Australian resilience expert to help Americans prepare for disaster

Photo courtesy of After the Fire USA Summit

Leading Australian disaster resilience expert Renae Hanvin will help Americans “do disasters differently” at a wildfire summit next month (September 9 to 11).

The founder and CEO of Resilient Ready will be a keynote speaker at the After the Fire 2025 Wildfire Leadership Summit in Sonoma County, California.

She will speak on the topic of Invisible Infrastructure: How Social Capital Builds Disaster Resilience.

The invitation-only, three-day summit will bring together over 200 leaders from across America to explore a 360-degree perspective on the wildfire landscape, from prevention and preparedness to equitable recovery and long-term resilience.

After the Fire USA is an initiative of Rebuild North Bay Foundation, a registered nonprofit founded during the 2017 North Bay Complex Fires in Sonoma, California.

The summit aims to provide a deeper understanding of megafire challenges through immersive sessions, strategic networking and cross-sector collaboration so participants can help their communities prepare for, survive and thrive after disasters.

This year’s theme centres on the power of community-led resilience and how local leadership can drive transformative recovery.

Ms Hanvin said she was honoured to be invited to speak at the summit.

“We are living in an era of compound disasters globally, so we need a united approach to prepare for, survive and thrive after natural challenges like fire, flood and earthquake.

“The sharing of knowledge and experience between leaders and policymakers at events like this mirrors what social capital aims to achieve on a community level.

“We want to help people build networks within their communities at places like libraries, shopping centres, community halls, schools, regional pubs and places of worship, so they know where to turn locally when disaster strikes.

Here in Australia, long-time disaster resilience leader Ms Hanvin and social enterprise Resilient Ready is leading a national groundbreaking approach to help Australians “do disasters differently”.

Funded by the Australian Government’s Disaster Ready Fund (DRF), the Creating a Social Capital and Social Infrastructure Framework to benefit every Australian pilot project expands on the “snapshot” DRR project delivered in South Australia in 2024 via SAFECOM.

The project will include input from all Australian states and territories to create a national definition and measurement criteria about people connections (social capital) and places where people connect (social infrastructure).

It will also include global social capital expert Professor Daniel Aldrich’s social capital and social infrastructure heatmapping data sets in South Australia.

Professor Aldrich and Ms Hanvin recently travelled to every state and territory to explain the concepts of social capital (the ties between people) and social infrastructure (the spaces and places where we build those ties) and how they help build resilience.

They will share early data findings in late October on what social capital and social infrastructure is to Australians and explain how Prof Aldrich’s global research is relevant to Australia.

Project findings will provide a unified descriptor of what social capital and social infrastructure is, can and should be for Australians.

The data will also help inform government and other stakeholders about where to invest and how to make best policy decisions that will build disaster resilient and ready communities.

Quantitative research has been conducted in Adelaide, Whyalla and Kangaroo Island, and an online tool to be launched in Adelaide in October.