Flinders University’s Torrens Resilience Initiative (TRI), one of Australia’s longest standing research initiatives dedicated to disaster preparedness and management, is committed to building resilience and protecting safety, health and prosperity in times of crisis.

For the past 13 years the TRI has helped organisations, communities and nations build disaster preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery.

There is no doubt the past three years have given the research group a many issues to advise on, from COVID-19 to the conflict in Syria, the Ukraine Invasion and the 2019/20 Australian bushfires.

TRI Director and Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor Paul Arbon says the COVID-19 pandemic, the threat of deliberate biological events and food security are some of the recent and emerging challenges TRI has turned its attention towards.

With more than six million people with COVID-19 losing their lives since early 2020, he says the impact of the pandemic has spread much further than the public health implications.

“We've talked about the likelihood of a pandemic for decades, and there's been a lot of discussion about what would probably happen if there was a pandemic,” Professor Arbon says. “But we've never been certain which infection would be the cause, which makes aspects of preparation more difficult.

“I think we focused on the health impact in isolation, and we didn't understand the extent to which the effects of a pandemic would cascade into other important parts of society, including the economy, politics, good governance and so on.”

 A line up of cars at a pop-up COVID-19 testing centre in Adelaide.

Now that COVID lockdowns in Australia have lifted and the nation’s borders have reopened, Professor Arbon says we should be focusing on what the next pandemic could hold.

“It’s related to the fact that we have seen more infectious agents that exist in animal populations translating into the human population over recent years,” he says.

“This phenomenon is related to climate change and environmental degradation because as the environment changes, more people are exposed to diseases that they were not exposed to previously.

“There is a scientific link between climate change, the environment, and the emergence of new infectious diseases. So, my argument is that it's the next pandemic that we should be focusing on now.”

One impact of COVID-19 that TRI has explored is the cross-scale effects of information disorder on societal resilience and social cohesion.

Information disorder is the sharing of false information with or without intent to harm.

COVID has provided TRI with the ideal case study for the analysis of information disorder, which escalates during times of large-scale disruption and in the pandemic’s case, particularly around mask wearing, vaccine mandates and lockdowns.

In our modern world, we are more connected than ever and have constant and overwhelming exposure to information.

When the media runs sensational headlines or we read extreme views on social media, propagated for example by anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine movements, it is very difficult to sort through and work out what we should be doing to protect our friends and families.

“The real problem in an event like a pandemic is that there's too much information for most of us to manage and we don't know which of the competing views is useful or truthful,” Professor Arbon says.

"They're not trying to do the wrong thing but there is too much competing, and at times sensationalised, information. They’re trying to work out what the right thing to do is, and that's increasingly challenging for people, and for governments, public health officials and emergency responders.”

As for the solution – it’s in part the responsibility of health authorities, governments and those with influence to focus on informing people in ways that are "less defensive" and more trustworthy. 

“Telling people they must do something is different from telling people it’s a good idea,” Professor Arbon says, in reference to mandates versus strong recommendations on mask wearing and vaccines.

TRI’s membership includes a cross disciplinary pool of almost 40 researchers from various disciplines across Flinders University.

After years spent working in the disaster resilience and management field, as well as taking on various leadership roles including Past President of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine, and former Chief Commissioner for St John Ambulance Australia, Professor Arbon says he is not weighed down by the state of the world and its challenges.

“I think working in this space you discover that most people in the world are good people trying to look after themselves and their families and do good things for their neighbours,” he says.

“People in our field of work talk about the fact that they would prefer to live in a disaster affected community because it’s so supportive and encouraging.