The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has called for greater disaster resilience and mitigation planning, echoing recent recommendations from insurers, the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safer Communities and the Productivity Commission.

“Enhancing Australian resilience will allow us to better anticipate disasters and assist in planning to reduce losses, rather than just waiting for the next king-hit and paying for it afterwards,” the institute says.

The Productivity Commission’s recent interim report on natural disaster funding arrangements recommends a focus on local mitigation rather than nationally funded relief and recovery.

The ASPI agrees, and notes “great economic efficiencies flow from disaster mitigation”.

“Mitigation should become policy for the Australian Government and our state governments and for our treasury departments,” the institute says. “It should be a key part of Canberra’s microeconomic reform program.

“It’s much more efficient than spending over and over again on relief.”

The ASPI says it is important to measure community resilience but there is “no consistent basis for such measurement”.

It calls on the Australian Emergency Management agency to establish a “national resilience scorecard” in conjunction with states and territories.

“Communities could then develop their own scorecards, focusing on the hazards that threaten them.”

Scorecards might cover the ability of critical infrastructure and buildings to recover from impacts, social factors that affect a community’s resilience and the special needs of individuals and groups.

The ASPI supports creation of a national database for disaster-related information and says the insurance industry could play a crucial role building and maintaining it.

It cites the Queensland Government’s open-data strategy, which is supported by an Insurance Council of Australia memorandum of understanding to share information.

“Other state governments could adopt Queensland’s approach to combining government-held geospatial data with data held by insurance companies and other private sector organisations.

“Better data collection and sharing will lead to better risk analysis, which leads to better mitigation efforts. This will reduce insurance premiums.”