Measuring What Matters: Turning Community Connections into Emergency Management Capability
Tracks
Southport Room 2
| Monday, July 27, 2026 |
| 11:10 AM - 11:30 AM |
| Southport Room 2 |
Overview
Renae Hanvin, Resilient Ready
Details
Three Key Learnings
1. Understand the national framework's descriptors for social capital and social infrastructure, and why shared language is essential for consistent policy, planning and investment.
2. Learn how every SA1 community across Australia has the potential to measure social capital and social infrastructure to understand capabilities, gaps, risks and areas of inequity.
3. Recognise how a focus on social capital and social infrastructure measurement leads to smarter decisions across planning, infrastructure, disaster resilience and recovery, health, housing, workforce, economic development and industry development.
Speaker
Ms Renae Hanvin
Ceo
Resilient Ready
Measuring What Matters: Turning Community Connections into Emergency Management Capability
Abstract
This workshop introduces participants to a new national Social Capital + Social Infrastructure Measurement Framework giving the sector a unified set of descriptors and language to talk about the "missing piece" of the disaster resilience ecosystem - being people connections, trust and cooperation between people and the places and spaces that foster connections.
For the first time, emergency management professionals will see how the human systems that shape preparedness, response and recovery can be measured, mapped and compared at the SAI1 or neighbourhood scale.
The session showcases our global-first online mapping tool, built and ready for use across all Australian communities, that makes visible what has traditionally been assumed: how people are connected, where trust flows, and which everyday places quietly hold communities together under stress.
Through Australian and international scenarios, participants will explore how bonding, bridging and linking social ties, combined with local social infrastructure such as halls, libraries, sports clubs and social businesses influence warning uptake, volunteer mobilisation, service demand and recovery trajectories.
Rather than treating communities as a single unit, the framework reveals variation within places, helping practitioners understand why the same hazard can produce very different outcomes across neighbouring suburbs or towns. The workshop focuses on what this means in practice.
Participants will learn how the framework and mapping tool can be used to strengthen preparedness planning, support real-time response decisions and design more effective, equitable recovery.
It demonstrates how state governments, emergency services organisations, councils and not-for-profits can use this data to prioritise investment, coordinate action and activate local capability earlier.
This workshop will help equip the sector to move beyond physical hazards and warning systems - and towards a shared, measurable understanding of community capacity that supports the next chapter of emergency management.
For the first time, emergency management professionals will see how the human systems that shape preparedness, response and recovery can be measured, mapped and compared at the SAI1 or neighbourhood scale.
The session showcases our global-first online mapping tool, built and ready for use across all Australian communities, that makes visible what has traditionally been assumed: how people are connected, where trust flows, and which everyday places quietly hold communities together under stress.
Through Australian and international scenarios, participants will explore how bonding, bridging and linking social ties, combined with local social infrastructure such as halls, libraries, sports clubs and social businesses influence warning uptake, volunteer mobilisation, service demand and recovery trajectories.
Rather than treating communities as a single unit, the framework reveals variation within places, helping practitioners understand why the same hazard can produce very different outcomes across neighbouring suburbs or towns. The workshop focuses on what this means in practice.
Participants will learn how the framework and mapping tool can be used to strengthen preparedness planning, support real-time response decisions and design more effective, equitable recovery.
It demonstrates how state governments, emergency services organisations, councils and not-for-profits can use this data to prioritise investment, coordinate action and activate local capability earlier.
This workshop will help equip the sector to move beyond physical hazards and warning systems - and towards a shared, measurable understanding of community capacity that supports the next chapter of emergency management.
Biography
Renae Hanvin is the Founder and CEO of Resilient Ready, a certified social enterprise helping communities, businesses and governments reduce the human and economic impacts of disasters. She is a recognised leader in business and community resilience, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at Flinders University working at the intersection of emergency management, social capital and place-based systems. Renae created Australia’s first Social Capital and Social Infrastructure Measurement Framework in collaboration with Professor Daniel Aldrich, translating research into a global-first practical tools for preparedness, response and recovery. She has advised councils, state agencies and national programs across Australia.
