Anthony Kiem  0:03  
So my focus is mostly on determining how the risks associated with extreme events like droughts and floods and fires have varied in the past and could change in the future. But then also we spend a lot of time working out how we can use those insights to develop adaptation strategies that improve resilience to changing climate conditions. So for this HEAL Network, I'm contributing to the bushfire theme and also the water security theme. But in terms of, I've been asked to state some what I think the research priorities in my area of interest are. So I think we already know a bit about how current variability and change alters the frequency and the severity of, an intensity of extreme events. But there's still a lot that we don't know. And especially at the location, or the sector, or the community specific level, there's lots of gaps around the impacts of human, of those extreme events on human health. So there's a need to get a lot more evidence, if we are to achieve the HEAL network goals around protecting and improving community health and improving health system resilience, and so on. So I think the first priority for me would be to better understand the current and the future impacts of the extreme events on human health. And we especially need to know more about some of this recent science that's showing that climate change is going to increase the likelihood of multiple extreme events happening at a similar time or even at the same time. And some of the challenges that rises for emergency responses and health systems that have limited capacity, and if you've got really serious extreme events happening and close together, or even at the same time, it's a problem. So we need to know something about that. The second priority is, okay, it's one thing to understand what the impacts are going to be, but what are you going to do about it? So developing and implementing adaptation strategies that are robust and resilient. That's, that's, that's the second priority. And then for the theme overall. I think, like I said, we know a fair bit, we know a little bit about this extreme events in the impacts on health. But there's still a lot we don't know. And there's always going to be a lot of uncertainty, because there's multiple plausible futures. And so when we're developing strategies, to increase resilience, we need to make sure these take into account decision making under uncertainty approaches. And that the, whatever adaptation strategies we go with are holistic, and robust so that they can cope with a range of plausible futures. So this is, I think this is across the whole theme. You know, we do a bit of work in the Pacific Islands, and we see things where the adaptation strategy to protect against sea level rise, for example, you know, build a levee bank actually increases the flood risk when they have a heavy rainfall event. So we've got to be careful that an adaptation strategy to increase the resilience of one thing doesn't actually increase the vulnerability for another section of the community or something like that. So that's my summary.

Fay Johnston  3:24  
Fantastic. Thanks very much, Anthony. And we'll move straight on to hear from Dr Alana Hansen from the University of Adelaide.

Alana Hansen  3:31  
Can you see me? (Yep). Good. Okay. Um, yes, so I'm from the University of Adelaide, and from the School of Public Health. And under the leadership of Professor Peng Bi, we've been looking at the health effects of heat waves for quite a few years. And we all know that heat waves are a very serious natural hazard, causing mortality. And so we, our focus has looked at looking at the type of morbidity and mortality that occurs with heat waves. And also who heat waves affect. Who are the vulnerable populations, or the priority populations. And in terms of defining our research priorities, I think we need to do more about adaptation, and particular precision adaptation. And as has been previously mentioned, what works for one group of people may not work for another group of people. So I think we really have to look at targeted adaptation. And what we found in our research is that is very useful, in terms of translating our research into policy and practice, is that we really have to engage with the stakeholders. And we are researchers not only being quantitative but qualitative as well. I think it's very important to talk to people, to get their ideas, to get their opinions and to find out what works for them. And in terms of translating it into practice, we really have to engage with those stakeholders, as well. And we've got a couple of examples. Our researchers helped to inform the South Australian heat warning system. And also we've done some research on threshold temperatures in regional Australia and I think that's informed the Australian and New Zealand Emergency Management Committee. We've done quite a bit of work on occupational health and safety. And our workers informed some recommendations for Safe Work Australia. I think risk communication is also very important. And we found that a lot of the risk messages to get out in terms of heat waves go out in English, and English isn't everybody's language. So I think risk communication in languages other than English is very important. And also for older people, of course, they're quite at risk during heat waves and in South Australia, we have the Red Cross who operate tele cross ready. And we've also done some work with architects to look at housing improvements for older people because when the weather becomes extreme older the people are at risk, but they're often indoors. So why are they at risk? Let's look at their housing. So there are a couple of the things that we've been working on and our research priorities.

