Prof Douglas Paton

Prof Douglas Paton

Researcher
About
Prof Douglas Paton

Professor Paton has a PhD from Edinburgh University and a career path that spans from Scotland (St. Andrews) to Tasmania via New Zealand. He is a Technical Advisor on Risk Communication to the World Health Organisation, a member of the Risk Interpretation sub-committee of IRDR (UN-ISDR), and an advisor to the Australian Red Cross on community resilience. His work informs policy and practice for natural and health (pandemic) hazards through these roles. His RHD student interests include natural hazard readiness and recovery, architecture and well-being, environment and mental health, and community and organisational aspects of mental health.

Prof Paton's research transects community, environmental, health and cross-cultural psychology. "All-hazards"/cross cultural research in Australia (bushfire, flood, tsunami), New Zealand (earthquake, volcanic, pandemic flu), Japan (earthquake, volcanic), Indonesia (volcanic), Taiwan (earthquake, typhoon), and Portugal (bushfire) identifies how people, communities and agencies interact to make decisions and implement actions under conditions of uncertainty and the need to integrate risk management and community development strategies to foster sustained community resilience. His current research examines links between long term disaster recovery and well-being in Taiwan, Japan and New Zealand (funded by ARC (Discovery) and PGSF (NZ) grants). This involves national (ANU and Charles Darwin University) and international (Taiwan, NZ, Japan) collaboration.

27 Aug 2019
Natural hazard response efforts are increasingly reliant on broadcast warnings by agencies. While...
Community Understanding of the Tsunami Risk and Warning Systems in Australian Communities
18 Aug 2015
The Eastern Australian coastline faces some 8,000km of active tectonic plate boundary capable of...

Resources credited

Type Released Title Download Key Topics
Presentation-Slideshow 27 Aug 2019 Are we future-ready? PDF icon Save (3.79 MB) Northern Australia
Presentation-Slideshow 27 Feb 2017 Tsunami preparedness and warnings PDF icon Save (1.08 MB) communities, tsunami, warnings
HazardNoteEdition 21 Oct 2015 Turning warnings into action PDF icon Save (236.32 KB) communication, tsunami, warnings
Presentation-Slideshow 08 Sep 2014 The "Tassie fires - we can help" Facebook page PDF icon Save (5.34 MB)

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