Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The federal government has announced its much-anticipated gas reservation scheme, to provide security for Australia’s domestic supply and put downward pressure on prices.

The scheme, working though permits, will only affect new contracts. Although it will apply to all new contracts from now, the plan will not begin operating until 2027. Consultations on details will start in the new year.

The government acknowledges the importance of gas in the energy transition, and is seeking to get on top of both availability and cost issues.

“Australian gas for Australian users, ” Energy Minister Chris Bowen said, unveiling the plan with Industry Minister Tim Ayres after a cabinet meeting in Canberra.

The government says one of the principles to guide the detailed design of the scheme is that it “should increase domestic supply, as present contracts expire, to drive downward pressure on price”.

Exporters will have to reserve between 15% and 25% of gas production for the local market. The required proportion will be settled in the consultations.

Bowen said this would amount to 200 to 350 petajoules a year, “which our advice is would be enough not only to cater for the domestic shortfalls that are forecast, but obviously to slightly oversupply the Australian domestic market”.

The scheme will have the capacity to be national in scope, working with gas market mechanisms in states and territories. Western Australia presently has a reservation scheme which operates successfully.

The plan was due to be announced a week ago but that was delayed after the Bondi attack. The government was anxious to get it out before Christmas.

Before the May election the government attacked the Coalition’s plan for a reservation system, which varied in detail from this one.

“The reservation scheme should provide long term certainty for commercial production and investment, including by clearly setting domestic supply requirements well in advance of establishment and minimise impact on Australia’s LNG trade partners and their energy security,” Bowen, Ayres and Resources Minister Madeleine King said in a statement.

Bowen said: “Gas has an important role to play in our energy system as we transition towards 82% renewables. Unlike coal, gas power generators can be turned on and off in a couple of minutes – providing the ultimate backstop in our energy grid”.

Ayres said: “Secure and affordable gas for local manufacturing firms and heavy industry is critical to backing Australian industry and sovereign capability.

“Our government is supporting heavy industry to decarbonise as much as possible – but not every facility can, and some use gas as an irreplaceable feedstock.

“This is one of the reasons we will introduce a domestic gas reservation scheme – and I welcome industry input into its design in 2026,” Ayres said.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Albanese government announces gas reservation plan to address supply and price – https://theconversation.com/albanese-government-announces-gas-reservation-plan-to-address-supply-and-price-272433

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Jacobson, Senior Lecturer in Condensed Matter Physics, The University of Queensland

In 1977, an American physicist named John H. Van Vleck won the Nobel prize for his work on magnetism. In his Nobel lecture, amid a discussion of rare earth elements, one sentence leaps out:

Miss Frank and I made the relevant calculations.

Who was Miss Frank? Van Vleck credits her with key work on the quantum mechanics of magnetism, but she is almost absent from the history books.

Amelia Frank published a handful of scholarly papers which are well-cited for the time. Yet histories of physics mostly mention her only as the wife of Eugene Wigner, who was himself awarded the physics Nobel in 1963.

Why don’t we know more about Frank, and why aren’t her contributions recognised? When we searched through the archives, we found a remarkable scientific life unfolding at the dawn of quantum mechanics.

A bright beginning

Born in 1906, Amelia Z. Frank grew up a junkyard owner’s daughter in Adrian, Michigan. Local newspaper reports paint her as a bright, accomplished teen and an independent thinker.

As an undergraduate at a leading women’s university, Goucher College, Frank joined the physics club. Her senior yearbook relates that her presentation on the Compton effect – a description of how light interacts with electrically charged particles, named after Arthur Compton – was both highly technical and engaging.

Nine months later, Compton gained wide public recognition with the award of the 1927 Nobel prize for demonstrating that X-rays could behave like particles. Frank clearly had her finger on the pulse of the quantum mechanical revolution then occurring in physics.

Where many scholars intrigued by the quantum frontier pursued their study in Europe, Frank went to the University of Wisconsin. There, she met the recently recruited Van Vleck.

Quantum innovation

Arriving in Madison in 1928, Frank had placed herself at the American centre of quantum innovation.

At that time, quantum mechanics could describe isolated particles or atoms, but puzzling out the behaviour of solid materials was proving difficult.

