What's New in Knowledge | September 2026

The latest edition of the Australian Journal of Emergency Management (AJEM) is available to read here. This edition includes a review of the past 40 years of recovery in AJEM.

The New Zealand Climate Change Commission (He Pou A Rangi) has released a 2026 progress report on their national adaptation plan. The report is available to read here.

In understanding consequences and recovery, this article from the Fire to Flourish program dives into community-led co-design involving communities. Drawing on empirical evidence from 3 years of participatory action research with bushfire-affected communities, it presents an empirically grounded framework identifying enabling conditions to cultivate for community-led co-design.

The National Principles for Disaster Recovery have been revised to reflect contemporary recovery practice, recognising that recovery is long-term, non-linear and increasingly shaped by compounding and concurrent disasters. You can find them on the AIDR Knowledge Hub.

Focusing on systemic risk, in examining the causes of the devastating flash flood in Nepal, scientists have highlighted cross border and cascading hazards and risk: see here, here, and here.

This journal article looks at critical ethical dilemmas in disaster evacuation planning. It introduces the novel concept of Ethical Cascading Failure (ECF), which describes how the violation of a single ethical principle can propagate across multiple principles and stakeholders, eventually leading to systemic breakdowns of evacuation governance.

This article looks at systemic risk in volcano misinformation, where it examines common misconceptions around volcanoes and eruptions. It describes solutions to counter misinformation that were used in 7 case studies, aiding those trying to find credible information.

In disaster risk reduction, this report shares the outcomes of an NSW Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre project that brought together diverse community leaders from NSW a few years on from bushfire/flood events to provide research-supported activities to share and articulate their priorities in formats useful to policy-makers and program delivery personnel. Implications of this research are also discussed in this ABC News article.

This Monash University research paper presents a trauma-informed, 7-step framework that enables communities to localise and evaluate their own disaster response capacities, called the Community Capacity Co-Design Process (C3P).

In looking at First Nations knowledge, you can now use the Digital Atlas of Australia to see where Indigenous Ranger Groups operate via the Indigenous Ranger Groups Explorer page.

Find here an interesting opinion article on the importance of protecting Indigenous languages as part of building community resilience, and how investing in resilient infrastructure also protects culture.

Turning to children and young people in disasters, this US study provides one of the first examinations of wildfire smoke risk in childcare environments. It sought to understand how licensed facilities that provide childcare for very young children receive warnings about wildfire smoke events, perceive the associated risks, and respond to reduce those risks. It finds that providers often underestimate indoor smoke risks, and relatively few implement recommended mitigation measures.

Climate change also arrived this summer for the beloved TV characters and landscapes of Sesame Street. In a special storm episode, Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and friends have to get ready for extreme weather, then learn to help each other through the aftermath. Watch the episode preview here.

Looking at animals in disasters, with the outbreak of bird flu in Australia, the topic of response and how this is a disaster for Australian animals has appeared in many articles. As this Conversation Australia article suggests, it is not too late to reduce the severity of its impacts on Australian wildlife. Other recent Conversation articles on bird flu discuss vaccination of little penguins against bird flu in Victoria, the potential for backyard bird feeding to be a ‘superspreader’, and New Zealand’s approach to moving from prevention to response.

Research on equity and inequity this month includes a piece from scientific magazine Eos that shares research examining dynamics of social vulnerability after tropical cyclones in the United States. The study finds that cyclones can deepen existing vulnerabilities, leading to homelessness, health challenges and insecurity. However, as recovery progresses, communities often emerge less socially vulnerable than they were before the disaster. Read the magazine article here and dive into the full research publication here.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) proposes a new framework for measuring the human costs of disaster displacement using a life-year approach adapted from the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) methodology widely used in public health. The framework captures how displacement affects people's ability to live healthy, secure, and productive lives by estimating ‘life-years lost’ during periods of disrupted housing, livelihoods, services and social networks. Read more about the framework here.

Focusing on extreme heat, in the United Kingdom can the searing European summer put climate action back on the agenda – or will disaster response take over? Read more here. Along the same lines, here is a European Correspondent piece on some of the major headlines relating to the European heatwave.

There has been a range of articles released this month talking about different hazards, including this piece which shares data on occurrence rates of earthquakes and discusses why it seems like there are more large earthquakes occurring.

In health, studies show that when Indigenous people are displaced from or denied access to Country, measurable declines in mental health, physical health and social and emotional wellbeing follow, read the full piece here.

Meanwhile, research finds that mental health effects of climate-related disasters are greater among people with pre-existing nervous, emotional or mental health conditions compared to people with no pre-existing conditions. Find the research here.

In looking at governance, leadership, and capacity building, evidence shows that investing in women’s leadership and participation in decision-making can contribute to stronger environmental and climate outcomes. This article outlines a new program for promoting innovation and resilience in environmental leadership for women in the Asia-Pacific.

Governments at all levels are facing increasingly frequent, complex, and costly disaster risks, while the systems used to manage them are fragmented across agencies and jurisdictions. In response, a growing number of states and localities are adopting comprehensive resilience plans – intentional, cross-sector strategies designed to align responsibilities, funding, and priorities around reducing risk before disasters occur.

In looking at new developments in technology this month, The European Union-funded XAIDA project brought together a consortium of 16 expert partners in artificial intelligence (AI), statistics, and climate modelling to develop new AI-based methodologies to show how climate change impacts extreme weather events and foresee their future occurrence. The project also engaged stakeholders from different sectors to prepare risk appraisal and adaptation strategies for such events.

For WNIK Radio this month, as always, there is brand new episodes to listen to of the How-to Disaster Podcast, with episodes this month covering topics such as community recovery and lessons communities can take forward to the art of recovery which talks about turning lessons of loss into leadership. See the podcast website here.