This year on WSP's People and Place Podcast, we are introducing a miniseries titled Planning for Natural Hazards, and Dr. Mark Maund, WSP's Planning and Approvals Team Lead for Regional New South Wales and ACT, will be hosting it. Join Mark as he speaks with some brilliant specialists from around Australia who will contribute to the conversation around planning for natural hazards and a better future. In our fourth episode Gajendran Thayaparan, Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle in the School of Architecture and Built Environment, joins Mark to share his knowledge on the importance of education in disaster risk reduction. They discuss different types of education, decision making before, during, and after disasters and communities adapting to the new normal.
This year on WSP's People and Place Podcast, we are introducing a miniseries titled Planning for Natural Hazards, and Dr. Mark Maund, WSP's Planning and Approvals Team Lead for Regional New South Wales and ACT, will be hosting it. Join Mark as he speaks with some brilliant specialists from around Australia who will contribute to the conversation around planning for natural hazards and a better future. In our fourth episode Gajendran Thayaparan, Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle in the School of Architecture and Built Environment, joins Mark to share his knowledge on the importance of education in disaster risk reduction. They discuss different types of education, decision making before, during, and after disasters and communities adapting to the new normal.
[00:00:00] Mark: Hi everyone, and welcome to the People and Place Podcast by WSP. My name is Dr. Mark Maund and I'm WSP's Planning and Approvals Team Lead for Regional New South Wales, and ACT. This year on the People and Place Podcast, we are introducing a miniseries titled Planning for Natural Hazards. I'll be speaking with some brilliant specialists around Australia who can contribute to the conversation around planning for natural hazards and a better future.
Before we begin, I would like to do an Acknowledgement of Country. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands, where our projects take place throughout Australia and their continuing connection to culture, community land, sea, and sky. We pay our respect to elders past, present, and future.
Today I'm very pleased to be joined by Gajendran Thayaparan, Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle in the School of Architecture and Built Environment. Great to have you here today Gajendran.
[00:00:56] Gajendran: Uh, thank you, Mark. And thank you for having me.
[00:00:58] Mark: Maybe to start, if you could just give us a bit of your background and your role in disaster risk reduction.
[00:01:02] Gajendran: Yes, I'm an Associate Professor in Construction Management at the University of Newcastle. I've done my undergraduate degree in BSc Quantity surveying, did a Masters of Science in Facilities Management, and then a PhD in Construction Management, looking at technology communication adoption in construction project organisations.
I currently research disaster resilience through the built environment lens. And I work with my PhD students and research teams solving some of the complex problems relating to climate change adaptation and disastrous reduction.
[00:01:33] Mark: Yeah, that's really interesting you are doing a lot of great research in that space. One of the things we hear a lot about is the role of education, education of government, education of the community, general knowledge and understanding of risk of natural hazards and how we can try and reduce some of those risks. Can you have a quick chat about how you see the importance of education in disaster risk reduction and some of the current trends in education.
[00:01:59] Gajendran: Okay. Education has been the centre of our focus. We started our first disaster management program based on disaster risk management as a graduate certificate and a master's program, because what we realised was there was a huge gap in the knowledge base, particularly bringing multidisciplinary understanding of disastrous reduction. Because disasters are generally categorised based on hazards. Whether it is a earthquake or a flood or a bushfires.
And then what we have done is develop knowledge and skill sets based on those particular fields. But then we wanted to look at more about managing disasters and reducing risks across the hazards. And through that lens, we realized we need to have more educational programs that brings those skillsets together and develop a discourse around those disaster risk reduction disciplines.
I can't agree more that we need to have more and more a focused education in this field and particularly it has to be stratified and targeted towards different stakeholders in the field. What I mean by stakeholders is that you have private sector, there is public sector and there are government agencies and there are communities. So not everyone wants to know everything about disastrous reduction, but to really target the knowledge base in the right way.
So, this brings to the second aspect. How do you design this education? I mean, masters and graduate certificates at a high level. So, what needs to happen in this space, which is still not very common in the a university education is short courses and micro-credentials what means people can do smaller bits of education in terms of managing risks or disastrous reduction. And then they can scaffold it towards a formal qualification.