Magnetism was the perfect testbed, as it can only be explained by quantum mechanics – not classical physics. Frank, supervised by Van Vleck, turned to rare earth elements, where magnetism is strong and existing theories were insufficient. Could quantum physics resolve this conundrum?

Frank’s thesis, partially published in Physical Review in 1932, focused on the element samarium. It showed quantum mechanical corrections were needed to explain the experimental data and contains a plot that appears in Van Vleck’s Nobel lecture, labelled “V.V. & F”.

Hard times

After her PhD, Frank worked as a tutor at the University of Wisconsin and continued her research. Her 1935 article on crystal field theory showed how samarium’s energy levels shift due to neighbouring atoms.

Colleagues described her as a promising scholar and her publication record was good. But she faced barriers that slowed her work.

Money was one issue. Frank was supporting her younger sister, an undergraduate chemistry student, and it was the middle of the Great Depression.

In an unpublished 1935 letter we found in Box 12, Folder 214 of the J. H. Van Vleck papers held by the American Institute of Physics in the Niels Bohr Library and Archive, Frank told Van Vleck she’d had to take another job to survive:

Our finances were in such bad shape that I suggested to various people that I’d be interested in typing […] and so I have taught classes, tutored, typed and cooked, but I have not finished my paper.

Van Vleck was seeking positions for Frank, but jobs were scarce – and as a Jewish woman in that era, Frank would have faced multiple forms of discrimination.

Marriage and death

Ultimately, Frank left physics, resigning from the University of Wisconsin around October 1936. When Van Vleck asked why, Frank let him in on a then-closely guarded secret: she had started a relationship with new colleague Eugene Wigner.

The pair married shortly before Christmas. Wigner described himself as astonished by his love for her.

But their happiness didn’t last. Just weeks after the wedding, Frank fell ill.

Wigner said it was her heart, others said it was cancer. Either way, Frank’s condition was grave.

After months in hospital, she returned to Michigan. She passed away in her parents’ home on August 16 1937. She was 31.

An enduring contribution

Frank’s untimely death is one reason why she is under-recognised today. But it is not a sufficient one.

Frank kept company with other trailblazing women across the country. Her flatmate in Wisconsin was Mary Bunting, who was later president of the women-only Radcliffe College and oversaw its integration with Harvard.

Frank’s ambition, intellect and drive took her to the frontiers of knowledge. There, Van Vleck’s support kept her in physics long enough to make lasting, if overlooked, contributions.

Ninety years have passed, but Frank’s life exemplifies women’s ongoing experiences in physics, good and bad.

Women remain drastically under-represented in quantum physics. To take one example, a 2023 survey found 87.5% of full-time Australian quantum researchers were men.

Women remain more likely than men to have caring responsibilities that increase financial stress and reduce research time. And mentorship and purposeful community-building remain vital to bring women into the field – and keep them there.

In the end, this may be Frank’s most enduring contribution to quantum physics. Recovering her story is important because it allows her scientific contributions to be appropriately recognised. Perhaps more importantly, her story reminds us that women have belonged in quantum physics from the beginning.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Who was Amelia Frank? The life of a forgotten physicist – https://theconversation.com/who-was-amelia-frank-the-life-of-a-forgotten-physicist-270953

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susanna Trnka, Professor of Anthropolgy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

Health isn’t what it used to be – namely the absence of being sick.

Ask any teenager today what it means to them to be healthy, and you’re likely to hear about the vast array of areas in their lives they are “working on”.

This can include emotional health, aesthetic health, fitness, nutrition, social health, financial health, social media health, mental health, spiritual health … the list goes on.

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, health wasn’t something I or my friends thought about much. We took it for granted it was either something you had, or were unfortunate to have lost.

In contrast, today’s young people view health as something they can “grow” and should already be working on. Health has become an investment. And, through a process of expansion I call “healthization”, it has become an increasingly diverse one.

Beyond Dr Google

In my recent research, I asked 235 young New Zealanders aged 14–24 to talk about how they use digital technology as part of understanding their health. The results inform my recent book, Healthization: Turning Life into Health.

Some of the results were not unexpected: young people discussed googling their symptoms and self-diagnosing anything from a sore throat to a miscarriage.

They also talked about using online quizzes and a variety of websites and forums to ascertain their mental wellbeing, including self-diagnosing themselves with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

But at the same time as invoking the value of using “Dr Google”, they also talked about sophisticated strategies they use for determining what forms of online and offline knowledge are trustworthy.

