Owning the future: risk ownership and strategic decision-making for natural hazards
This paper draws upon the outcomes of four workshops held in 2015 that investigated values, risk and consequences, actions and ownership for strategic risk management linked to prevention, preparedness and recovery. Making natural disasters everyone’s business is not a short-term proposition. How this understanding can be integrated into decision making requires extensive collaboration. The workshops aimed to create common understandings among communities and businesses, and collaboration between them and the public sectors. In many cases, risk ownership will be shared, which can make it a confusing and frustrating space for policy makers and practitioners alike.
The workshops produced a number of common themes relating to needs, barriers and opportunities. The most common themes raised concerns about limitations of current decision-making structures, approaches, systems and tools, in particular, the inability of these to meet the emerging needs of communities, government and non-government organisations trying to implement resilience and recovery. Exploring ownership in greater detail can help address these needs.
Key findings from the workshops include the following:
- Many gaps remain, and further work is needed to develop more robust institutional and organisational arrangements that support risk ownership and strategic planning of natural hazards;
- In determining risk ownership, it is important to understand who the owner is, what the allocation is for, how it is allocated, and whether the associated responsibilities can be fulfilled;
- Allocation needs to be supported by clear process structures, skilled facilitation and be given sufficient time for effective outcomes to be achieved. It also needs to take a systemic approach that assesses risks and values together;
- Patterns of ownership indicate imbalances within current public and private sector arrangements, especially between the owner of values at risk and ownership of the risks associated with these;
- Complex social values, such as community cohesiveness, are key in understanding risk ownership, especially when taking a multi-hazard approach;
- Skills and capacity in the area of strategic decision-making need further development.
- The transitional pathways and specific needs across the states were diverse indicating a need for flexible innovation-based practice and funding models to support future development; and
- Boundary organisations have a unique role in the emergency management process and should be considered as a stand-alone institution.
Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Volume 31 Issue 4, August 2016, pp. 16-23. This document is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.