[00:03:47] Mark: Thanks. Gajendran that's really interesting. You're right education is one of the big issues we need to resolve. And clearly it informs how people make decisions, both in terms of before disasters and also during disasters, in terms of evacuation, do they stay, having that knowledge is really important to enable people to make decisions.
What I did want to ask you about is what is decision-making. A lot of what we do in disaster space is preparing for disasters. Also understanding impacts or risks during disasters. How do we respond? Do we evacuate how do emergency services deal with these disasters? Can you give us a bit of a discussion around what you think decision-making is and why it is so important in disaster risk reduction?
[00:04:26] Gajendran: Decision-making it's a very complex topic. So basically, we talk about decision making most of the time after a hazard occurs. Now that is it's only a part of the equation decision-making in disasters reduction happens well ahead the hazards particularly when you look at urban planning and where do you start to live? and how do we develop the infrastructure? How do we communicate with people? And how do we prepare from the disaster?
So, there are decisions across A timeline in terms of preparing people for facing disasters or building resilience for disasters. I think there's quite a lot of knowledge out there. Indigenous people have lived in this country for years and they have managed the natural hazard. However, the structure of the societies and how we live have changed.
So, if you ask me decision-making, how do we make it? It's not a simple answer. It's quite a lot of issues, a lot of criteria, but the most important thing is being systematic and the objective of the decision. So, if the objective of the decision is to prepare communities to withstand disasters. We are starting from the point that they are going to be hit by a disaster and we are to build their resilience in the way that we could reduce the damage to their community.
In the developing countries, we talk about minimum death rates, but in developed countries, we talked about economic damage, minimizing that with death rate, but in developing countries, it's more about minimizing the death rates during the hazard. So, the objective is then building up capacity within our institutional systems and within communities to reduce this damage.
Now, how do you do that? Systematic planning of looking at the hazard, the exposure, and the capacity. These are the three things in a formula. What is the hazard they face? Is there a multiple hazards? What is the exposure to the hazard and what kind of capacity they have to deal with that?
[00:06:20] Mark: Yeah, that's really interesting, as you said a lot of it relates back to the community, the knowledge they have and decisions they make or knowledge of hazard to preparation before disasters is really important. I am involved in planning and planning around natural hazards and town planning decisions are normally long-term when we decide to build an area and live in an area.
These are generally permanent or definitely long-term decisions when we build buildings and infrastructure, the fact that these decisions are permanent, and we've made these decisions that we've run through the systematic process that you're talking about. Do you think that's a different decision-making approach in that generally communities are permanent?
They don't relocate. Do you think that makes decisions different, more important? Is there a different process that we run through because of that? We also don't know in a hundred years time what the community will look like. What technology will look like; what infrastructure will look like.
Do you think these issues inform decisions or do they complicate decisions as we go along? It's really about building adaptation into planning so that we can adapt to these new knowledge and new hazards in the future. Can you talk about some of those decisions and those long-term decision-making processes that you think could either improve or are currently involved in planning?
[00:07:33] Gajendran: You raised a lot of issues and a lot of points there. So, the simple thing is that communities are defined in many ways. Some of them are really place-based. So, a community living in a particular area where I've lived there for probably centuries in some communities or decades and as you said, it becomes permanent.
The other one is communities based on their cultural, ethnic, or other social traits. Community resilience is all about making sure that after a disaster, they bounce back to a level of operation maintaining their cultural identity or place-based activities. Now, as you're saying, planning decisions have objectives and these objectives could be economic and other kinds of infrastructure.
How do we can develop these communities in a particular place that are sustainable economically? The issue now is, do we consider hazards in that decision? So, you said, how can we make better decisions? Is that when you are developing a new plan, what it means is you are settling a group of people with a liveable city kind of environment and making sure they have got livelihood and they have some safety within that environment.
And they can basically have a social interaction and develop a community. So, the decisions that you make need to really consider natural hazards and how the cascading effect of the natural hazards over the years could impact that community. We can't build every time after a particular natural hazard, destroying everything back again the same way.
So, the communities that has been settled or created decades ago, as you said, it's not easy to relocate because people have identity place, identity, and everything in that community. So, you can't suddenly go and say, look, yeah, this is not a good place to live. Let's relocate. Unless that place becomes completely inhabitable, like certain places in New Zealand after the earthquake.
