ACRS RRSN Webinar: No Other Way Around

This event is free for ACRS members and $35 for non-members. Learn more about ACRS Membership here.

Rural roads often sit in areas that experience severe heat, cold, storms and flooding. These reduce levels of service and close roads entirely, isolating remote communities. Despite the risks, some road users still attempt the journey.

The ACRS Rural Road Safety Network invites you to join a webinar where the presenters will take you on a journey from managing the asset, to the warning, to the person in the vehicle.

PRESENTERS:

Dr Mitchell Anderson is CEO and co-founder of Urban Intelligence, an Ōtautahi Christchurch company that helps councils and infrastructure providers turn natural hazard evidence into shared, continuously updated risk intelligence for investment, planning and emergency management decisions. He sits on the SRA International Board. He and his teams research examine how hazards disrupt infrastructure networks and cut communities off from essential services, with work published in Nature Communications, Nature Climate Change, Risk Analysis and Cities. His focus is how hazard risk becomes asset damage, service disruption and community impact, and how that reaches capital decisions.

Andrew Gissing recently finished up as Chief Executive Officer of the National Hazards Research Australia. He is one of the country’s most experienced voices on flood risk and road user decision-making. He has published extensively on vehicle-related flood fatalities and is a frequent commentator on why motorists continue to enter floodwater despite decades of warnings. Raised around Murrumbidgee flooding, he brings both national research leadership and a rural perspective to the question of what actually changes behaviour when conditions deteriorate.

Dr Amy Peden is an NHMRC Research Fellow in the School of Population Health at the University of New South Wales and a leading Australian researcher on drowning prevention and flood-related death. Her work audited learner driver handbooks across all eight Australian jurisdictions and found flood safety information missing or inconsistent in most of them, with only one explaining the meaning of flood signage. She will speak on why people drive into floodwater, and what driver licensing and education still miss.

DETAILS:

• Date: Wednesday 21 October 2026

• Time: 12:00pm to 1:00pm (AEDT) Convert to your time zone here

• Cost: Free for ACRS members | $35 for non-members (Learn more about ACRS Membership here)

• Platform: Online via Teams – link sent upon registration

• Registration Required