DP Spotlight October - Digital Disaster Risk Management

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Digital repositories and archives play a critical role in preserving long-term access to the cultural memory and evidence contained within their significant resources. They can vary enormously in size and scope from large international data centres and national repositories to specialist or small community archives. Their digital contents may range from digital research outputs, to contemporary and historical records, to audiovisual and digitized cultural heritage materials.

Yet, all the work that is undertaken in appraising, managing, describing, curating, preserving and delivering digital content can be disrupted or even instantaneously destroyed by a disaster. Furthermore, the likelihood and consequences of disasters are increasing in severity due to two major factors: climate change and cyberattacks.

Overall, the trend of ‘faster disasters’ that are escalating with climate change and cyberattacks underscores the importance of proactive disaster risk management – before, during and after a disaster – to strengthen the resilience of digital repositories and archives. To this end, the DPC commissioned Dr Heather Brown and Annette Mills to produce a brief Guidance Note, Digital Disaster Risk Management for Repositories and Archives.

At this DPSpotlight session – timed to coincide with this year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction – Heather and Annette will talk about their work and the advice they give in this new Guidance Note. We are also very happy to announce that this publication will be made freely available to anyone as from 13th October, 2026!

About the speakers:

Heather brings deep expertise in this area, including a PhD in integrated physical and digital collection disaster response, senior leadership experience at Artlab, and her current role as ALIA’s Library Standards Librarian. She has taught digital preservation and preservation courses at the University of South Australia, authored and co authored key publications - most recently UNESCO’s Building resilience: disaster risk management for documentary heritage and digital archives training toolkit - and regularly delivers practical disaster preparedness workshops.

Annette’s experience complements this from a practitioner and sector perspective. She has taught digital preservation and preservation courses at the University of South Australia, worked for many years managing heritage collections, and is a former Secretary of Blue Shield Australia (as the ALIA representative). Annette has also delivered a range of digital preservation training and webinars.

Who can use DP Spotlight?

DP Spotlight is available to everyone in the digital preservation community, DPC Members and non-members alike, provided all participants are respectful and supportive of one another and adhere to the DPC's Inclusion and Diversity Policy.

Click BOOK NOW below to register and receive the joining information.

Recordings 

All presentations will be recorded and made available to DPC Members and Supporters via this web page after the event (login to DPC website required).

Please note – DPC Members do not need to register in order to access the recordings after the event.

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. We encourage diversity in all its forms and are committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation, whilst remaining technology and vendor neutral. We ask all those who are part of this community to be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.