They described how they triangulate online results, determine when to check with medical professionals, and frequently compare their understanding of health information with friends, siblings or parents.

Perhaps more unexpectedly, their definitions of what it means to be healthy were all-encompassing. So much so that for some there appeared to be almost no limit to the role that striving to be healthy plays in their lives.

Things that a generation ago were thought to be important but not necessarily part of being healthy – such as friendship, beauty, having a sense of community, dating, doing well in school, creating “down time” or moments of relaxation – are now rolled into this expansive concept of health.

Not having these things is no longer seen as sad or due to misfortune, but as being actively detrimental to one’s health.

Health’s moral dimension

In a country often stereotyped for its rugged but sometimes cavalier “she’ll be right” ethos, young people openly worry about their own and other people’s physical health in ways strikingly at odds with previous generations.

There has been a lot written about the 21st-century focus on self-improvement. But young people also describe eagerly helping others in their health projects or “journeys”, spending time googling mental health issues so they can help diagnose friends, or even taking their parents along on a run.

Indeed, mental and emotional health in particular are singled out as areas where young people see a generational role to promote greater transparency and social acceptance.

Health takes on a moral dimension as young people describe investing in their own and others’ health as a means to achieve “a good life”. In fact, not to work on one’s health was often depicted as morally wrong.

Through the process of healthization, health has come to cover a much broader terrain than it did a generation or so ago. So, is it even achievable?

Or, given so many different components to health – from minding one’s time on social media to drinking enough water, from working on establishing meaningful friendships to logging in with MapMyRun – is it an illusion that no one can possibly fulfil?

While this might initially appear to be the case, the young people I interviewed suggest differently.

While some did indeed seem overwhelmed by the amount of necessary “work” on health that faces them, others noted the need for “balance” and pathways (sometimes multiple ones) toward enacting those aspects of health that appear most meaningful and achievable.

Finding real balance

In my book I suggest the turn towards such holistic views of health not only helps us acknowledge the wide variety of things that affect our wellbeing, but highlights how the mind and body are interrelated – how our mental wellbeing can influence our physical health and vice versa.

The downside is that it can feel overwhelming and also draw attention away from other things we value and which we need or want to do. These may not necessarily be good for our health but are nonetheless socially meaningful.

That might include devoting time to caring for family members, for example, rather than working on our physical fitness. Or sacrificing our time or wellbeing to promote or protect a greater cause.

The trick, the book concludes, might be to adopt a point of view that embraces the merits of a broad view of health while also encouraging ourselves to look beyond it.

Just as young people are recognising the importance of working on the self while also emphasising the importance of their relationships with others, maybe we can all discover a better kind of “balance”.

Susanna Trnka received funding for this research from the Royal Society of New Zealand – Marsden Fund.

– ref. More than just being well: teens and Gen Z are redefining what it means to be healthy – https://theconversation.com/more-than-just-being-well-teens-and-gen-z-are-redefining-what-it-means-to-be-healthy-269258

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Nicholas, Lecturer in Dance and Performance Science, Edith Cowan University

The festive season can throw our exercise routines out the window. You might be staying somewhere different, with no access to a gym. Maybe your yoga studio is closed or social sport is on a break. Or you might just be too flat out with social events to find the time.

For some people, a break from pushing their bodies will be exactly what they need.

But others will want to keep up the fitness and strength they’ve been working on throughout the year – and some will crave the mental release.

Here are some low-equipment, time-efficient strategies to keep you exercising through the break.

Staying fit

If you want to stay fit over the festive season, walking can be an easy and effective low-impact way to keep enjoying the health benefits of cardio exercise.

But how much should you walk? The more steps you take each day, the lower your risk of dying early, from any cause.

For adults 60 years and older, the benefits plateau around 6,000–8,000 steps a day, and for those under 60, at 8,000–10,000 steps. So these are good to aim for.

But people who run a lot or play a sport may be trying to maintain a higher level of cardio fitness over the holidays.

So, say you have been including brisk walks, running or high-intensity interval training into your routine.

You can reduce the number of sessions (for example, from five to two sessions a week) and/or how long they last (for example, from 40 minutes down to 20 minutes).

