What's New in Knowledge | March 2026

Welcome to the March edition of What's New in Knowledge. This monthly blog series collates key research, reports and public interest journalism from across the disaster resilience space.

In recognition of Australia’s second Extreme Heat Awareness Day – held last month and hosted by Sweltering Cities and the Australian Red Cross – this edition of What’s New in Knowledge leads with extreme heat research.

This in-press study analyses urban compound heatwaves (UCHW) and associated inequalities across 936 cities worldwide. It finds a sustained increase in UCHW between 2003 and 2019 with global urbanisation, accompanied by a general decline in associated inequalities, particularly in the Global South. Meanwhile, an environmental journalism non-profit – Dialogue Earth – has, partnered with Boston University to compile data of extreme heat effects on urban health, shown through graphs.

Focusing on Australia, the NASA Earth Observatory provided this summary of the January heatwave in Southeastern Australia. You can find out more facts and figures about this heatwave from the Bureau of Meteorology here. More broadly, this article in The Conversation warns that it may soon be necessary to intervene in Australian ecosystems to boost their heat resilience.

Three reports from an Australian Post-Event Review Capability (PERC) on extreme heat project provide a layered, systems-based analysis of how heat risk is shaped, experienced and managed in Australia focusing on:

In understanding consequences and recovery, a (paywalled) comparative analysis of tsunami recovery strategies in the Asian region identifies a range of factors that contribute to an effective recovery while also highlighting remaining challenges. Research published in the Journal of Buildings and Cities argues for a reconceptualisation of recovery through the lens of spatial justice, highlighting the dimensions of distributive justice, procedural justice, and recognition justice.

Meanwhile, Design for Disaster Recovery (paywalled) is a newly published book by David Sanderson at UNSW that shares lessons learned from leading practitioners working in urban development ‘who dissented from established top-down practices to forge better, people-centred approaches’.

In thinking about systemic risk, this paper finds that sustained temperature increases associated with climate change significantly elevate systemic risk in the European banking system. A review of coastal management research in Britain highlights the tough, multidimensional trade-offs required in shoreline management and risk reduction plans.

In disaster risk reduction, a range of diverse research was published in journals this month, including an examination of disciplinary perspective of community resilience to gauge the potential of transdisciplinary research and practice; a comparative study of modalities and teaching styles for disaster risk reduction education; and an analysis of the role of social infrastructure in community-based resilience using the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan as a case study. Meanwhile, a report released by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center raises awareness of challenges and opportunities for bottom-up models of humanitarian assistance, drawing from the experiences of seven partnerships under the Asian Preparedness Partnership initiative.

Closer to home, a new research brief from Natural Hazards Research Australia (NHRA) summarises research led by the University of Sydney with NSW SES that examined top-down and bottom-up community risk assessment practices and developed guidelines for their integration.  

Meanwhile, an examination of hundreds of self-recorded evacuation videos shows how people end up in dangerous situations when evacuating late. This Conversation article shares some of these terrifying videos and summarises the key findings.   

Focusing on First Nations knowledge, recommendations for the ethical and equitable engagement of Indigenous Knowledge Systems within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been released. Meanwhile, a joint UNESCO-ICHCAP project adapted and contextualised training materials to bridge cultural safeguarding with school education and disaster risk reduction frameworks in Fiji, Vanuatu, and Tonga.

Another NHRA research brief describes key learnings from a project based at the University of Wollongong that explored the supports and barriers to Aboriginal cultural land management practices in collaboration with the Wiradjuri and Wolgalu Aboriginal community of Brungle–Tumut in NSW.

Recognising inequity, a recently released book based on 58 in-depth interviews explores how the power outage in the 2021 winter storm in Texas endangered people with disabilities, arguing that this was not inevitable but rather was produced by policies that disabled vital infrastructure. Moving to California, this study indicates that socially vulnerable communities occupy different parts of the landscape and face distinct fire risk pathways depending on different dimensions of social vulnerability. Moving back to people with disabilities, this brief communication from the European Geosciences Union reports on flood exposure and disaster preparedness in facilities serving people with disabilities in Austria.

