MUDRI / EMV Compendium of Case studies:

Victorian Community-led Resilience Initiatives

Guidelines

Background

Emergency Management Victoria (EMV) and the Monash University Disaster Resilience Initiative (MUDRI) share a strong interest in helping communities develop their resilience, particularly in the setting of disasters / emergencies. Many communities have developed programs that create or reinforce their resilience. Others have yet to begin that process. EMV and MUDRI have already committed resources to support capacity building for Community-led Planning. This Compendium aims to support community-led resilience initiatives.

The Need

Some communities, in looking to embark on such a project, have difficulty in finding out what resources are available, what has been done that can help them in their efforts, and, what they could be doing.

Both the International Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and EMV have recently embraced community-led resilience as key objectives in their respective Strategic Action Plans.

Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015 - 2030 (1)

‘It is urgent and critical to anticipate, plan for and reduce disaster risk in order to moreeffectively protect persons, communities and countries, their livelihoods, health, culturalheritage, socioeconomic assets and ecosystems, and thus strengthen their resilience.’ (Para 5)

‘There has to be a broader and a more people-centred preventive approach to disasterrisk. While recognizing their leading, regulatory and coordination role, Governments should engage with relevant stakeholders, including women, children and youth, persons with disabilities, poor people, migrants, indigenous peoples, volunteers, the community of practitioners and older persons in the design and implementation of policies, plans and standards. There is a need for the public and private sectors and civil society organizations, as well as academia and scientific and research institutions, to work more closely together and to create opportunities for collaboration, and for businesses to integrate disaster risk into their management practices.’ (Para 8)

‘While the enabling, guiding and coordinating role of national and federal State Governments remain essential, it is necessary to empower local authorities and local communities to reduce disaster risk, including through resources, incentives and decision-making responsibilities, as appropriate.’ (Para 20 f);

Victorian Emergency Management Strategic Action Plan, 2015 - 2018 (2)

The EMV Priority for Community and Business is to ‘Build and empower community leadership and develop awareness, shared responsibility and self-reliance to ultimately strengthen resilience.’ This EMV priority embraces the International imperative outlined in the Sendai Framework.

The EMV Strategic Action Plan lists the objective of this priority as ‘increased capacity of local communities to be ready to withstand, and recover from an emergency, using business, social and community networks to raise awareness, share responsibility and build self-reliance to strengthen resilience.’

The EMV Strategic Action Plan lists actions to realise this objective:

  1. Develop or link into existing initiatives that highlight the critical, hands-on role community members and local business can play in keeping themselves and their communities’ safe in an emergency.
  2. Develop a resilience framework incorporating guiding principles for shared responsibility and self-reliance in prevention, planning, response, relief and recovery activities, communications and publications. Embed these principles in all tiers of emergency management plans.
  3. Develop or link into existing initiatives to build the next generation of community and business leaders in emergency management. Encourage participation that reflects local community demographics including gender, ethnicity, religion, disability and socio-economic status. Increase opportunities for community leaders to be involved in decision making forums, such as Community Emergency Management Planning process.
  4. Use community profiling to strengthen understanding of local community diversity, values and needs. This informs the sector on optimum service and engagement models and wider opportunities with respective communities.

‘The outcome will be community members who are empowered and skilled to take on leadership roles before, during and after an emergency’. (2) The EMV Strategic Action Plan will form the framework for a suite of specific plans to operationalise each of the actions listed. This compendium is complementary to these plans.

Objective

The aim of the MUDRI / EMV Compendium of Case studies of Victorian Community-led Resilience Initiatives is to create a Compendium which will:

  • Describe Victorian-based community-led resilience programs, their scope, range, and specific activities;
  • Help identify and showcase best practice & lessons learnt;
  • Help build collaboration and networks to share and distribute community-led resilience ideas and successes to other communities;
  • Help build the evidence-base for a more resilient and safer community;
  • Reduce unnecessary replication;
  • Encourage consistency while supporting diversity; and
  • Provide access to university support where it will be of benefit and in response to local identified needs, e.g. literature reviews, forums, evaluations etc.