So, we need to make wiser decisions before we put new settlements so that they don't become a significant hazard driven place in 10, 20, 30 year’s time. And everything that looks nice at the beginning may not be the same in 20 years because with climate change what's happening is that the hazards are increasing.
And when the hazards increased a place that was seen as, okay, in terms of natural hazard could become highly severely impacted. So, if the simple answer is yes, the decision-making process needs to consider natural hazard and long-term possibility of adaptation in that how we can adapt a community and a place in a new settlement becomes key.
[00:10:15] Mark: That's really interesting. and you're right I think adaptation is one of the key things. The ability to adapt, to changing climate, changing technology and the way we live as well. Obviously, the outcome that we're all aiming for is for some where that's comfortable, safe, and liveable.
In terms of making these decisions and making the right decisions we need good quality information. What do you think is some of the most important sources of information or types of information we need to make informed decisions around planning for natural hazards? And do you think we currently have that level of information or is there a way we can improve that current information that we have?
[00:10:52] Gajendran: Climate change, adaptation decisions and planning decisions with other government policy driven or government objectives driven decisions are very complex. One thing is certain in this that nothing stays stable and uncertainty in these decisions is the fundamental trait.
So, do we have right information for that particular period of time? And are we comfortable with the level of information is the discussion that a group can make together. However, in five years time, that information might be seen completely flawed and particularly inadequate. So, the point is do we have the best possible information to make a decision in a very uncertain environment.
And it was an evidence based decision is the best we could do at this stage. Five years time, we can still question whether that decision is right or wrong. But the point is that at that point in time, we used every possible information, and we used the right algorithms or right processes to arrive at a decision.
If you ignore a critical part of that decision. For example, for years, natural hazards have not been considered as a part of the decision making. So that is a problem. So, once you bring it in what kind of information comes in and most of the time predictions are modelling and they're never accurate, or I can't say never accurate.
You can't. Really be very confident with a certain statistical level. You can be confident in 99% or 95%, this particular scenario, projection of bushfire, trajectory or flooding trajectory, or sea level rise trajectory. You use that information and as long as they have used appropriate algorithms to make the information that will be used for planning. I think that's the best level we could get at.
So, I would say two or three things here. One make sure you understand the level of uncertainty in that process so that you're not trying to sell a decision as perfect decision. Second is that make sure that every information that is required at that level.
And what is available. You bring it in now, the satellites can provide you with a lot of information and there are enough, powerful software to simulate number of scenarios. So that's the third level. Then bring it in a logical and ethical and moral way.
Although you have the information you can justify, development based on More economic output rather than long-term adaptation output. So, if you make the decision in that conscious way, I think we should be okay. In long run. We don't need to worry too much about putting people at a very difficult places to live.
[00:13:32] Mark: Yeah, that's really good point, I think just justifying or identifying with the source of the information, the reliability, and the fact that at the time, most of us make the best decisions we can with the information we have.
The other thing that I find is really important, and we've seen it recently with recovery from both Bush fires and floods in Australia. And we see it many other countries as well, the importance of community involvement in different stages of disasters. And also, in decision-making the role of community and having strong social networks is really important.
Can you talk a little bit about community involvement in decision-making, how to improve it or the best way to have good interaction with the community? And is there a way we can harness that to make better decisions or stronger recovery stages in the future.
[00:14:15] Gajendran: Oh, very interesting question, and also very complex question because communities have lived in places and communities have a lot of information that they have observed over a period of time. And particularly if there was a smaller community in a region where the stories or narratives have been passed through about natural hazards over the years, through, grandparents, parents, they can inform in terms of decision-making.
However, one thing we are to realise is that may not be the complete information. That's part of the information, the climate models and external scientific data will probably contradict. The trajectory or would probably add to the trajectory saying that, okay, you saw this progressing at a particular rate. Now we are going to see an accelerated rate, which the community may not have that insight.
So, bringing those information and building them is very important. So generally, community preparedness and community social networks are absolutely important in a normal, days of living we call it building social capital, but particularly post hazard disaster, even it's very important to bounce back.
