Co-design disaster preparedness messaging for CALD communities

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), there were over 7.6 million migrants living in Australia in 2020. Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities are more vulnerable to disasters due to multiple and complex factors including lack of familiarity with the systems and hazards in Australia. Risk perception and consequently, risk communication epitomises the core of preparedness, response and recovery. Thus it is accepted globally that better risk communication processes and systems are needed for effective disaster resilience. Much of emergency or disaster messaging fail to account for the myriad ways in which groups, such as CALD communities process disaster messaging. The complex construct of ‘culture’ significantly influences one’s conceptualisation and experiences related to livelihoods, wellbeing, self-protection, social protection, governance and power relations is poorly understood. This creates a void in our ability to understand how CALD communities might perceive risks, interpret them, and react to them. This project will be to conduct a review of the disaster preparedness material for CALD communities. A student will focus on reviewing publicly available disaster preparedness material intended for CALD communities. In addition to the review, the student could contribute to writing a manuscript for publication based on this desk review. Another key activity in this project will be to work with select CALD communities to co-design disaster preparedness messaging.