About this Glossary
The Australian Disaster Resilience Glossary is an integrated online glossary of disaster resilience and emergency management terms and definitions.
Its purpose is to allow consistency and avoid ambiguity in the definition and use of words and terms associated with disaster resilience and emergency management.
The Glossary provides a consensus on terms and definitions or information on the range of terms and definitions encountered in emergency management to account for jurisdictional and contextual variation.
The Glossary does not present new or different definitions of terms, but brings together definitions from a number of existing sources into a single national collection that will:
- be published online (with print on demand capability);
- recognise words (and definitions) that are used across multiple communities through to those that are used exclusively by a single community;
- be governed by a set of principles and guidelines to ensure consistency across the collection;
- have online read and search functionality;
- include the ability for users to recommend new words and provide suggestions or comment on existing definitions;
- include a process for continuous review of the national glossary collection.
The development of the Glossary has been supported by key emergency management organisations in Australia. These organisations provided links to their glossaries and were provided with the opportunity to submit terms and definitions for inclusion.
The Glossary will continue to develop and overtime will include related terms, images, pronunciation audio, and links to additional references.
The Glossary is intended to be used as an online resource. However, it is also available to print in full or by selecting categories of words.
The types of organisations that might use the Glossary include:
- Local governments
- State and Commonwealth government departments
- Emergency and disaster management professional groups
- Individuals and community groups
- Researchers
- School children and schools
- Private sector organisations
- Educational institutions
As situations change, the Glossary will be updated and amended. Proposed changes should be submitted to AIDR through the Contact Us page.
The Glossary can be found here and is comprised of the following glossaries:
Emergency Management Australia Glossary 1998
Biosecurity Emergency Management - Glossary
Bureau of Meteorology Glossary