Disaster risk reduction beyond command and control: mapping an Australian wildfire from a complex adaptive system’s perspective

This chapter examines the challenges and opportunities of employing a resilience-building perspective to disaster risk reduction in the context of wildfires. It maps the evolving concept of resilience and its incorporation by different disciplines and by government agencies through policy formulation and implementation in Victoria, Australia—one of the most wildfire-prone areas in the world. In addition to semistructured interviews and direct observation, data collection targeted reports, meeting minutes, legislation, news articles, newsletters, and institutional social media relating to the 2015 Wye River-Jamieson Track Fires. Data were analyzed following a Grounded Theory approach supported by NVivo 12. Findings point to the implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies that emphasize emergency management services and the resilience of local communities. These strategies incorporate natural systems from an anthropocentric ecosystem services perspective, there being room for greater collective understanding of the links between individual/site vulnerability/resilience and community/settlement vulnerability/resilience as part of the concept of shared responsibility