Despite highly specialised and capable emergency management systems, ordinary citizens are usually first on the scene in an emergency or disaster, and remain long after official services have ceased. Citizens often play vital roles in helping those affected to respond and recover, and can provide invaluable assistance to official agencies. However, in most developed countries, emergency and disaster management relies largely on a workforce of professionals and, to varying degrees, volunteers affiliated with official agencies. Those who work outside of such systems have tended to be viewed as a nuisance or liability, and their efforts are often undervalued. Given increasing disaster risk worldwide due to population growth, urban development and climate change, it is likely that 'informal' volunteers will provide much of the additional surge capacity required to respond to more frequent emergencies and disasters in the future. This paper considers the role of informal volunteers in emergency and disaster management. Definitions of volunteerism are reviewed and it is argued that there is an overemphasis on volunteering within, and for, state and formal organisations. We offer a broader definition of 'informal volunteerism' that recognises the many ways ordinary citizens volunteer their time, knowledge, skills and resources to help others in times of crisis. Two broad types of informal volunteerism are identified -emergent and extending-and the implications for emergency and disaster management are considered. Particular attention is given to increasing 'digital volunteerism' due to the greater accessibility of sophisticated but simple information and communication technologies. Culture and legal liability are identified as key barriers to greater participation of informal volunteers. We argue that more adaptive and inclusive models of emergency and disaster management are needed to harness the capacities and resilience that exist within and across communities.

On Saturday 7 February 2009, 173 people lost their lives and more than 2000 houses were destroyed in bushfires (wildfires) in the Australian State of Victoria. The scale of life and property loss raised fundamental questions about community bushfire safety in Australia, in particular the appropriateness of the ‘Prepare, stay and defend or leave early’ policy. This paper presents findings from research undertaken as part of the Australian Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre’s (CRC) ‘2009 Victorian Bushfires Research Taskforce’. The research examined factors influencing patterns of life and property loss and survival across the fires through mail surveys (n=1314) of fire affected households. Just over half of the respondents (53%) stayed to defend their homes and properties, whereas the remainder left before or when the fires arrived (43%) or sheltered in a house, structure, vehicle, or outside (4%). Results reveal a survival rate of 77% for houses that were defended by one or more household members, compared to 44% for unattended houses. The paper identifies inadequate planning and preparedness and the tendency for people to wait until they are directly threatened before taking action as major factors leading to late evacuation, failed defence and passive shelter.

There is a growing expectation that volunteers will have a greater role in disaster management in the future compared to the past. This is driven largely by a growing focus on building resilience to disasters. At the same time, the wider landscape of volunteering is fundamentally changing in the twenty-first century. This paper considers implications of this changing landscape for the resilience agenda in disaster management, with a focus on Australia. It first reviews major forces and trends impacting on disaster volunteering, highlighting four key developments: the growth of more diverse and episodic volunteering styles, the impact of new communications technology, greater private sector involvement and growing government expectations of and intervention in the voluntary sector. It then examines opportunities in this changing landscape for the Australian emergency management sector across five key strategic areas and provides examples of Australian responses to these opportunities to date. The five areas of focus are: developing more flexible volunteering strategies, harnessing spontaneous volunteering, building capacity to engage digital (and digitally enabled) volunteers, tapping into the growth of employee and skills-based volunteering and co-producing communitybased disaster risk reduction. Although there have been considerable steps taken in Australia in some of these areas, overall there is still a long way to go before the sector can take full advantage of emerging opportunities. The paper thus concludes by identifying important research and practice gaps in this area.