A range of research examining weather and climate change was released this month. AI modelling finds that climate change could expose 1.1 billion people to hunger by 2100. An analysis of narrative interviews explores how individuals and groups in Europe, often labelled as vulnerable, are knowledgeable and active in disaster prevention, preparedness, and response. Research by University of Technology Sydney researchers, explained for non-mathematicians in The Conversation, shows that dramatic changes in upper atmosphere are responsible for recent droughts and bushfires.

New reports released this month include one outlining how flood exposure in Germany is evolving due to interacting influences of climate change, urban expansion, and uneven protection levels.  

Alarmingly, this article reports on new research that finds the world’s reflective cloud cover has shrunk over the past 2 decades by a small degree, allowing more light in and boosting climate change. Meanwhile, a thematic brief from a UK-Canada framework research programme on climate adaptation and resilience reveals migration to be part of broader adaptation strategies, arguing that where choice is retained, migration can be a practice way to reduce risk.  

The International Organization for Standardization also released a new International Standard of note this month: ISO 14092:2026 Climate Change Adaptation – Requirements and Guidance on adaptation planning for local governments and communities (paywalled). It provides practical guidance for planning climate change adaptation at the local scale, where climate impacts are directly experienced. 

In health, this research news article explains research published by the University of Melbourne in 2025 that provides evidence supporting investment in psychological preparedness for natural disasters as a mechanism to prevent mental health exacerbation post disasters, particularly in rural communities. Meanwhile, an Australian National University study examines 2 decades of emergency department presentation data to explore health impacts of climate change in the ACT, finding a rising health burden from extreme temperatures.

Turning to research from the United States (US), this study (paywalled) shows that higher nighttime temperatures during pregnancy may be associated with a higher risk of autism diagnosis in children. Multifaceted health, social, and infrastructural impacts of hurricane-induced flooding in Southern Appalachia were examined through a recently published survey (paywalled) of 700 impacted community members.   

In governance, leadership, and capacity building, this in-press article from University of Tasmania researchers examines how team characteristics can influence the quality of scenario development for disaster management. It finds that teams with higher levels of social intelligence and creativity develop higher quality scenarios. Staying with the theme of research leadership and capacity, this commentary by Susan Cutter and Kathleen Tierney highlights women’s roles in advancing US hazards and disasters research. In a different vein, Australian researchers have developed principles to support effective use of evidence briefs for landscape fire applications that can also be applied across other areas of disaster resilience research.  

In fire management, this article presents a framework for identifying opportunities to leverage wildfire footprints to increase resistance to high-severity fire. 

In Australia, a Senate Select Committee has been holding public hearings on information integrity on climate change and energy, to inquire into ‘the prevalence and impacts of misinformation and disinformation which relates to climate change and energy’. Their final report is due to land in late March. Internationally, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO is holding NEAMWave26 – a near month-long exercise during March to test end-to-end tsunami procedures across 5 scenarios.  

Frontiers in technology continued to be expanded this month. This study explores how generative AI chatbots, when designed equitably and inclusively, can strengthen youth engagement in human rights education, looking through the lens of disaster risk reduction. Staying with the theme of technology and empowerment, a study in Indonesia integrated technology, nature-based solutions and local ecological knowledge in a model of disaster education focused on increasing community preparedness. This article from New Zealand argues that, while satellite and AI-enabled analytics provide reliable, real-time pictures of ground conditions during natural hazard events, the governance frameworks that control access to satellite data are not robust enough to ensure the right data gets to the right places when communities need it most. 

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Sources: Prevention Web, Nature, The Conversation, UNDRR, International Journal on Disaster Risk Reduction, LinkedIn, Sandy Whight, Isabel Cornes, Darryl Glover, Blythe McLennan.