But to maintain your fitness, it’s key to push to the same intensity as normal when you do train.

You can also try cardio exercise snacks. These are short, high-intensity workouts, typically less than ten minutes. But they’ve been shown to enhance cardio fitness.

There is evidence even five minutes or less of high-intensity interval training – where you work hard for 30 seconds and then rest for 30 seconds – can still improve cardio fitness.

Another recent study found one minute of vigorous physical activity has the same health benefits as 4–9 minutes of moderate activity, and up to 153 minutes of light exercise.

So even a tiny “snack” is worth doing, if you’re able to exercise at a high intensity.

Keeping strong

For those who want to build or maintain muscle strength, small bouts of body weight training can work as resistance exercise snacks – a similar idea to cardio snacks.

These involve using your body for resistance rather than gym equipment. So they are lower intensity, but you do them more often (most days or even every day).

A suggested approach: do just 1-2 exercises per muscle group and 1–2 sets per exercise. Do this for up to 15 minutes at a time, in five to seven sessions a week.

Below is an example workout which can be completed as a circuit at home or the local park. Be sure to include a warm-up and cool-down either side of the workout.

If you already lift moderate to high loads at the gym, and still have access to equipment, you may prefer to try a low-volume and high-load approach.

This might mean you do just one session a week, and one set of exercises, but you keep the amount you lift the same.

Maintaining your wellbeing

Many of us exercise because it helps us de-stress and improves our mental health.

One 2025 study pooling the evidence shows people often report better wellbeing on days when they are active, and dips on days they are more sedentary.

Fitting exercise in during holidays can be tricky. But this period, which can mean more social events and fun as well as stress, tension, conflict – and for some people, loneliness – may be when you need it most.

Activities such as swimming, yoga or walking for 20–40 minutes can help to improve mood, anxiety and tension.

Exercising in a calming environment is also important for reducing stress. So if you can, find somewhere quiet or go outdoors in nature, whether solo or with family and friends.

Exercise can also be a chance to connect. Research shows for families with younger children, being active together can increase the feeling of involvement and closeness.

Consider family activities for the break such as bike riding, swimming at the pool or beach, Christmas light walking trials or “exergaming” (digital games that involve physical activity) such as Just Dance.

But it’s OK to take a break

Regular physical activity is important for health and wellbeing. But it’s possible to become fixated on fitness and for feelings of worry or withdrawal to creep in at the thought of working out less over the holiday period.

Don’t forget that taking a few weeks off can also be good for you. It allows the body and mind to have a break and recover both physically and mentally from a regular or strict exercise regime.

Sleep and downtime are vital for recovery. But you’re more likely to neglect these during busy periods, such as when you’re juggling deadlines and social events in the lead up to the holidays. And you’re more likely to be stressed and tired too.

Allowing yourself to reduce your exercise commitments, prioritise self-care, and allow more time to rest might be just what you need.

Seek guidance from your health-care provider and/or an exercise professional before undertaking a new exercise program.

Joanna Nicholas has worked for a business selling fitness equipment and delivers strength and conditioning sessions at dance studios.

– ref. No gym or regular routine? Here’s how to stay fit over the holiday break – https://theconversation.com/no-gym-or-regular-routine-heres-how-to-stay-fit-over-the-holiday-break-270296

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamshid Aghaei, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Central Queensland University, CQUniversity Australia

Extreme weather is placing greater strain on Australia’s power grids. In 2022, the record-breaking Northern Rivers floods blacked out almost 70,000 households. A powerful storm in 2024 cut electricity to more than half a million Victorians. In 2025, Cyclone Alfred left 320,000 homes without power.

Large-scale power outages often coincide with mass evacuations. During the Black Summer megafires, tens of thousands of people fled.

Extreme weather will become more common and more extreme as the climate changes. Traditional far-flung power grids are often vulnerable to disasters. Trees fall on power lines, torrential rains cause outages, and bushfires can melt transformers.

Electricity is essential for emergency services, medical clinics, evacuation centres and communications systems to function during these events. Maintaining a reliable supply is a challenge.

Tapping into Australia’s growing fleet of household batteries could solve this problem by supplying electricity at local scale for hours or days, even if the grid goes down. It will take work to make this a reality, but the payoff during disasters could well be worth it.