Exemplars

One exemplar of a Compendium similar to our intentions is the ‘Compendium of Case Studies on Climate and Disaster Resilient Development in the Pacific 2015.’(3)

Overview: ‘The Compendium of Case Studies on Climate and Disaster Resilient Development in the Pacific showcases programmes and projects that address climate and disaster risks, through climate change adaptation, disaster risk management and/or greenhouse gas emissions reduction. The compendium highlights lessons learnt at the programme and project level and may be used as a resource for future initiatives moving forward under the SRDP’.

A second exemplar, which has also informed the development of the Victorian Compendium, is that of the UK Resilience ‘Civil Protection and Resilience Case Studies which features an on-line, publically available compendium of cases studies.(4) The Guidelines and headings used in their Template for submitting Cases Studies.(5)

Scope

Initially, at least, the MUDRI /EMV Compendium will be Victorian-centric. Case studies will be drawn predominantly from across Victoria. Examples from other states or international, may be sought/included later, if deemed appropriate by the Reference/Steering Group.

The Compendium

The Compendium will:

  • be a collection of Community-led Resilience case studies in the setting of disasters/emergencies, definedas those that are led by community groups, including those which are hosted/supported/co-designed with Local Government Authorities or Emergency Service Organisations;
  • include case studies that are either ‘completed’ or ‘in-progress’ activities;
  • be produced in a standard, consistent format using a standard template;
  • be on-line, free, publicly accessible, co-hosted by EMV and MUDRI;
  • enable interested parties to distil learnings from a broad range of resilience initiatives from different communities across Victoria.

Audience

It is envisaged that the Compendium will be used by anyone interested in community resilience, particularly communities looking to start their own community-led projects/initiatives.

The audience will also include EMVs community-led planning networks, MUDRI students, researchers, and the broader resilience community.

Sourcing

Relevant case studies will be sourced initially from the presenters at MUDRI Forums of the last three years, together with community groups involved with EMV’s community resilience programs. (Total estimated at more than 70 initially). A desktop environmental scan of community-led resilience projects will be conducted across key groups (e.g. SES, MFB, CFA, AV, MAV, Red Cross, LGAs, others) to identify further initiatives and inform this element of the scoping activity being undertaken by MUDRI on behalf of the Steering group. These additional initiatives will also be invited to contribute to the Compendium of case studies.

Governance

The Compendium project will be led by a Steering Group with representatives from both EMV and MUDRI. The Steering Group will be supported by a Community-based Reference Group.

Timeframes

ACTIVITY / DATE
MUDRI/EMV agreement / 30 June, 2015
Announce at MUDRI Forum / 30 July, 2015
Preliminary desktop environmental scan to identify relevant groups and invite submissions / 30th September, 2015
CLOSING DATE for submission of completed templates (support and editing will be available on request) / 7 November 2015
Formal Launch of initial Compendium at MUDRI Forum in November 2015 / 26 November 2015
Add and modify as new groups/projects emerge (dynamic maintenance) / Ongoing

Benefits

  • A demonstrable output from both EMV and MUDRI’s perspectives, by November 2015
  • Tangible support to community groups developing resilience programs and activities
  • Empowerment of communities
  • A baseline from which we can all grow
  • Effective community-led resilience programs
  • Efficiencies from networking
  • Efficiencies from reducing replication
  • A leadership profile for Victoria (this is a unique proposal)

Publications

The Compendium will be web-based. No hard copy ‘glossy’ publication of the Compendium will be available through EMV or MUDRI, although specific case studies could be downloaded by individuals. MUDRI will synthesise a summary report for EMV and for publication in an appropriate journal, e.g. the Australian Journal of Emergency Management.

Future options

After the Compendium is established, future actions may include other useful resources for community resilience practitioners (e.g. other suggested readings, resources, tools, templates, models). Further, analysis and summation of common trends and of lessons learned may be carried out. While retaining the updated compendium, this initial innovation could expand into a dynamic ‘Support Network’ for the Victorian Resilience Community – ‘The Victorian Community Resilience Network’.

Funding

The Compendium is initially funded by MUDRI with seed funding provided by EMV.

