Honours Projects available immediately with Dale Dominey-Howes
Natural Hazards Research Group, The School of Geosciences
My team and I have recently joined the School and our broad area of expertise is natural hazards and disaster
studies, risk management, climate change impacts and adaptation, tourism, policy and planning. As a team, we
are interested in hosting and supporting new Honours research students. We can support projects across all
discipline areas of the School including earth and marine geosciences, human and physical geography.
The following are topics available for immediate start. However, if none of these are of direct interest, please
feel free to contact Dale to discuss working out a hazard-disaster related topic of your choice that the team can
support you with.
Currently available study topics include (but not limited to):
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Analysis of the Black Saturday 2009 Victorian bushfires
Beach rip currents and human losses and risk
Historical records of Australian tsunamis
Human deaths and natural hazards in Australia
Climate change and business risks in Sydney
Public perceptions of hazards and disasters in Australia
Apocalypse now – analysis of the September 2009 Sydney dust storm
Sea level rise – perceptions of a slow onset disaster
Vulnerability and resilience of the Australian tourism sector to natural hazards (and/or climate change)
Investigating the vulnerability of disabled people to hazards and disasters
Investigating the experiences of LGBTI people to hazards and disasters
Policy and planning by NSW local and State governments to climate change
Examining the role of culture in influencing responses to natural hazards in Australia
Lessons learnt?: Examining the policy and planning outcomes from post-disaster emergency
management reviews
Investigating the institutional capacity of emergency managers in serving minority groups
How have natural disasters shaped the emergence and form of Australian cities and regions?
Constructing a disaster history for New South Wales
An investigation of the 20th century disaster risk-scape of Western Australia
Specific high priority Honours research projects appear below…….
HOW MANY AUSTRALIANS HAVE DIED IN NATURAL DISASTERS?
Australia is a country regularly affected by major natural disasters – especially floods and bushfires. Extreme
events can cause significant loss of human life, injury, displacement and homelessness and other socioeconomic and cultural impacts. A rudimentary understanding of who is dying, where, how and why are
fundamental building blocks for under pinning disaster risk reduction strategies. Remarkably, in Australia, we
have a very fragmentary picture and no detailed national database exists of such human casualty data.
Work is urgently needed to begin to build a national picture (and robust dataset) of how many Australians are
dying during natural disasters. This Honours topic will begin to address this important national issue.
We are looking for enthusiastic students with an interest in human and physical geography, urban studies, risk
management, natural hazards and quantitative/GIS mapping. Any Honours students working on this project will
be part of a larger research project managed by staff from the Australia – Pacific Natural Hazards Research
Laboratory.
Associate Professor Dale Dominey-Howes
PERCEPTIONS OF HAZARD, RISK AND DISASTER
Australia is a country regularly affected by major natural disasters. For individuals, families and communities
to be safe in disasters, they must ‘perceive’ the hazard and risk in a way likely to drive ‘positive’ behavioural
responses. Recent disasters in Australia suggest that despite excellent government detection, monitoring and
early warning for hazards, Australians are not perceiving the danger, do the wrong thing and frequently are
killed. We do not know why. This project will help investigate this issue.
Work is urgently needed to begin to build a national picture (and robust dataset) of perceptions of hazard, risk
and disaster. This Honours topic will begin to address this important national issue.
We are looking for enthusiastic students with an interest in human geography, risk management, natural
hazards, cultural and social studies and policy and psychology (or a cognate discipline). Any Honours students
working on this project will be part of a larger research project managed by staff from the Australia – Pacific
Natural Hazards Research Laboratory.
BEES Contacts:
Associate Professor Dale Dominey-Howes
QUEERING DISASTERS
Natural disasters are devastating – taking human lives, injuring people and disrupting our communities and
infrastructure. Disaster impacts are never evenly felt or experienced and resilience and vulnerability are
influenced by factors such as education, gender, religion, access to information, economic status and so on. One
group almost completely invisible in traditional studies of disaster impacts are lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgendered, inter sex and queer (LBGTIQ) people. New work suggests LBGTIQ people may experience
natural disasters differently to heterosexual people and work is urgently needed on this issue in Australia and
New Zealand.
We are looking for enthusiastic students with an interest in human geography, gender, sexuality, masculinity,
urban studies, risk management, natural hazards and/or social studies, cultural studies or policy. Any Honours
students working on this project will be part of a larger research project managed by staff from the Australia –
Pacific Natural Hazards Research Laboratory and the University of Western Sydney (UWS) and well funded by
an Australian Research Council grant to Gorman-Murray and Dominey-Howes.
Associate Professor Dale Dominey-Howes