Valerie Ingham

Charles Sturt University · Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security

This chapter defines and raises awareness of disaster fatigue at the community level within the context of complex disasters. When enduring a series of disastrous events, a community must grapple with preparing for the next disaster before sufficiently recovering from the previous. In addition, a series of disaster events may vary significantly in...

Objective In the aftermath of fires which swept through a regional community in 2013, community leaders were thrust, unprepared, into the disaster recovery arena. The objective of this research was to investigate the subsequent lived experience of these community leaders and, based on this information, develop a guide to meet the challenges for the...

In Australia, community organisations are pivotal to building the resilience of local vulnerable populations. Following a disaster event, community leaders have high levels of expectation placed on them. Despite this expectation, their organisations remain underfunded, there is scant acknowledgement of the actual and potential contribution that the...

Global climate change has altered the efficacy of traditional responses to flooding in Bangladesh and has necessitated the adoption of new actions, social networks and mobilities to strengthen the ongoing viability of the community. These changes need to be accompanied by appropriate government responses. We examined these changing mobilities in Ba...

Bangladesh is prone to repeated flooding events. The evidence indicates that these events are on the rise and increasing in severity. Our research, conducted by field trips to Bangladesh in 2010 and 2015, utilised in-depth interviews with participants from regularly flooded villages. Key findings indicate that it is useful to consider strategies to...

An investigation of household preparedness and community connections was undertaken in the NSW Blue Mountains. The research employed a qualitative approach. Upon receiving ethical approval, interviews and focus groups with a total of 31 vulnerable residents were recorded and transcribed. Data analysis included the manual coding of individual transc...

Objective: To assess the impact of network communications, community participation and elements of vulnerability on the perception of social cohesiveness in the Blue Mountains local government area (Blue Mountains LGA). Design: A questionnaire was administered to residents of the Blue Mountains LGA. Econometric analysis of the resulting data was...

Neighbourly relations have been theorised as ‘friendly distance’ in contrast to connections which are theorised as strong or intensive ties. The article explores the neighbourly relationships between residents of a peri-urban regional area outside Sydney in Australia. Strong interview themes emerged regarding the ways in which residents who were we...

The need for emergency and disaster professionals with multidisciplinary knowledge and holistic understanding is widely recognised. Despite this, there is currently no international nor an Australian consensus on a set of common standards for higher education that could ensure graduates possess knowledge and skills with sufficient commonality to fa...

After fires swept through the lower Blue Mountains of NSW in October 2013 and destroyed over 200 homes, a research project was initiated and titled ‘Community Connections: Vulnerability and Resil- ience within the Blue Mountains’. Reported in this article are the results of eight in-depth interviews conducted with local community leaders. They were...

In a novel approach, this paper adapts the economic model of production and applies it to the production of community disaster resilience and psychosocial recovery. Utilising field data collected through in-depth interviews within three regions of Bangladesh, namely Sirajganj, Sunamganj, and Satkhira districts, we apply the “Production Model” to co...

Preparedness programs evaluated under the BSAFE project have directly reached almost 700 households within the Blue Mountains, NSW. Although there were three different programs, all were aimed at enabling people to think about and commit to household preparedness measures. The three programs were: Meet Your Street, More Than a Fire Plan and Heads U...

This paper reports and analyses the research into community approaches to flooding in twelve communities in three regions in Bangladesh during 2010. The study adopted a framework utilising approaches in disaster management literature, particularly the phases of preparation, response and recovery, and relevant multidisciplinary theoretical approache...

The Community Connections research sought to identify the needs of vulnerable community members and inform strategies to address their social inclusion and safety necessities. In emergency situations most people are assisted by family, neighbours and friends. For others assistance may be much harder to find. Within the NSW Blue Mountains, the Octob...

Two million people were affected in the floodplains and low-lying areas in Sirajgang in 2012. Seven hundred and fifty families were made homeless and forced to live in small temporary huts on the river protection embankments. Unemployment rose alarmingly and the jobless left their villages to find work in larger cities, leaving behind their vulnera...

This study of a small rural flood-prone Australian community, explores the perceptions of established approaches to emergency management by the community, particularly the roles ascribed to institutions and social capital. The tentative findings and interpretation suggest a combination of institutional and social capital factors at work through the...

Following the development of general interdisciplinary approaches to identified phenomena in a range of areas, this paper contributes to the debate over the means of generating knowledge in relation to disaster management. At the core of the disaster management literature is an advocacy for policy and practice which has been grounded in technologic...

It is clear that natural disasters, particularly floods, fires, storms and earthquakes, reveal a range of inequities, human suffering and economic and political costs, some of which are persistent across generations. The interdisciplinary research introduced in this paper explores some of these aspects in relation to flooding within two vastly diff...

A model is presented for the effective training of Mine Rescue personnel. Organising effective training sessions for a Mine Rescue team presents unique problems generated by fly in/ fly out rosters and the transitory nature of personnel on a mine site. The selection strategies and criteria for Mine Rescue team members, the structure of training ses...

Flexible learning has long been associated with distance learning. It is also becoming increasingly associated with on-campus learning (Palaskas & Muldoon, 2003). This paper explores the practical implications of flexible learning and examines the appropriateness of a blended approach to learning and teaching. The context of this study was Charles...