Visions of Resilience

As long-term strategists (eg. Herman Khan, 1967) encountered in the mid 1900’s, expert or probability-based approaches to strategy development can prove counter-productive when institutions face a risk-landscape of very high uncertainty and complexity. Because climate change will affect so many natural and human systems and in so many ways, it is ushering in a ‘new’ and highly uncertain risk environment. The way organisations understand this new environment and the methods they use in response will play a key part in the success (or failure) of societal adaptation.

Traditionally, organisations have approached disaster risk management with a heavy reliance on ‘probability’ or ‘expert’ assessments of the likely type, extent and frequency of negative events. This approach has developed over a period, and within institutions, where preservation of a status-quo (ie. in organisational structures and functions) has been prioritised. The statistical methods used to define risk estimates have been built around historical records of disaster events and assumptions about the frequency of natural disaster events having a ‘normal distribution’. This has allowed planners and decision-makers to identify and focus on risks deemed ‘most likely’ (in the middle of the frequency distribution bell-curve) and hence, develop a sense that risks can generally be known, quantified and therefore predictable. Unfortunately, this approach ensures that those decision-makers, and the community generally, remain under-prepared for ‘surprise’ events that do not conform to statistical predictions and often cause catastrophic impacts. It appears that the emerging field of climate change adaptation has adopted many of the same methods and approaches that are .

This project seeks to demonstrate and refine an approach to adaptation planning and decision-making that is aligned with future-oriented ‘scenario-based’ approaches used by organisations exposed to highly disruptive technical, social and geopolitical ‘shifts’. The project involves an iterative design-charette process used by VEIL to explore future scenarios and adaptation responses. The charrette process involves workshops with local community stakeholders, decision-makers, climate change scientists and designers. Together, these people work to creatively envisage a common desired ‘climate-proof’ future for two pilot areas. Importantly, each future is explicitly ‘built’ in response to a set of plausible (but deliberately extreme) context-specific weather conditions set in 2037. The envisaged futures act as a framework or ‘testing-ground’ against which the adaptive capacity of relevant institutions is assessed and potential transformations are proposed.

What does the project involve?

Structured as a design-led action research project, we are interested in the methodology being applied as much as the outcomes produced. The essential steps involve:

1. Identifying two case study communities that are at risk from multiple climate hazards – Anglesea and Creswick were chosen.
2. Developing context specific scenarios set in 2037 that translate climate projections into fictional narratives about everyday conditions and challenges for both towns.
3. Conducting two-day design workshops in Anglesea and Creswick with community members to produce a series of ideas designed to maintain and build resilience of each community.
4. Developing community ideas into a set of coherent strategies and visions of resilience for Anglesea and Creswick (with an opportunity for feedback from the community).
5. Conducting half-day workshops with key organisations relevant to each town to explore pathways for enabling community strategies and identify barriers.
6. Drawing from workshop outputs, a literature review and interviews to identify mechanisms for change at Local, State and Federal Government level.