Guidelines

  • Who can submit? Leaders of community-led resilience initiatives in the disaster/emergency setting, defined as those that are led by community groups, including those which are hosted/supported/co-designed with Local Government Authorities or Emergency Service Organisations.
  • How? Submission will be via an on-line facility available at:
  • When? The on-line facility is available from Monday 3rd August, 2015. Closing date for this first round will be 7th November, 2015. Submissions received after this date will be considered, but will not be released with the launch of the Compendium on 26th November. 2015.
  • Process?
  • Please register your intention to prepare a submission by emailing Dr Caroline Spencer at
  • Help? Assistance and guidance is available from the MUDRI team. If you would like to discuss the preparation of your submission, including guidance on the electronic submission facility, please contact Dr Caroline Spencer at in the first instance. Caroline’s appointment at Monash is part-time and thus we request that your first contact is by email.
  • When your submission has been entered through the on-line facility, it will be reviewed for compliance with the guidelines and for completion. There may be some feedback to the authors for their consideration. Amendments may be requested and the submission re-submitted. The MUDRI team will review the submissions from an editorial perspective before acceptance of your submission for entry into the Compendium.
  • Once your submission has been accepted for inclusion in the Compendium, you will be asked to give your permission for the case study to be included in the Compendium, that you agree to allow interested persons to contact the persons listed in your case study through the contact details entered and that you recognise that the case study is now in the public domain and that the MUDRI / EMV group may use the case study in subsequent research and/or publish a paper(s) in a relevant journal(s) based on a summary and analysis of the range of case studies. The intellectual property for each case study remains with the case study authors.
  • Template – the standardised template for submissions is on the following page. We ask you to keep to the word limits as shown. Please be precise and freely use dot points to ‘tell your story’, and we’d love one photo in high quality resolution which may characterise or illuminate your project. Each element (box) in the Template includes key statements/questions to act as cues for you to structure your experiences.
  • The Title and Summary have tight, but adequate, word limits;
  • The Background and Situation Context should be completed in sufficient detail to enable the reader to understand the background to your initiative and form a judgement if your experiences may be applicable to the reader’s context;
  • The Activities should be completed in sufficient detail to enable the reader to replicate key elements in their own context;
  • The Results should be completed in sufficient detail for you to list the evidence you have obtained of the impacts of your project;
  • The Reflections should also be evidence-informed;
  • The Summary Box should be specific lists of the information requested;
  • The Knowledge Products should be a list of outputs from your project in the public domain that you would be willing to share with other communities. You are specifically encouraged to include web-based URL’s of your project process and outcomes. Please add any Awards that your project has received.
  • Finally, please add one or more names and contact details from whom readers can seek further information.

References

  1. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015 – 2030
  1. Victorian Emergency Management Strategic Action Plan, 2015 – 2018
  1. ‘Compendium of Case Studies on Climate and Disaster Resilient Development in the Pacific 2015.’
  1. ‘Civil Protection and Resilience Case Studies which features an on-line, publically available compendium of cases studies available at
  1. The Guidelines and headings used in their Template for submitting Cases Studies are available at

Compendium Steering Group

3rd August, 2015

The Template – Guide to completion:

MUDRI/EMV Compendium of Community-led Resilience Case Studies
Title: What is the title of your project (20 words maximum)
Summary: What was the initiative and what impact did it achieve? (50 words max)
Background & situation context (200 words maximum)
-Setting – where is the project being conducted?
-Initiating factor(s) / needs – what observations inspired the project to start?
-Objectives – what is the desired vision? What did you want to achieve?
-Target beneficiaries – who will benefit from this project?
Activities (200 words maximum)
-Inputs/Implementation - what did you do and how did you go about it? What resources did you have access to?
-Progress / Status – what achievements have you made towards objectives? Is the project completed or in-progress?
Results (300 words maximum)
-Outputs – what was produced as a result of this project?
-Impact/Change/Benefits – what were the Impacts/changes/benefits for the target beneficiaries? Include both positive and negative results, and any evidence of impact?
-What are the next steps? - are any follow-on initiatives planned?
Reflection (300 words maximum)
-What may have been unique about your project / Good practice?
-Critical Factors for Success - what were the critical factors which led to the success of your project?
-Challenges faced and solutions - how did you solve the challenges?
-What could have been done better? – based on any evaluation studies;
-Sustainability and potential for replication in other settings
BOX:
-Program title
-Location
-Lead organisation(s)
-Partners
-Funding: source & amount
Knowledge Products from the Project, Awards and Further Information
-URL
-Contact (Name Email)
1,000 words maximum
1 photo (preferred)