Relief and Recovery
Module Intentions
- Gain an overview of recovery objectives and the four recovery domains (social, built/infrastructure, economic, and environment).
- Expand your knowledge and understanding of recovery principles and key policies
- Outline the State, regional and local operational arrangements for short term recovery, including escalation and transition to long term arrangements
- Have knowledge of long-term governance arrangements and structures, including a recovery task-force and Affected Area Recovery Committees
- Understand the importance of well-planned dissemination of Public Information in relation to community recovery.
Why do you need to know about relief and recovery ?
- It informs you about the roles in Relief and Recovery of the various agencies and organisations and individuals within them
- It outlines areas of Recovery that will increase your capability and capacity to gain an understanding of the complexity of the recovery processes.
When will you apply the knowledge gained from completing this module ?
- The information contained in this module can be applied if you have an emergency event that requires you to implement your emergency management role within your organisation
What is Relief and Recovery ?
- Relief is the provision of assistance necessary to enable affected people to meet their basic needs, including for shelter, water and food; clothing, personal care and hygiene.
- Recovery is the process of dealing with the impacts of an emergency and returning social, economic, infrastructure and natural environments to an effective level of functioning.
Click below to watch the Tasmanian video Introduction to Relief and Recovery:
The role of relief and recovery
Recovery is a shared responsibility of communities and government. It involves all levels of government – local, state and commonwealth – as well as affected communities and non-government and community organisations. Recovery starts during the emergency response and encompasses linked and overlapping phases of relief and short term recovery, early recovery planning and medium to long term recovery.
To be successful, recovery efforts need to be coordinated and collaborative. Communities and governments need to work together to identify recovery needs, and to plan and implement recovery actions.
Click to reveal the Tasmanian Government’s objectives in recovery are to:
Support the restoration of social, economic, infrastructure and natural environments to minimise long-term consequences for individual and community wellbeing, the economy and environment
Facilitate community participation in recovery planning and decision-making
Ensure that government and non-government support is targeted and appropriate
Assist communities to rebuild in a way that enhances resilience across social, economic, infrastructure and environmental values and encourages risk management
Learn from experience and continually refine arrangements to enhance future recovery processes.
The Tasmanian Emergency Management Arrangements-TEMA
The TEMA outlines Tasmania’s Recovery arrangements in an emergency event. Recovery is focused on and led by affected communities. Government recovery efforts aim to support communities through the recovery process and should recognise the key leadership role of landowners, local communities and their leaders.
Agencies with functional responsibilities prepare and maintain arrangements to manage the delivery and coordination of relevant recovery functions, including partnerships and support arrangements with NGOs and community groups.
This diagram and the text below, reflects the process of moving from through the following stages of Transitioning from Response to Recovery which is also outlined in the TEMA, Steps in the process include:
- The emergency event
- Initial ongoing community development work
- Early recovery-Relief
- Long term recovery-Response
- Ongoing community development work
In accordance with section 24F of the Emergency Management Act, all information relating to the emergency is to be transferred to the State Recovery Coordinator (if appointed) as soon as practicable after the operational response has ended. This constitutes a formal transition from response to recovery.
