Guidelines for the development of community education, awareness and engagement programs

A project titled 'National review of community education, awareness and engagement for natural hazards' (hereafter, the review) was commissioned in August 2006 by the then National Community Safety Working Group of the Australian Emergency Management Committee (AEMC). The project was carried out over two years by a research team from the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University. The review was tabled and noted at the AEMC meeting of 31 March 2009. This volume in the Australian Emergency Manual Series provides an account of the results of the review, and: * analyses the thinking behind what has become known as the 'community safety approach' to natural hazard safety in Australia and overseas; * outlines preliminary policy theory and program theory models for the community safety approach that provide a foundation for program design; * summarises in detail publicly available evaluation studies of 14 Australian community safety programs for natural hazards, with an emphasis on 'what works, for whom, in what settings'; * describes the results of six case studies of community safety programs and critical issues especially conducted for the review; * presents an overarching program theory model for the community safety approach to natural hazards drawn from a synthesis of the program evaluation summaries and the case study work; * suggests six 'principles of effective practice' in developing and implementing programs of community education, awareness and engagement for natural hazards; * discusses the central importance of community participation in the development and implementation of programs.