Associate Professor Kim Maund

Land use planning (LUP) provides a mechanism to reduce risk and increase resilience to natural hazards. We sought to understand the extent that key stakeholders in LUP consider natural hazard risk in determination of rezoning applications. The aim was to identify why land uses are permitted within areas exposed to risk of natural hazards like bushfires. Presenting the case of New South Wales, a state ravaged by devastating bushfires, we explore decision-making practices within the regulatory planning environment. We utilised a qualitative exploratory research design involving a multi-criteria decision-making framework as a lens to explore how key stakeholders make decisions to consider bushfire risk within the policy environment. Our findings identify the lack of a consistent process employed in LUP decision-making and priority given to decision-making criteria that emphasises achieving targets for employment and housing and results in low priority given to bushfire risk. We suggest that placing higher priority on bushfire risk in decision-making, within and between organisations, is necessary to consider bushfire risk within regulatory LUP activities to support disaster risk reduction and create resilient communities.

Purpose: This study aims to address the research gap about value in the holistic discourse of creative placemaking. It identifies and synthesises the often discounted social and environmental values of creative placemaking along with typically emphasised economic values. Design/methodology/approach: This paper builds upon two research phases; first, a review and extraction of creative placemaking value indicators from relevant current urban, cultural and planning literature; and second, the identification of relevant, practice-based, value indicators through interviews with 23 placemaking experts including practitioners, urban planners, developers and place managers from the two largest cities of NSW, Australia; Sydney and Newcastle. Findings: This study identifies three broad thematics for valuing creative placemaking along with several sub-categories of qualitative and quantitative indicators. These indicators reveal the holistic value of creative placemaking for its key stakeholders, including expert placemakers, designers, building developers, government and community groups. A key conclusion of the research is the need for tools that grasp the interconnected, and at times conflicting, nature of placemaking¿s social, economic and environmental outcomes. Originality/value: While a variety of value indicators exist to understand the need for ongoing resourcing of creative placemaking, stakeholders identified the limitations of current approaches to determine, represent and appraise the value of creative placemaking. The indicators of value proposed in this research consolidate and extend current discourse about the value of creative placemaking specifically. The indicators themselves have profound practical implications for how creative placemaking is conceived, executed and evaluated. Theoretically, the study builds on the deep relationships between values and practice in creative placemaking, as well as critiquing narrow forms of evaluation that entrench economic benefits over other outcomes.

Informal settlements, where mostly the urban poor reside, tend to be located in hotspots of natural hazards such as floods, fire, earthquakes and tsunamis. The devastating impacts of these natural hazards on such settlements can be attributed to the higher levels of physical, economic, social and environmental vulnerability in conjunction with inadequate and poor level of disaster preparedness. Conceptualizing a detailed risk profile, in the context of informal settlement characteristics presents a starting point to which the impacts posed by environmental hazards can be addressed effectively. This paper develops a theoretical framework through literature review coupling the concepts of "disaster hazards", "vulnerability" and "informal settlements". The findings suggest that the policy environment (environmental/land use planning and communication) impacting the informal settlement characteristics (demographic, financial, social/poetical and locational/environmental) is key to managing disaster risk profile in informal settlements. The paper concludes by identifying five theoretical propositions that can assist in disaster preparedness.

The potential of risk communication as tool for reducing the devastating impacts posited by disaster hazards on human lives and property has been discussed extensively in literature. Most risk communication studies and strategies focus on awareness creation and education on disaster hazards. However, awareness creation and education on disaster hazards do not necessary translate into preparatory attitude and behaviour towards disaster hazards. Frantic efforts are required to persuade and motivate people at risk to convert hazard awareness and education into preparation towards disaster hazards. Against this backdrop, this paper develops a conceptual model through literature review to facilitate and enhance disaster preparedness through risk communication.

This paper reports on a project that explores the opportunities and challenges for compliance with safe building codes for disaster resilience, focusing on two countries-Bangladesh and Nepal. Recent disasters in both countries highlight a significant problem of non-compliance with building codes. However, these disasters have brought institutional and community awareness of the importance of safe building codes, presenting a germane opportunity to explore the issues associated with compliance. Building codes do exist in the two countries, but due to socio-economic, political and cultural conditions compliance is generally lacking or limited, particularly in the large informal building sector. There is thus a need for understanding how these codes might be more widely adopted to enable disaster resilience. Collaboration between partner universities in these countries with experience in this field address: sharing the understanding that evidence-based knowledge is a critical component in the commitment to local action; improving institutional and community awareness of the importance of compliance with/barriers to enforcement of codes; fostering communities of collaborative practice; and developing local and international dissemination networks. A log-frame approach indicates the rationale, assumptions and expected outcomes of the project. The project is at a preliminary stage and this paper discusses the framework associated with the exploration of barriers and enablers to building codes compliance.

With the introduction of ecologically sustainable development (ESD) and subsequent legislative regulations throughout Australia, effective environmental management across the construction sector should occur. In reality, construction operations continue to have detrimental environmental impacts. Within New South Wales the primary legislation governing development control, for the purpose of ESD, has produced a complex legislative system that its ability to achieve the objectives of environmental protection remains questionable. Large scale development projects may evoke need for associated environmental regulatory controls; however, such rules are generally not applicable to small and medium scale developments. Yet, these types of projects make up a significant amount of the development market and collectively a major contribution to detrimental environmental impacts. Given each construction project is unique, the application of complex regulatory controls may result in notably different levels of environmental protection between developments. Inconsistency may be seen with regulatory interpretation, implementation, monitoring and associated processes of enforcement. Using a systemic lens this research linked the efficacy of regulation, monitoring, and information flow to explain variability in the outcomes of onsite environmental management operations. The paper reports preliminary findings of a two stage qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with key project stakeholders (e.g. government regulatory officers, construction managers) and case study examination of four medium scale development projects. Using a phenomenological coding approach, preliminary analysis identified a number of themes that impact effective onsite environmental management including: environmental interpretation and assessment, compliance and enforcement, external influences, collaboration and engagement.