Evaluating resilience in two remote indigenous Australian communities

This paper quantitatively assesses the status of community resilience in two remote indigenous communities, Ngukurr and Gunbalanya in the Northern Territory, Australia. A quantitative assessment is used to explore community perceptions of disaster resilience within the study areas as well as the methods of assessment and appropriateness of the assessment methodology. The objective of this study was to assess the state of resilience in two small remote predominantly indigenous communities in northern Australia, as well as to determine the applicability of the Torrens Scorecard approach for these communities.

Overall, the findings show that both communities were within the scorecard’s ‘caution’ zone meaning that considerable work is warranted to identify strategies and build disaster resilience. The scoring of self-assessment questions throughout the process was generally the same for both communities. While the occurrence of extreme events generally cannot be prevented, their negative effects can be lessened by reducing risks and improving the capacity of people and communities to deal with them. To meaningfully determine, coordinate, plan and prioritise the most effective measures to improve resilience, a baseline assessment of a community's strengths and weaknesses is required. 

Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Volume 31, Issue 4, October 2016, Pages 44-50. This document is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.