But what we have to realize they live in a cascaded system of infrastructure, telecom infrastructure, a critical infrastructure like roads, water, electricity. So, we can't expect after a very serious hazard. Every infrastructure has been, damaged by the disaster communities can't function in the way that they have prepared because their preparedness, would have been reliant on some of these infrastructure, helping them, for example, using mobile phones, to talk to others or using the social network.
But if the telecom towers goes off and electricity is not there and the batteries have not been working, so you're going to be very limited. So, it's important when we prepare the communities that we don't invest all in that particular space, because we need to make sure that the critical infrastructure that supports the resilience and the response during the disaster. Can hold during that time.
So, we could see many events that communities felt they have been prepared, but then they have been really affected by the disaster. And my observation is that it's beyond what they have prepared for. And every disaster has in the last five years has been severe than the previous event and whatever we prepare seems to be inadequate.
So, how do we deal with that situation is critical. So, we have to look community as a very important part but supporting infrastructure for communities to withstand the disasters is a one. So, this is where the adaptation becomes very important because you can't really prepare for an event. You have to adapt at that time and more to survive in a particular place.
[00:17:03] Mark: Yeah, you're right. The fact that community can have strong social cohesion they can be prepared, but with the increasing severity of disaster, we all need support in those communities. Obviously, we need support from a government infrastructure providers, private industry, to really help them recover from disasters.
And talking about decision-making Gajendran, we're very lucky in Australia. As you talked about developed countries, to be able to make certain decisions. And some of our biggest risks are around impact to buildings impacting infrastructure and our way of life.
In developing countries, they have different decisions and what you would almost call a more critical type impacts in terms of disasters, which is around potential loss of life, loss of livelihood, complete destruction of housing and communities. I think decisions in different socioeconomic groups are made differently.
Maybe, can you have a discussion around how you say those decisions being made? And also, maybe back to that point of support, is there something that the people in developed countries can provide that support to others who need it to help prepare for and recover from these disasters?
[00:18:10] Gajendran: It's a very interesting area of discussion about what supports and what responsibilities developing word hold for disasters happening in developing world. So, climate change induce a sea level rise, and we know that many of the pacific islands could be risked by this particular hazard and the whole discussion about these climate refugees and what kind of responsibilities the developed world have to take in terms of contributing to this particular climate issue, that's affecting people who are less able to. Make decisions to protect themselves.
I think the developing world is doing many projects or many activities around mitigating some of these risks and helping prepare those countries that are in a highly vulnerable state. However, the Western world reconstruction financing happens a bit different to a, in the developing world. So, in the developed world insurance systems there could be government taxation systems with some future funds are used to develop post disaster reconstruction.
But yet we can see in the developed world that insurance companies are getting a bit nervous about the level of damage that they are seeing and how best they can, manage the claims in the future, but in the developing world, it's the handouts that comes from the government or NGOs.
So, it's a different type of financing arrangement. Not many developing nations have insurance, or probably they may have insurance, but not the vast majority of people will have insurance. So, when a disaster happens in a developing world like earthquakes in Nepal or floods in Bangladesh, there are many NGOs that are trained to immediately start some kind of operation with them and reach out for world bank or Asian development bank or other foreign countries. Donate, but when it happens in the developed world it gets a bit tricky who has insurance, who doesn't have insurance, whether there's enough money in the insurance to rebuild.
And then the government intervenes when people can't actually support themselves and try to have some relief packages to help. So, the decisions then how do you finance that? And this needs really carefully thought through for long-term sustainability. In terms of good taxation systems or good funding mechanisms or private public private partnerships to deal with those things, is very important to maintain the critical infrastructure.
This is why mitigation becomes more important than response, because if you could mitigate every dollar, they say spending mitigation can save $4 in response or reconstruction.
[00:20:52] Mark: Really interesting, I guess an extension of that and some of the decisions people make. Uh, if they're lucky enough to make these decisions, which is back to that lifestyle choices, we're back to discussing planning and where people choose to live. The interaction between the environment and disasters. So, for instance, a bushfire risk we know is typically related to proximity, to vegetation, flooding related to water courses and floodplains, et cetera, a coastal risk being living near the coast. The difficulty around this is, these are the places that many people choose to live. They want to live in with nature.