Household storage is going mainstream

People usually use household batteries to cut their electricity bills. This works by storing excess solar energy during the day — or grid electricity when cheap — and using it later when prices are higher.

The number of household batteries installed under the federal government’s new Cheaper Home Batteries Program have now topped 146,000 in five months. The goal is to install 1 million new batteries by 2030, and the government recently boosted the program’s funding.

Batteries can be a lifeline

After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, a combined solar and battery system restored power to a children’s hospital.

In California, battery-supported microgrids — small, self-contained energy systems that can operate independently of the main grid — kept essential services running during the intense 2025 wildfires.

The large batteries in electric vehicles are also proving their worth during disasters. When Cyclone Alfred triggered blackouts in southeast Queensland, some EV owners used their cars to power essential items in their homes.

These examples show home batteries and other local energy storage methods can be used as lifelines for communities.

People usually use their household batteries to reduce their power bills. But they can do a lot more, especially during emergencies.

They can switch to a standalone “islanding” mode, where they power essential household appliances without drawing on the grid.

Some can be relocated to evacuation centres or temporary accommodation to supply critical needs such as lighting, refrigeration and communications.

It’s important to know batteries won’t automatically act as a backup in a blackout. Household batteries have to be specifically set up to be able to cut the connection with the grid temporarily. This capability requires an inverter which supports islanding or backup operation as well as an automatic transfer switch to stop the battery feeding energy back to the grid when the grid is down.

Batteries beyond households

If just 10% of the Victorian households hit by the major blackout in 2024 had an average-sized home battery (currently 17 kilowatt-hours), these could have delivered as much as 900 megawatt-hours of power.

During future disasters, storage capacity at this scale would have been enough to power 10 megawatts’ worth of essential services for at least 2.5 days. We estimate that would be enough to power evacuation shelters, keep medical clinics operating and run emergency communications.

This principle is already being road tested in Queensland’s Driving Resilience project, which is exploring how mobile energy hubs can supply displaced communities with electricity during floods and cyclones. These hubs are being developed to include multiple sources of energy such as fuel cells to convert hydrogen to electricity.

The challenge will be finding ways to get home batteries to work together during disasters. One solution is linking batteries through “virtual power plants” or community microgrids, where software connects and coordinates thousands of small systems to act as one. These systems make it possible to pool and share many batteries, even if the main power grid is unavailable.

In normal times, these networks can be used to support the grid by cutting costs to consumers and making it possible for more renewable power to enter the grid. During disasters, they could be redirected to power hospitals, evacuation shelters or entire neighbourhoods.

Could battery subsidies boost disaster readiness?

If household batteries are proving their worth during disasters, could subsidy programs be reshaped to increase energy resilience?

One option could be to design resilience subsidies giving extra financial support to households in disaster-prone zones. These would include bushfire-exposed urban fringe areas, flood-prone areas near rivers and coasts or in cyclone-exposed northern regions. These extra subsidies would only apply if households commit to sharing their stored electricity during emergencies.

While some people may be concerned about installing household batteries in fire-prone areas, the risks can be reduced by ensuring low-risk battery chemistries such as lithium iron phosphate are used. The alternative – diesel generators – come with their own set of problems if there’s a fire.

A scheme like this would ensure public funds are directed not only towards reducing household power bills, but towards strengthening community preparedness. Households with batteries could pledge to support neighbours, evacuation shelters and vulnerable people in exchange for higher subsidies.

Batteries subsidies or interest free loans already exist at federal, state and territory levels.

Adding a focus on resilience would make these programs work better for households and society at large.

Jamshid Aghaei receives funding from Queensland Reconstruction Authority for the Driving Resilience project, supported under the Queensland Resilience and Risk Reduction Fund.

Mohammad Reza Salehizadeh works as a Research Fellow at Central Queensland University (CQU), contributing to a project funded by the Queensland Reconstruction Authority under the Queensland Resilience and Risk Reduction Fund as part of the Driving Resilience initiative.

Milad Haghani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. When disasters strike, home batteries could be a lifeline – https://theconversation.com/when-disasters-strike-home-batteries-could-be-a-lifeline-264698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Missaka Nandalochana Hettiarachchi, Adjunct Professor in Disaster Management, James Cook University

This Christmas Day marks 21 years since the terrifying Indian Ocean tsunami. As we remember the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in this tragic event, it is also a moment to reflect on what followed. How do communities rebuild after major events such as the tsunami, and other disasters like it? What were the financial and hidden costs of reconstruction?

