Resilient Lismore has contributed to the inaugural Disaster Recovery Almanac, an independent academic initiative by the University of New South Wales.

With a document on ways to strengthen community in the process of recovering, Elly Bird, the Executive Director of Resilient Lismore has made an important contribution from this area.

Professor David Sanderson, disaster response and risk reduction expert began collecting survival stories to create a database of information on his How We Survive website. 

 “There’s no question that with climate change, rapid urbanisation and growing inequality, more people are at risk of experiencing disasters than ever before,” Prof. Sanderson tells UNSW media.

An academic work funded by the Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture endowment, it “aims to instil active engagement and participation with local communities in all disaster recovery and resilience efforts.”

Ms Bird says, “It is a long term project that's looking at systemic changes to how we do disaster recovery. They're putting a lot of expertise and resources behind trying to understand how to improve disaster recovery processes. 

“They will be looking at change, significant, systemic and structural change over time.”

The Almanac is freely accessible on the internet.  

“The Almanac is an initiatives that they'll be adding to each year. They'll be doing a feature talking to leading voices in disaster recovery.

“There's perspectives from community leaders and community organisers like myself and four others. And then they've also got perspectives from government policymakers and perspectives from academics.  

“The article that I contributed to the Almanac was focused on how there is an opportunity in recovery to actually build stronger communities. 

(Lismore features prominently from the beginning of the almanac)

“If we or governments think about how to support communities that take action or that want to participate in and lead their own recoveries, there's an opportunity to build stronger communities by doing that.”

You can find the Almanac here when you scroll down the page.

Resilient Lismore has also updated its website, so go and have a look, they have simplified it to make it easier to seek assistance.