They want to live near water near the coast, near vegetation it's a nice lifestyle that people choose to live. It's counterintuitive in some ways to live near these places because they are exposed to hazard risk. Is there a way we can improve decision making around this or do you think it's simply a case uh, either the buyer beware or improving resilience or infrastructure in these places to try and deal with some of these hazards again, in terms of decisions, is it almost an individual responsibility? It feels like it's a community-based responsibility to me that we need to provide options for people choosing to live in these areas and the best way that they can both achieve these lifestyles, but also be safe in doing that.
[00:22:08] Gajendran: I think this has been a debated. Significant period of time where people should live and who decides where people should live. And in a heavy government-oriented countries, government can regulate things to say that look, you can't live in this particular area. And Australia has good regulations around protecting natural land or Bush land and others you can't just go in and cut it off, but we also make decisions to release land in certain places.
But in some countries, Market decides a lot. There are less regulations and there are regulations to say you can't live in particular places, but still, it's less restrictive. So, where people choose to live, it's a difficult decision for an individual to dictate or a government to dictate. So, it is a collective decision. In the past people chose to live in these places based on their jobs. So, in developing countries, most of the fishermen live in the coast because that's the easiest access to go to the sea come back and do their activities.
Farmers later lived closer to probably rivers and others, but now it's not the case. It's about lifestyle and what you like to live when you know your views and everything. As a common principle, people should take responsibility. If they want to live in a place that is hazardous and, they have to be prepared. They had to be aware. And there should be infrastructure systems to help them when there's a disaster, but they shouldn't be completely reliant on public infrastructure to support them because. They chose to live in a highly hazardous place.
So, a lot of things come into this decision of how to support, how to prepare people living in different, low socioeconomic status and different demographics and different geographical conditions. And we need to make policies that are fair and effective. So that, that would be the criteria we'll use. There can't be a broad-brush decision on how to approach it.
[00:24:06] Mark: Yeah, That's really interesting. It's actually a really good point. Bringing back to decision-making fairness and being equitable. The other aspect of decision making, where you're talking about accountability and responsibility for individual decisions in order for people to make decision. Like all of us in deciding on anything where we live, what we have for dinner, where we go on the weekend, we need access to good quality information. Do you think that we have that access at the moment?
Is there a way to improve access to quality information and what's the best way to get to that to people so that it's direct, accessible, available, and really, as they're making their decisions, they know where to go to find that information and how to use it and understand it as well?
[00:24:45] Gajendran: That's a very. Important aspect of disaster preparedness. So, let's talk about information in itself. So, there is an information deficit theory that says that most people make inaccurate decisions or inappropriate decisions because of the lack of information.
However, one of our PhD students did a study on that and found out. Even if people have good information it doesn't translate into good behaviours or actions that leads to better outcomes. In that research, we found that the community participation and there needs to be an intermediate step with the information for people to interact, to make decisions rather than only giving information.
So first of all, we need quality information. I think we have a lot of research and community consultations have given it, but do people have time to conceive because we are bombarded with a lot of information in a lot of areas economic information, weather information, holiday information, travel information. So sometimes we need to build it with the existing approaches or existing communication platforms for them to conceive that information and more.
So going back to your question yes. In for quality of information is absolutely important. How it's given is more important. It can't be just a pamphlet or a website or something like that. It has to be integrated into their day-to-day life and. Where do they get to soundboard get feedback that they are doing?
[00:26:17] Mark: Yeah, that's really interesting. I do notice in the way we're doing or presenting environmental assessments at the moment, we're moving obviously from hard copy to simply online, to interactive environmental assessments, where people can go into a electronic database or a community room. And can then click on the information that they want to find on.
That's relevant to them. That's relevant to their location. So, you're right. The way we're presenting information is more interactive. And I like the idea of the fact that people need to go and discuss their decisions with someone in order to really, just to fact check that their decision achieved their objectives, if it's safety or lifestyle and all those things that people are aiming to achieve.
The other thing I want to talk to you about was legacy planning decisions. We know that a lot of planning decisions over time have not necessarily considered natural hazards or at least the same level of priority in planning as maybe is currently being looked at.
