TorqAid has prepared a short Summary Sheet on the likely priorities to be carried out in Tonga following the 15th Jan volcanic eruption and tsunami. Affected individuals and communities should be at the heart of the emergency response and recovery work. This will be a Tongan Government-led initiative, supported by local/national, as well as international, stakeholders.

Our 2025 online Semester 2 Participatory Disaster Risk Management (PDRM) program is running from the 28 July through to the 17 November 2025. The intended outcome of this program is to provide the knowledge & skills to enable the participant to better understand, plan for and implement humanitarian initiatives across the Disaster Risk Management Cycle (DRMC). Ten topics overall are taught on a weekly basis. When accompanied by three assessment tasks, the PDRM is given Advanced Standing towards a number of Master level courses (eg Sustainable Development, Development Studies) offered by Murdoch University, Perth.

TorqAid produces a short one page ‘Train like a Champion’ (TLC) article, which includes five teaching principles, and twelve teaching tips. This material is covered as part of the PDRM training program Topic TC 04 (Humanitarian Attributes & Competencies).

TorqAid has developed a ‘one pager’ of Twelve Teaching Tips for development or humanitarian practitioners who do not have any formal background in teaching, training or facilitation.

September 2019 was the month when Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas, and moved up the eastern coast of the US. As a result of this, TorqAid has updated its Post on Hurricanes-Cyclones-typhoons. This is useful material for both the humanitarian and development practitioner, as well as for tertiary/secondary students, and includes examples of earlier hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons from the Caribbean, SW Pacific (including Australia), NW Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal.

Chris has recently recently returned from a three month Redr Australia contracted UNDP mission to Cox’s Bazar, supporting the Rohingya humanitarian program there. This link summarises his work there, together with separate articles describing in more detail three key aspects of his responsbilities there.

The 2019/20 Australian bushfire season has been unprecedented in its intensity and geographical spread. Chris has subsequently both prepared an article on bushfires for the Geography Teachers Association of Victoria’s (GTAV), and also done some Bushfire Recovery Adviser (BRA) work for a major church agency in the east of the state.

The ‘Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Diagrammatic Framework’ article covers four key TorqAid diagrams (DRMC, DRR, DRM Planning, PMC) which help explain and clarify humanitarian disasters. There are variants of the DRMC and DRR diagrams relating to slow-onset hazards such as drought. There is also a DRMC variant relating to the 2020-2023 COVID-19 pandemic, and a variant of the DRR focusing on crises and breakdown of civil society. The DRM framework is covered in detail in the online PDRM program running from the 28 July through to the 17 November 2025.

This is a compilation of articles which is designed to be useful for churches involving themselves in post disaster recovery work. As well as some general information on participatory disaster risk management (PDRM), there are some practical examples of inter-church recovery initiatives carried out following both the 2009 Victorian floods, and the 2011 Victorian floods. […]

The Global Humanitarian and Development Agency Directory is an invaluable resource for both Australian Emergency Managers and overseas Disaster Risk Management (DRM) practitioners, but also for other interested stakeholders such as researchers and students.