Professor Sotiris Vardoulakis addresses the conference. Photo: Nicholas Ward.
In an Australian first, the University of Canberra, in collaboration with the Healthy Environment and Lives network, has launched a project to study the use of public facilities, such as libraries, as community refuges during natural disasters.
However, while using these spaces for emergency shelters became law in the ACT in 2023, this is the first time they are being studied to ensure they are safe and suitable for providing shelter to large numbers of people.
The HEAL network, a non-profit organisation, aims to find out how to best utilise these facilities. It brings together 30 organisations from around Australia to address the environmental challenges facing the nation.
National Research Network Director Professor Sotiris Vardoulakis stated that their current work focuses on creating safer spaces for everyone in the community.
“This is a project focused on community resilience centres. It’s funded by the National Health Medical Research Council, and will be designing and testing public spaces that can become a resilience centre,” he said.
“We’re looking for a range of public buildings that can serve this purpose. They could be libraries, they could be other public spaces, and we want to make sure that these spaces are accessible, safe, culturally safe, safe for children and families, and they can provide clean air and respite from heat.”
The research project was launched at a conference of community organisations at the Belconnen Library.
The conference brought together experts and front-line organisations to discuss how best to study and improve community facilities used for safe havens during disaster events.
The first stage of the study will be monitoring air quality and temperatures within libraries around the ACT and Western Sydney.
The Belconnen Library is one of several around Canberra already equipped with advanced air monitoring technology to assess its suitability as a community resilience centre.
The monitors are unobtrusive pieces of technology that are mounted high on walls. They will now spend several months measuring the air quality inside select community spaces in Canberra and Western Sydney to better assess their capability as shelters.
According to Dr Vardoulakis, several factors will be taken into consideration.
“We’ll be looking at their filtration systems, air conditioning and also the infiltration of smoke when there is a lot of smoke in the community because of bushfire,” he said.
“So we’ll be looking at the filtration, air conditioning systems, the space, the possibility of people to find advice about their health, about the environment, and also potentially some medical advice.”
During the catastrophic 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires, libraries and community centres were used as alternative ways for the public to escape heatwaves and smoke exposure.
The availability of community safe havens has been a priority for the government since it passed legislation in 2023 to expand safe havens to include clubs.
Protection against smoke is considered especially important due to the carcinogenic nature of smoke. But how effective these spaces are has remained unanswered.
HEAL project co-lead Dr Ro McFarlane said that understanding how effective these facilities are will be vital to protecting the wider community during the next major bushfire event.
“We need to adapt to the best of our ability to problems with fires and problems with other climate environmental degradation, but we also need to have a response straight away,” she said.
“We need to know, can we actually have safer temperature monitors? Can we actually control the temperature? Then we need to understand people’s access and movement, and how well a building like this can actually provide those services. And that’s why this is the first time in Australia we’re actually evaluating those things.”