One example of how to deal with legacy decisions was in Grantham in Queensland where the community was impacted by flooding. Uh, many houses were lost, and the decision was made with government support essentially to move that suburb to higher ground away from flooding people then had the option of doing a land swap essentially, and then paying to rebuild the house in those locations. Now there's a couple of perspectives around that in terms of being able to afford to do that.
However, we currently looking at places like Lismore, which are really trying to deal with that exact same issue. Do we move, do we change the uses that are permitted in those areas? Does the government and others help with support for buying back the land? This is some really tough decisions, and this really comes down a little bit to adaptability, but also climate change.
And as things that has information is happening at the time. Do you say that legacy planning decisions are going to become more of an issue over time? And do you think that the way we're dealing with those will change?
Do you think that relocation is a genuine possibility for some of the areas that we've built? It seems very expensive. You lose that social cohesion, but obviously the risk to human life is it should priority maybe discussion from you on those legacy decisions, planning decisions, and how you think they got to evolve in the future
[00:28:31] Gajendran: I'm not an expert in that area, but I could share some of the insights about relocation. So, there are a lot of informal settlements outside Australia in developing countries. And these informal settlements are relocating them from those places have been very difficult because where you find place for them, they are probably disfranchised a bit. And a lot of access to resources.
And then the decision, sometimes we made that to protect the richer suburbs you just channel the water through the informal settlements. You have to make sure the floods are being managed in a way. And it has to have a pathway to go. So, there are very complex, moral, and ethical issues in those decisions. So, do I think relocations are going to become common in the future. The situation to consider relocations will increase. Definitely. The reason is a lot of places could become uninhabitable because of increasing climate change impacts.
How do we respond to that? It's a difficult decision. Can you build things to withstand those floods or fires at that time? And then you move out of that place and then come back and live there. After a while everything is settled is one way people have looked at it.
If it's going to be every two years, this hazard is going to happen. It's going to disrupt the normal way of life. Then in a high possibility that they have to be relocated, how to resource it, how to support it. It is the most difficult decision that governments have to make, how much taxpayers' money or government funding has to help them, how much they had to be on their own.
There should be a very delicate balance and that it depends on the people, the ability to pay all these things will come in. So, it's going to be a very difficult space to watch. And support people who have gone through real trauma. So, this is a key part if anyone has to relocate, not only the natural hazard trauma they're have to deal with, but they have to deal with the trauma of losing their identity from the place.
[00:30:31] Mark: Yeah, I agree. Loss of community identity is really important. You talked about the insurance industry having involvement in disaster reduction and some of those decisions, which are completely agree, they're more actively involved. There's also the role of government role of community groups, non-government organizations. Really, in some of those decisions.
And maybe as a broad discussion, the question is who pays. I know it's a really difficult question, but maybe if we could explore that a little bit, understand, it depends on the situation, the country they're in the socioeconomic status, but really that discussion around if the decision needs to do any planning, relocation, rebuilding, different modifications, different infrastructure. At some point it costs time and money. Is there an optimum scenario you think the who pays can come to the best kind of balance?
[00:31:23] Gajendran: I don't think there is a clear-cut answer to that. But one thing we had to realize is that where we live and place that we live is not only about lifestyle, it is an financial asset. In many developed worlds. These houses and land are attached to wealth. This complicates the situation.
If it wasn't, people can live wherever with a piece of land, with a lifestyle they can connect. So, when they are wealth built on that and the wealth is challenged by the natural hazard, the decision becomes very complicated who pays for it because. When you buy a place to live and you don't attach a value to that in terms of financially it's different, but we never do that.
All of our decisions about where we live has a financial impost and our wealth decision too. So how do you in a liberal democracy where individuals hold wealth. And then suddenly when a disaster comes, then it becomes all social and you had to make a decision in that platform. It's really complex. I'm not an expert, as I said before, but I'd really love to hear from someone how this, dilemma, or conundrum of limit of democracy is based on individual wealth and built on individual assets.
And then when a disaster happens, then you have to make. General decision about resource allocation will be an interesting space.
[00:32:51] Mark: Very good answer to a very difficult question. The other thing that happens a lot, as we know, in many of these decisions is the role of government in land use planning. Decision-making one of the things you want to have talked about previously is the fact that there is no national planning policy in Australia.
