Delving into Heatwave Scenarios
Later this month I’ll be facilitating a scenario session looking at the potential impact of a long standing heatwave event for the City of Greater Dandenong here in Australia.
Heatwaves kill more people than any other weather event. By a long way. Importantly they also have a ‘fat tail’ with physical impairments to individuals often catching up with them two or three days AFTER the heatwave has subsided. For a local Council, exploring where their strategy might be stretched or even fall over is a key outcome of this process. It’s not designed to enable people to feel comfortable they have everything covered. To the contrary, the aim of this scenario will be to push and stretch the perceived capabilities and capacities such that they are likely to break. The key question for us will be ‘where?’.
There’s a great line up of people involved. Along with CGD’s own staff, the Department of Health, Monash Hospital, Ambulance Victoria, Victoria Police, Department of Transport and a raft of other Councils (among a wide variety of other organisations) have provided significant time and input at helping guide the context for the emerging narrative. Although the ‘traffic light’ scenarios are common in a Government setting and 2×2 Deductive scenarios common in Industry, this will be an Inductive scenario using questions to help write another page into the story line.
At the conclusion, the key session takes place – ‘If that, then what?’ which will explore the beginnings of a strategic response to an event of the kind described. Without tying a scenario to a specific strategic thought process, most scenarios are moot. Included in that session will be NeuroPsychologist Dr Kim Hazendonk of Positive Brain who’ll give an overview of what happens to our decision making, and those of members of our communities, when suffering heat stress, and importantly, what organisations can do to prepare their staff for such an outcome. We already know, few organisations have considered how to prepare their staff.
It’s going to be a big day and hopefully I’ll be able to report back a few days after the event to let you know how it went
One of the challenges for one aspect of the world is fuel and the price of fuel used for private transportation. I use the word ‘aspect’ quite deliberately because the ‘aspect of the world’ that seems to be making the most noise about rising fuel prices is by and large the ‘westernised’ world – that’s…
Read More >With the theme ‘Moving Forward, Supply Chains of the Future’, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will open the Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Conference in Brisbane in July on behalf of the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia. Details for the conference can be found below. The focus on the future of supply chains…
Read More >When it comes to quality strategic futures work as part of making the pragmatic decisions that shifts beyond theoretical futures work, I encourage my clients to question the assumptions they make about the information they have available to them. Which is why I am recommending the book ‘Gang Leader for a day – a rougue…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber was well and truly forced to justify the existence of his profession when venturing along to Jon Faine’s Conversation Hour last week. Co-hosted by Cath Pope the discussion looked at the role of Futurists, the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Jon’s scepticism around the role of futurists.. Along with Janoel Liddy,…
Read More >You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
Read More >A few thoughts on what steps could be taken to overcome the ‘treat everyone like a nail’ approach that Interest Rate rises seems to do. Check out the idea under the ‘Latest Focus’ section Interest Rate Rises are going to penalise too many people who don’t deserve to lose their homes
Read More >