Harden Up Queensland

• Green Cross Australia

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20 October 2011Harden Up is a Green Cross Australia led partnership that aims to empower Queenslanders to become self-reliant during natural disasters. It is funded by the Natural Disaster Resilience Program, which is funded through shared contributions from the Australian Government and the Queensland Government.

Together we are building a world-first disaster resilience portal through which Australia's severe weather history and latest climate data and projections will be visualised by Queenslanders to encourage them to take practical steps to become more self-reliant through major weather events, embracing sustainability and community engagement along the way.

Social media offers the potential for community interaction with accessible scientific trends and practical resilience advice. Green Cross Australia is Australia's leading social media NGO and brings its community/research/business partnership model to address the challenge of improving Queensland's disaster resilience.

HardenUp.org will build community resilience to severe weather by raising awareness of hazard exposure through a scalable social media platform that encourages Queenslanders to:

1. identify their personal risk exposure to cyclone, severe storm and storm surge;

2. take practical actions to reduce hazard exposure;

3. build community resilience by getting involved in local volunteering programs; and

4. adopt sustainable practices, especially by making green choices when recovering from severe weather events.

HardenUp.org's self-reliance message will integrate community natural hazard resilience and climate mitigation objectives, with a focus on how to prepare for, survive through and recover sustainably from major weather events. We will draw on deep resilience and climate prediction expertise and materials of our corporate and research partners.

By enabling world-class visualisation solutions and simple user-driven navigation pathways our platform will create a lasting scalable platform for online community, government, business and research preparedness engagement.