Most planning decisions are made at the state or territory level. What can you discuss maybe some of the roles that you see in different countries, particularly in Australia at the moment, in terms of different levels of government in land use planning decisions? Where potential for improvement exists and what you think, I guess the future is in land use planning decisions, particularly around policies, government policies in relation to natural.
[00:33:32] Gajendran: Look Australia has a fairly interesting three level government, different levels of government are given different levels of authority or decision-making powers to deal with land and development. In terms of development the biggest issue, people worry about is increasing asset prices. Again, I went to that system of wealth and livability and demand and supply issues in housing. So, if there was a shortage of supply and there's a huge demand occurring governments have to find ways to solve it.
It is partly a market problem, but it's partly land supply problem. So, what happens when you make decisions to release land for deal with the demand pressures, sometimes, economic objectives and that supply objectives overtake. So, what it means is that we need to think about our living in a different density. Of housing system and some countries have gone towards that.
So, if Australian dream was to own a land and build and develop a community probably, over a period of time, because that is there isn't much land left that is less hazardous to build. So, there are infrastructure level intervention to reduce some of the hazards and then the lifestyle decisions and also density decisions to be made. So, what can the government do? They can educate people to change some of these.
Initial beliefs about where to live when what is sustainable? And government has to be more conscious about that information they use and the objectives they set for increasing supply. Again, there is no silver bullet answer. The key thing is constant conversations to keep people intact with the real-world scenarios about climate change adaptation and people themselves will change their behaviours and change their expectations, where to live and how to live when and that could help the situation.
But if you don't talk about. And if you don't give information, and if you move on with everything is going to be the same as in the fifties or sixties, or before that, then we are going to head into real trouble.
[00:35:48] Mark: And I really agree. I mean, people do rely on government policy. for certain things, but it comes back to that sharing information, having discussions like we're having today and sharing that knowledge as much as we can, and really helping people make the most informed decision as part of that, the role of communication before and during, particularly during disasters, I think is really important.
A lot of the communication networks we've seen, or ways of communicating from emergency services lately have been text messages to mobile phones. We know that there's apps for rural fire service, for instance, in different fire agencies and the state emergency service, all the different IMCs that have different ways of communicating.
Do you think it's effective at the moment? Is there ways we can improve that? Because that's obviously a really important component of decision-making we're talking about short term decision-makings during a disaster. Do people evacuate. Do they move to higher ground? If there could be one road in and one right out of many places, is it time to leave? Is it too late? Is there ways to improve that communication?
[00:36:49] Gajendran: I think communication in my work is about what is the message, how it should be couched and how people could conceive and how they process it. However, the technologies and the systems are used to disseminate over a period of time is increasing. There are many platforms, many approaches and technologies beyond, landlines to satellite-based technologies drone-based technology.
Everything is helping to improve that space of communication and evacuating people and helping people. However, the investment in those infrastructures, particularly in developing countries, even developed countries to maintain the census of natural hazards is very important. So, we might in an excited way, put all these technologies in the first year, uh, install something, monitor it first year, second year, then we will leave it out and they are not maintained.
Then they become very ineffective and then it's just useless in a way. It doesn't help people evacuate. So that's one aspect of it. Technology. However, there could be single point of failures in these technologies. That's a one I'm worried about. Probably don't know about. Okay. So, we have got all these technologies in terms of electricity, web based and is there a single point of failure that we rely on these technologies and then suddenly that particular failure.
None of these things working. Okay. So, is the space better for communication? Definitely. Over the last 10 years, the communication space has improved. Are they being effectively used? Probably that's something we need to do research and identify, but I would assume they're effectively in use in a way. Could there be a single point of failure that we don't know about? That something keeps me awake probably in the night.
[00:38:37] Mark: Yeah, that's a really good discussion. You're right. This is the point of failure is the point at which the until system can stop working. And it's very hard often to identify that point. Gajendran, I think we'll wrap it up there. Thanks so much for joining me today. It's been really interesting talking to you, and I really appreciate the time that you've put in today.
[00:38:52] Gajendran: Thank you, Mark. It was a great opportunity for me to reflect on a lot of things that I do. Thanks.
[00:38:57] Mark: Thank you, everyone for listening. If you're interested in the work we're doing, please get in touch. Links will be in the podcast show notes. Thank you.