Proceedings of the ANDROID Residential Doctoral School 2015

This volume brings together submissions from the doctoral researchers covering a wide spectrum of topics including risk assessment and mitigation, post-disaster reconstruction, disaster governance, social/community resilience, and stakeholder engagement. The papers collated here demonstrate the richness and interdisciplinary nature of the research topics and the theoretical and practical nature of challenges/opportunities addressed by disaster resilience researchers. Given the growing need for evidence-based approaches to dealing with disaster situations created by increasing exposure to human/natural hazards and the need for development of research skills/expertise in this area of disaster resilience, the work of the doctoral researchers in this volume is a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge.

The Doctoral School initiative, set up by the ANDROID network with the aim to strengthen the nexus between the ‘disaster resilience’ research and teaching is a core element of the overall ANDROID project. The mixed teaching space developed as part of this project has encouraged and promoted the work of doctoral students in the area of disaster resilience. The Doctoral School signifies the ongoing effort of the ANDROID network to continue the processes developed through the ANDROID project beyond the duration of original funding, demonstrating the commitment of the network to develop Doctoral education in the area of disaster resilience.

The Residential Doctoral School (RDS) programme for 2015 aims to provide space and opportunity for doctoral students to engage, present, discuss and widely disseminate their research work in the area of disaster resilience. This involve (a) calling for submissions of original piece of doctoral research internationally, (b) providing feedback on the submissions through expert peer review process, (c) providing an opportunity to participate/present research work in a two-day workshop in which additional feedback is provided by a review panel, (d) providing an opportunity to network with experts in the field and (e) disseminate doctoral research work to a wider audience. For this purpose, the ANDROID network international conference (5th International Conference in Building Resilience) in Newcastle Australia ran parallel to the Residential Doctoral School.