Accredited qualifications for capacity development in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation

Increasingly practitioners and policy makers working across the globe are recognising the importance of bringing together disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. From studies across 15 Pacific island nations, a key barrier to improving national resilience to disaster risks and climate change impacts has been identified as a lack of capacity and expertise resulting from the absence of sustainable accredited and quality assured formal training programmes in the disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation sectors. In the 2016 UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, it was raised that most of the training material available are not reviewed either through a peer-to-peer mechanism or by the scientific community and are, thus, not following quality assurance standards. In response to these identified barriers, this paper focuses on a call for accredited formal qualifications for capacity development identified in the 2015 United Nations landmark agreements in DRR and CCA and uses the Pacific Islands Region of where this is now being implemented with the launch of the Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals, for DRR and CCA. A key issue is providing an accreditation and quality assurance mechanism that is shared across boundaries. This paper argues that by using the United Nations landmark agreements of 2015, support for a regionally accredited capacity development that ensures all countries can produce, access and effectively use scientific information for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The newly launched Pacific Regional Federation of Resilience Professionals who work in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation may offer a model that can be used more widely

Simulation modelling and strategic change : creating the sustainable enterprise

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Australasian Arachnology, Number 70, December 2004

This is it, my first issue! As Tracey announced in the editorial of the last Australasian Arachnology, it’s now my turn ‘at the helm’ of our newsletter. Everybody will agree that Tracey did a tremendous job over the last five years, editing 15 wonderful issues (numbers 55 – 69). Parallels of the current change to her take-over from Mark Harvey as previous editor are evident. As then Mark, Tracey embraces a new role as parent and her increasing family duties do not allow as many arachnological activities at this stage

Recovering the lost gold of the developing world : bibliographic database

This report contains a library of 181 references, including abstracts, prepared for Project R 7120 "Recovering the lost gold of the developing world" funded by the UK' s Department for International Development (DFID) under the Knowledge and Research (KAR) programme. As part of an initial desk study, a literature review of gold processing methods used by small-scale miners was carried out using the following sources; the lSI Science Citation Index accessed via Bath Information and Data Services (BIDS), a licensed GEOREF CD-ROM database held at the BGS's Library in Keyworth and IMMage a CD-ROM database produced by the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy held by the Minerals group ofBGS. Information on the search terms used is available from the author

The research buyer\u27s perspective of market research effectiveness

This study examines the views of research buyers about the efficacy of market research used within their firms. A sample of research buyers from Australia's top 1000 companies was asked to evaluate the research outcomes of their most recent market research project in terms of their overall business strategy. Specialist market research buyers (insights managers) believed their commissioned research was very effective. This was in contrast to research buyers in generalist roles who did not believe in the effectiveness of the research outcomes to the same extent. The overarchlng strategic direction adopted by the buyer's firm did not make a difference to the type of research conducted (,action orientated' vs. 'knowledge enhancing'). However, entrepreneurial firms were more likely to rate their research as effective and to have dedicated research buyers generating insights into their markets. The results of this study are inconsistent with earlier studies and indicate that the market research function within Australian firms stili plays an ambiguous role

Do Process Modelling Techniques Get Better? A Comparative Ontological Analysis of BPMN

Current initiatives in the field of Business Process Management (BPM) strive for the development of a BPM standard notation by pushing the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). However, such a proposed standard notation needs to be carefully examined. Ontological analysis is an established theoretical approach to evaluating modelling techniques. This paper reports on the outcomes of an ontological analysis of BPMN and explores identified issues by reporting on interviews conducted with BPMN users in Australia. Complementing this analysis we consolidate our findings with previous ontological analyses of process modelling notations to deliver a comprehensive assessment of BPMN

How Should We Prioritise Incident Management Deployment?

With perpetual strains on resources and traffic increasing at a steady rate, transport agencies need to evaluate the road network and make informed decisions to determine which roads have the greatest risk of adverse impacts and therefore identify the roads that have the greatest case for intervention. This is especially the case for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and in particular incident management services where decision-making techniques are immature relative to conventional road engineering. This problem is compounded by the fact that common evaluation tools are insufficient for ITS applications. Historical information for ITS impacts is not always readily available, impacts are not transferable and impacts are incremental to the individual user. For these reasons, a new network evaluation framework is presented in this paper for incident management deployment. The framework aims to analyse the road network and prioritise roads with respect to two factors: the historical risk associated with incidents; and the cost effectiveness of implementation. To assess the historical risk, the framework initially converts social, economic and environmental impacts to a common monetary base, enabling the addition of the incident impacts. The economic impact values must be treated as relative values of measurement, not absolute costs. The second part of the framework assesses the historical risk, taking into account both the consequence of an event, measured in economic terms described above, and the probability of an event occurring based on historical information. The third uses a cost-effective ratio comparing the reduced impacts with the project costs. The economic risk analysis presented in Figure 1 below integrates safety, reliability and environmental impacts, providing an integrated decision-making tool for proactive ITS deployment decision-making

Work Stress among Professionals in the Building Construction Industry in Nigeria

This study was undertaken to identify key stress factors among professionals in the building construction industry in Nigeria. This is in view of the fact that to date, very little is known about work stress among professionals in the building construction industry in this country. The study involved the administration of a questionnaire to 107 professionals including architects, builders, civil/structural engineers and quantity surveyors randomly selected from 60 ongoing building projects in Anambra, Ogun and Kaduna States, Nigeria. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, and findings show that the principal sources of stress were high volume of work, uncomfortable site offices, lack of feedback on previous and ongoing building projects, and variations in the scope of work in ongoing building projects. The paper suggests that taking responsibility for work which one has adequate capacity to handle, establishing realistic budgets and time frames for project delivery, provision of spatially adequate, visually and thermally comfortable site offices, adoption of appropriate job design practices and education of professionals in stress management will reduce the incidence of stress among professionals in the building industry in Nigeria