Preparing for Heat Waves In a World Primed to Cook
Are we there yet? Have people finally cottoned on to the idea that maybe, things aren’t going so well for the planet and our place in it? Storms, up; floods, up; fires, up; droughts, up; people being displaced by climate events, up. The signals are all around us.
And yet, as a species we struggle to respond fully, deliberately to emerging crisis UNLESS we are viscerally involved. Many of us simply do not know what it means to experience a heat wave event or a flood or poverty until, well, we’re in that state. The paradox – is that until we’re involved, we’re not engaged enough to fully think about what we might do, and that is a huge risk when you’re talking about the welfare of people.
Which is why scenarios are a brilliant way of bringing people to an understanding beyond the spreadsheet data. You aim to make your scenario as neurologically rich as you can, engaging as many senses as you can to help your participants get into the headspace that allows them to appreciate what might be possible. In that space of ‘experience’ they’re able to make better decisions in ADVANCE of when an event might occur.
Coming up in September I’m facilitating the Heat Health Scenario for the City of Greater Dandenong (CGD) as they explore how ready they are to deal with a long standing heat event, who they will have to assist, and what capabilities and other agency resources they may have to draw on to deal with what is a clear survival issue for their residents. It’ll be in a different format from others I’ve conducted for the Dairy Industry, Defence Industry, Manufacturing sector, Waste sector and more. We’ll use the minds of people on stage to advance the narrative in more ‘immediate time’ and help push our thinking as far as we can go to find what gaps might exist in their planning.
What’s significant about this for a Council is that they’re inviting a whole range of other experts from outside Council to help them understand what is and isn’t possible. And using the Drum Theatre as the staging grounds allows a few neurologically engaging elements to be brought into play. It’ll be a challenging day for all both on and off stage stage.
On the eve of ANZAC day here in Australia ABC Radio Darwin’s Vicki Kerrigan chats with futurist Marcus Barber on the future of war – what the future triggers of war might be and how war will be fought Increasing technology or less technology? Haves versus the have nots? On a pretty serious topic…
Read More >In this chat with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin, we chat about workplace design and the need to create functional workplaces – something the ‘open-plan’ model fails utterly at delivering. Click on the link below Futurist Marcus Barber on ABC Radio Darwin discussing the future of workplace design and the challenges of dysfunctional workplaces…
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Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber chats with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin about the challenges facing the Northern Territory, the farming and mining sectors. In summing up the emerging signs of a clash between agricultural uses of land and land use for resource and mining needs, Marcus uses the phrase ‘Eat or Extract’ as the…
Read More >As most of you know I nominated this year as the 2012 International Year of Resilience because frankly, that’s what I reckon large chunks of the world need right now. The twitter feed is #2012YearofResilience. I sent a few of these tips out at the start of the year and have seen a few of…
Read More >A new city is due to emerge in Darwin over the coming couple of years and the key question is – what sort of attention is being paid to weather related disasters in the design phase? Paul Dale on ABC Radio Darwin chats with futurist Marcus Barber about planning and weather. You can download the…
Read More >Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’ is best known for its second verse – “I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains”. As vast tracts of Australia again face the prospect of massive floods I wonder if our Urban Planners ever consider the significance of…
Read More >Potentially the biggest area of untapped competitive advantage (and arguably one of the biggest areas where costs could be reduced) is within supply chains. Most approaches to Supply Chain Management are linear and isolated with one player trying to squeeze the other with no regard to the overall effect of the full supply chain. It’s…
Read More >There’s a shift underway in the mining industry that will likely catch Australian airlines out if they aren’t paying attention – the shift toward ‘remote’ mining. Remote mining is being pushed by the automation ability across all aspects of current mining technology, which at the basic level, means that fewer humans are needed on site…
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