Fay Johnston  6:36  
Thanks very much, Alana. Great, great points. And there's also a lot of fantastic comments in the chat, which we will capture, even if we don't get to actually discuss it amongst yourselves right now. So we'll move straight along to Professor Ian Walker from ANU. Thanks.

Ian Walker  6:56  
Thanks, Fay. Hello, everyone. So I'll follow the same script Anthony and Alana followed. Brief going over from Geoff was talking about researchers relevant to this theme, and what are, what we think our research priorities ought to be. So the first point is I have two roles here. One is, the first is that I'm one of the CIs on one of the cross-cutting themes on science communication in the network and that, despite its name, limited science communication, I think. It's good to have a very broad remit that include science, communications, perception, and attitudinal and behavioural change. The second point of connection is that I'm also a lead CI on an MRFF funded project examining some of the psychological consequences of the black summer bushfires, and how to build community cohesion and resilience to better ensure preparedness and resilience. That project involves many people from many different academic disciplines, not quite on the industrial scale of the the number of CIs involved in the HEAL network, but there's still quite a few. In the project, so far, we've completed a major national survey. We've got more than 3000 respondents. Preliminary analyses show so far that people who were in bushfire affected areas still a year later, show very high levels of emotional distress, higher depression, higher anxiety than the general population. At least 20% of those participants meet the usual cutoff for probable PTSD still a year after the fires. There are two or three e-Posters on display in this conference, if anybody's interested, please check them out. I know moving on to research priorities, I think COVID identify three main ones from my point of view. First is to better understand the nature of coupled social-ecological systems, partly for its own sake. But more importantly, because I think it will enable better, stronger, more durable interventions to enhance environmental and human wellbeing. Related to that, some of the key constructs that Carmen Lawrence mentioned in her talk earlier, I think, are really central, including things like place attachments or nostalgia, set of diverse worldviews and generally the dynamics of social change. A second priority, I think, is to better understand the contextual nature of human-environment systems. What do I mean by context, I think it's all too common, too easy to think about, for example, a unidirectional flow of effects from a major environmental catastrophe like, well, disasters, such as the black summer fires directly affecting psychological health and wellbeing. And that's certainly absolutely the case that happens. But it's much more complex and dynamic than that. So but context here, I mean, a web of interactions between what I think of as a sort of micro-mezzo and macro level processes, social and psychological processes. So micro level effects things like depression and anxiety in any given individual following a bushfire depend on sets of macro-variables, such as the availability of government support and resources, which we're finding is perhaps an even bigger stressor for people than the experience of bushfires themselves. So it depends on those macro-variables. Also depends on mezzo level variables, such as the patterns of social cohesion within a community. So you get this embedded multi-level context that you need to understand and unpack to be able to understand the contextual nature of human environment systems. And then, similarly, the relationships between environmental factors and human wellbeing are not uni-directional. Ecosystem services, for example, certain commonwealth talked about, quantified but conversely people, both individually and collectively, also affect ecosystem wellbeing. And that's not it's rarely studied, is not well understood and needs to be better understood. Now, third priority which is, I think, just everybody, everyone of the speakers today has touched on this, is that we desperately need to better understand how to move signs into action, phrases about translation, or impact, and so on are contrite but they just don't do it. We really desperately need to do that better to understand it, but to be able to do it. So I'll stop there. Thanks, Fay. 

Fay Johnston  12:41  
Thanks so much, Ian. And that was really perfect spot on timing. It's exactly 3:40, which means we're at risk of being cut off at any moment. So I'm going to need to hand straight to you, Geoff. Geoff Morgan, the co-lead of this theme to wrap up. Thanks, Geoff.

Geoffrey Morgan  13:00  
Thanks, everyone. Especially thanks for all your time and attending. I'm sorry that we won't get time for questions. But just to assure you this is the start of a process, where we really want to get people to think big initially about our research priorities and to engage in early next year in a process that we'll be going through that you'll hear more about in the New Year for, you know, developing our research or refining our research priorities. I'd like to thank the speakers for their great presentations, very thought provoking for our area. And I look forward to seeing everyone in the new year and through the rest of the virtual conference.