Enhancing Networks for Resilience Inter-organisational collaboration for disaster resilience: A case study of the Southern Grampians Glenelg Primary Care Partnership

SNA brings a range of unique insights and methods to a research project. However, the strengths and limits of SNA as a method must be thought through early in the research design and the research must anticipate how the results can meaningfully contribute to the understanding of an issue. To date, SNA in disasters risk management and climate change adaptation has focused on better understanding the flow of information and resources through networks, linking them to notions of adaptive capacity and resilience. In disaster risk management, such research has concentrated on networks enacted during disaster response and recovery stages. Investigations of adaptive capacity and resilience need to move towards prevention and preparedness activities and be based on relationships that go beyond information flows, such as processes of applied learning and shared decision making. Our research provides an approach for how this shift in analytical perspective can be catalysed. Future research will need to focus on furthering understanding the enablers of applied learning through collaboration as well as the network governance characteristics of shared decision making, shared responsibilities and leadership within SGGPCP or similar networks. The SGGPCP is well placed to continue brokering relationships amongst diverse actors within and beyond the SGGPCP, to help agencies develop innovative solutions to complex issues, like natural and human-induced disasters and climate change.