Creativity and innovation in disaster resilience
As a national institute managed by AFAC (Australian and New Zealand Council for fire and emergency services), on behalf of the National Emergency Management Agency, AIDR works closely with the broader sector to support knowledge sharing and capability development. One example of innovation in disaster risk reduction (DRR) is AFAC’s Bushfire Emerging Technologies Hub, part of the Global AI Collaborative: Wildfires supported by Google.org. The Hub is designed to help bushfire and land management agencies across Australia and New Zealand apply artificial intelligence and emerging technologies to improve how bushfires are detected, tracked, and managed.
The Hub has partnered with Natural Hazards Research Australia to engage researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) to undertake an environmental scan of AI and emerging technologies across the hazard landscape, including bushfire, severe weather and flood. The scan will explore key risks and challenges while identifying pathways for future opportunities to apply AI and emerging technologies in DRR.
Additionally in March 2026, AFAC, in partnership with ANU and the NSW Smart Sensing Network, held a ‘Drone Innovation Day’, showcasing cutting-edge technologies such as autonomous swarms, helicopter-drone teaming, AI-guided bushfire suppression, and hydrogen-powered flight, designed to transform emergency response. The event demonstrated how these innovations could improve early hazard detection, coordination, and safety while emphasising the key challenge ahead is integrating and scaling these systems into real-world emergency operations.
Innovation in DRR also involves new ways of understanding risk. AIDR’s work on systems thinking, including the Systemic Disaster Risk Handbook and associated webinar, reframes how risk is understood, governed and acted upon across sectors. Rather than prescribing fixed processes, these resources introduce a principles-led approach that encourages leaders to rethink traditional, hazard-by-hazard methods and adopt systems thinking, inclusive governance, and adaptive decision making. They integrate concepts such as uncertainty, place-based resilience, networked risk cultures, and equitable access to risk knowledge, to support new ways of thinking about complexity and interdependence.
Meanwhile, innovation in DRR is increasingly driven by collaboration, storytelling, and connected networks across the sector. By bringing together practitioners, researchers and communities to share lived experience alongside evidence, initiatives like the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference build a richer, collective understanding of risk. Storytelling helps translate complex challenges into shared meaning, while partnerships, the Possibility Lab, and AIDR’s Knowledge Hub support continuous, inclusive learning grounded in real-world contexts.