Beyond the immediate human toll, disasters destroy hundreds of thousands of buildings each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan damaged a record 1.2 million structures in Philippines. Last year, earthquakes and cyclones damaged more than half a million buildings worldwide. For communities to rebuild their lives, these structures must be rebuilt.

While governments, non-government agencies and individuals struggle to finance post-disaster reconstruction, rebuilding also demands staggering volumes of building materials. In turn, these require vast amounts of natural resource extraction.

For instance, an estimated one billion burnt clay bricks were needed to reconstruct the half-million homes destroyed in the Nepal earthquake. This is enough bricks to circle the Earth six times if laid end to end. How can we responsibly source such vast quantities of materials to meet demand?

Demand causes problems

Sudden spikes in demand have led to severe shortages of common building materials after nearly every major disaster over the past two decades, including the 2015 Nepal earthquake and the 2019 California wildfires. These shortages often trigger price hikes of 30–40%, which delays reconstruction and prolongs the suffering of affected communities. Disasters not only increase demand for building materials but also generate enormous volumes of debris.

For example, the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake produced more than 100 million cubic meters of debris – 40 times the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Disaster debris can pose serious environmental and health risks, including toxic dust and waterway pollution. But some debris can be safely transformed into useful assets such as recycled building materials. Rubble can be crushed and repurposed as base for low-traffic roads or turned into cement blocks .

The consequences of poor post-disaster building materials management have reached alarming global proportions. After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, for example, the surge in sand demand led to excessive and illegal sand mining in rivers along Sri Lanka’s west coast. This caused irreversible ecological damage to two major watersheds, devastating the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and fisherpeople.

Similar impacts from the overextraction of materials such as sand, gravel, clay and timber have been reported following other major disasters, including the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Idai in Mozambique in 2019. If left unaddressed, the social, environmental and economic impacts of resource extraction will escalate to catastrophic levels, especially as climate change intensifies disaster frequency.

Urgent need for action

This crisis has yet to receive adequate international attention. Earlier this year, several global organisations came together to publish a Global Call to Action on sustainable building materials management after disasters.

Based on an analysis of 15 major disasters between 2005 and 2020, it identified three key challenges: building material shortages and price escalation, unsustainable extraction and use of building materials, and poor management of disaster debris.

Although well-established solutions exist to address these challenges, rebuilding efforts suffer from policy and governance gaps. The Call to Action urges international bodies such as the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction to take immediate policy and practical action.

Building back better and safer

After a disaster hits, it leaves an opportunity to build back better. Rebuilding can boost resilience to future hazards, encourage economic development and reduce environmental impact. The United Nations’ framework for disaster management emphasises the importance of rebuilding better and safer rather than simply restoring communities to pre-disaster conditions.

Disaster affected communities should be rebuilt with capacity to cope with future external shocks and environmental risks. Lessons can be learned from both negative and positive experiences of past disasters. For example, poor planning of some reconstruction projects after the Indian ocean Tsunami (2004) in Sri Lanka made the communities vulnerable again to coastal hazards within a few years. On the other hand, the community-led reconstruction approach followed after the Bhuj earthquake, India (2001), has resulted in safer and more socio-economically robust settlements, standing the test of 24 years.

As an integral part of the “build back better” approach, authorities must include strategies for environmentally and socially responsible management of building materials. These should encourage engineers, architects and project managers to select safe sustainable materials for reconstruction projects.

At the national level, regulatory barriers to repurposing disaster debris should be removed, whilst still ensuring safe management of hazardous materials such as asbestos. For example, concrete from fallen buildings was successfully used as road-base and as recycled aggregate for infrastructure projects following the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia and 2011 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan.

This critical issue demands urgent public and political attention. Resilient buildings made with safe sustainable material will save lives in future disasters.

Missaka Nandalochana Hettiarachchi receives funding from WWF, an environmental NGO, through his role in disaster management

– ref. Disaster after disaster: do we have enough raw materials to ‘build back better’? – https://theconversation.com/disaster-after-disaster-do-we-have-enough-raw-materials-to-build-back-better-265682

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Cross, Associate Dean (Learning & Teaching) Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice, Queensland University of Technology

With Christmas just around the corner, it can be a very busy and stressful time of year. Between festive gatherings, ticking off what’s left on your yearly to-do list and shopping online for that perfect gift, it can be easy to let your guard down against fraudsters.

