Making Sense of Natural Disasters: The Learning Vacuum of Bushfire Public Inquiries

Dwyer, Graham

ISBN 10: 3030947777 / ISBN 13: 9783030947774

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2022

About this Item

2022. 1st ed. 2022. hardcover. . . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9783030947774

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Making Sense of Natural Disasters: The Learning Vacuum of Bushfire Public Inquiries
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3030947777
• ISBN 13: 9783030947774
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This book examines the ways in which emergency management organizations make sense and learn from natural disasters. Examining recent bushfires in Australia, it demonstrates that whilst public inquiries that follow such disasters can be important for learning and change, they have ultimately created a learning vacuum insofar as their recommendations repeat themselves. This has kept governments and society focused on learning lessons about the past, rather than for the future. Accordingly, this book recommends a new approach to sensemaking and learning focused on prospective planning rather than retrospective recommendations, and where planning for the future is seen as the shared responsibility of the government, society, and the emergency management community in Australia and beyond.

About the Author

Graham Dwyer is Course Director at the Centre for Social Impact at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. His research has been published in leading journals such as Organization Studies, Human Relations, Management Learning, and the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.