A new facility at Griffith University’s Nathan Campus (Brisbane) is providing government, industry and not for profit organisations with training, planning and preparation space for disaster management.
The Disaster Resilience Management Facility (DRMF) offers dedicated, purpose-designed spaces modelled on an operational disaster management centre.
DRMF Director Professor Cheryl Desha says the facility provides disaster management organisations with a place and space to think away from their usual workplaces while enabling strategic resilience planning.
“Colleagues can get away from the demands of their usual day to day work and spend some time in a state of the art facility in the forest with some good, fresh air, without having to go travel too far from the city,” she says.
The DRMF is also located close to academics who work on disaster management and response research, making it easy to connect with those researchers.
The facility has hosted retreats, planning, and training sessions for many organisations including the Red Cross, the federal government, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. and Redland City Council.
Prof Desha says meaningful engagements with local communities and the wider public are important for Griffith in affirming its place as a civic university driven by values (you can read more about this in the university’s strategic plan https://www.griffith.edu.au/office-vice-chancellor/strategic-plan).
The space is available for use by the public and private sector, with Griffith University actioning its commitment to being a ‘civic university’ (https://www.griffith.edu.au/office-vice-chancellor/strategic-plan), and to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/1474287/SDG-Impact-Report-2021.pdf ) which includes Goal 11 “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.
Prof Desha says that Griffith University is committed to contributing to the community, and the DRMF for disaster management is a natural fit with this commitment.
“With multiple events happening on any given day, there are many benefits to industry and academic colleagues working alongside, with the incidental conversations meetups in a state-of the art facility such as the one we have here,” she says,
Prof Desha says the facility has several features that enable remote, immersive collaboration, which means people can dial in and feel like they are really in the space.
“Virtual online platforms can accidentally lower the trust environment, so we go back to pattern recognition because we don’t trust the space,” she explains.
“This facility encourages us to be present and aware in our online and in-person interactions, taking in the data in front of us, rather than relying on ‘what we did last time’ and following patterns that we are used to. With so much change in climate and weather, we have to act on what is happening now, rather than copying from the past.
“Daniel Kahneman is the world’s first non-economist to win the Nobel Peace Prize for economics. He is a psychologist who wrote a book called Thinking, Fast and Slow. That book inspired this facility in addition to what we are able to emulate from Queensland’s State Disaster Coordination Centre.”
Prof Desha says that disaster management is about making evidence-based decisions and the DRMF is set up to facilitate that.
“The spaces really enable thinking well and we have ensured that flows into the virtual environment, incorporating strategically placed screens, furniture, lighting and acoustics,” she says.
“The layout of the facility is intended to reinstate, return, or improve the trust environment in a remote dial in situation so that the decision makers in this space, whether they’re relating to someone next to them in real time, or virtually next to them, has a similar high trust experience that relaxes the brain and the allows them to be present to the current situation.
“The ambient appreciation of environment that is telling you what time of day it is and what the weather is doing because all of those things we know relax us into being able to accommodate ‘system two thinking’.”
The DRMF facility has several spaces that can be used in conjunction with each other or separately. There is a meeting space, a kitchen and a media room which enables news media vans to park outside the building and transmit from inside the facility. This provides opportunities for organisations for engagement with news media during training and planning activities.
The building that houses the DRMF is a great example of how a building can enabling teaching and learning spaces, while also being used for community engagement, professional and civic community events.
You can read more about the building in which the Disaster Resilience Management Facility is located and watch Prof Desha’s video about it at the link below:
https://www.griffith.edu.au/campus-development/new-academic-building-n79
