Organisation Resilience Ready: Prepare for Natural and Socio-Economic Hazards

Resilience is no longer only an emergency management responsibility.

In this program, you will explore how to anticipate disruption, decide with incomplete information and communicate clearly when the pressure is highest.

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What to expect

Organisations are operating in an environment of increasing uncertainty. Natural hazards, cyberattacks, geopolitical instability, pandemics, infrastructure failures, supply-chain disruptions and social inequities can rapidly escalate across organisational and jurisdictional boundaries.

Resilience is therefore no longer simply an emergency-management responsibility. It is a core capability requiring executives to anticipate disruption, make decisions under uncertainty, communicate effectively, coordinate across sectors and balance immediate operational demands with long-term adaptation and investment.

This highly interactive executive education program examines resilience at the level of the individual, organisation, infrastructure network, community and region. Participants will explore how risks become interconnected, why seemingly isolated disruptions can generate cascading consequences, and how leaders can strengthen preparedness, response, recovery and adaptation.

The program combines contemporary resilience frameworks with scenario exercises, simulations, facilitated discussions, case clinics, peer consulting and a practical team capstone.

Is this course for you

This program is ideal for professionals responsible for managing risk, resilience, and crisis response across organisations, sectors, and infrastructure systems.

This program is suited to individuals who:

diagnose risk, vulnerability, and resilience challenges across assets, networks, and communities
identify interdependencies and potential cascading failures across sectors and infrastructure
apply scenario planning, stress-testing, and business continuity approaches to prepare for disruption
make defensible decisions under conditions of incomplete, contradictory, or rapidly changing information
communicate effectively with employees, stakeholders, government, communities, and the media
develop governance, escalation, and decision-making protocols for crisis and recovery contexts

What you will explore

During this program, you will develop a practical framework for building and sustaining resilience across assets, networks, organisations and regions. The program focuses on scenario planning, crisis governance, cross-sector collaboration and recovery strategy, helping participants lead confidently through natural and socio-economic disruption.

By the end of this program, you should be able to:

Apply a practical framework for diagnosing resilience gaps across assets, networks, organisations and regions
Use scenario planning, stress-testing, and business continuity and crisis playbooks with confidence
Apply sharper governance and decision-making protocols for operating under uncertainty, including media and community communication
Balance immediate incident response with longer-term adaptation, recovery and investment
Draw on a cross-sector network spanning behavioural science, policy, finance, engineering and data

Where this course can take you

During this training course, you will explore the foundations of resilience, distinguishing it from risk, and examine the broader hazard landscape along with interdependencies and cascading failure. You will consider decision-making under uncertainty, risk perception and communication, and the behavioural and psychological dimensions of crisis leadership.

The course also focuses on systems and infrastructure, covering critical infrastructure networks, cascading failure simulations and complex-systems thinking, along with dashboards, metrics and reporting on resilience. You will apply this learning through a capstone component involving team presentations and take-away tools such as scenario cards, communication templates, after-action review templates and a resilience metrics dashboard. Delivery blends mini-lectures, tabletop exercises and simulations, case clinics, peer consulting, and guest input from senior practitioners across emergency services, government and industry.

About the Facilitator

Professor Doina Olaru

Professor, UWA Business School, Management and Organisations
School of Social Sciences, Planning and Transport Research Centre

Professor Doina Olaru is an experienced researcher and educator with expertise in decision-making, transport and infrastructure systems, travel behaviour, modelling and applied analytics. She is a faculty member of UWA Business School.

Throughout her career, Doina has led multidisciplinary research programs addressing complex problems involving infrastructure, mobility, technology, communities and public policy. Her work is distinguished by its strong engagement with government and industry and by its focus on translating analytical evidence into practical decisions and improved community outcomes.