Australians lost more than A$2 billion to scams in 2024. This year, losses are likely to be similar.

Often, scammers will try to create a sense of urgency, pushing their intended victims to act now. As we prepare our shopping lists and festive lunches, now is also the perfect time to be alert to scams.

Here’s how to prepare yourself – and your loved ones – for a safe and scam-free Christmas and New Year.

The current wave of scams

Online shopping scams are particularly rife at this time of year, with sales season well under way. They can take many forms.

Scammers will create fake online stores, create advertisements for products that don’t exist or send products that are inferior in quality to what was expected.

Many people are expecting more packages than usual to arrive at this time of year. Taking advantage of this, scammers send phishing text messages and emails pretending to be from from the postal service and couriers.

Investment scams occur year-round and Christmas is no different. Scammers may target you through phone calls, text messages, emails and social media posts.

Scams involving cryptocurrency are particularly common this year, and any unsolicited “investment opportunities” should raise immediate suspicion.

Romance scams: Christmas can be difficult time of year for many people. Loneliness hits a bit harder for some, and singles may be looking to start the new year in a new relationship.

Romance scams exploit our desire for a relationship. If your “partner” is asking for money under any circumstance, particularly one you have only ever met online, it should be a warning sign.

Seeing and hearing is no longer believing

The evolution of technology is rapidly changing the ways we conduct our personal and professional lives. Scammers have embraced this opportunity.

Fraudsters will use whatever tools possible to persuade and manipulate unsuspecting victims. And artificial intelligence tools have changed the game.

Deep fakes: it is easier than ever to generate high quality and realistic images and videos. Offenders will use these to help support their stories and garner your trust. Just because you have seen something does not mean it is real.

Voice cloning: as with images, scammers can now create realistic impersonations of a person’s voice with relatively small amounts of material. The distressed phone call you receive from a loved one may not be them at all, but just an scammer trying to get your money.

Drafting scripts: while large language models, such as ChatGPT and Claude, may be useful for helping you draft an email or report, scammers are using these tools to help script their fraudulent pitches. It can help offenders tailor specific ways to target potential victims.

The 3-step plan you should make now

While the threat of scams may seem overwhelming, there are three positive steps you can take right now, to reduce your risk of being a victim.

1. Do your own self-assessment

Everyone has a weakness or vulnerability that makes them open to scams. And each one is going to be different. Scammers are ruthless and systematic in their targeting.

Think about your own situation, your personality and your routines. What types of approaches might you be vulnerable to? How might you enact measures to counter these?

2. Conduct a digital audit

Ensure your accounts and devices are secured properly, with strong passwords, updated software, and multi-factor authentication where available.

Make sure you are comfortable with your privacy settings across any social media accounts. While this may seem obvious, it is still important to get the basics right and to have control over your digital footprint.

3. Create a family password

As a family, choose a word or phrase that is not obvious but is significant to you and easy to remember.

Think of it as a family password. Use this family code word or pass phrase to verify any communications that purportedly come from family members.

Staying connected

Also, make it part of your routine to talk to family and friends about the texts and emails you receive, as well as what you have seen in the news. Talking openly about the ways you are being targeted helps others recognise when it happens to them.

Analyse the different approaches you get and try to unpack what the offender is hoping to achieve and why they might be successful.

If you or someone in your family is a victim of a scam, know who you can talk to. If you are unsure of something you receive, feel confident to step back and get advice or talk to someone you trust.

Offenders rely on us acting in the moment and will instil a sense of urgency. Know that it is OK to hang up, not respond or walk away.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of a scam, you can report it to ReportCyber as well as your bank or financial institution. For support, contact iDcare. For further prevention advice, consult Scamwatch.

Cassandra Cross has previously received funding from the Australian Institute of Criminology and the Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre.

– ref. Scammers won’t take a break over Christmas. Here’s how to make a plan with your family to stay safe – https://theconversation.com/scammers-wont-take-a-break-over-christmas-heres-how-to-make-a-plan-with-your-family-to-stay-safe-269934