Acute shocks are sudden events, such as storms, heatwaves, or acts of terror. Chronic stresses are long-term challenges, such as mental health problems, increasing inequality, or sea level rise.
By strengthening the underlying fabric of our city and deepening our understanding of the risks that we face, we can improve our overall resilience and well-being. We can prosper in spite of rising challenges.
Global trends
There are a number of global trends that are increasing the likelihood and severity of shocks and stresses. These include:
City of Melbourne's efforts
The City of Melbourne is working with communities and across the organisation to build resilience to future challenges. The City Resilience and Sustainable Futures team is leading a four-year project called 'Prepare Melbourne'. This project aims to engage and prepare residents and communities to enhance their resilience to hazards, disasters, and the health impacts of climate change.
There are six program streams currently underway:
- Climate Justice Project: Enable deeper and more deliberative collaboration between disadvantaged communities and City of Melbourne to address climate justice issues
- Community Resilience Assessment: Better understand and respond to the physical and social vulnerabilities communities face to disasters in our neighbourhoods.
- Staff Capacity Building Program: Build staff knowledge and capacity in resilience to better support our community to prepare for disasters.
- Community awareness program: Deliver communications and awareness program to communities, to build capacity to prepare for specific priority hazards.
- Technology solutions: Pilot humanity-first technology solutions to support planning and delivery of initiatives that better prepare our community for disasters.
- Heat Lab: A new model to incubate, iterate and evolve resilience concepts in response to extreme heat risk and vulnerability in the City of Melbourne.