Highlights from Disaster Reduction Week
Building Resilience in Action: Highlights from RMIA’s Inaugural Disaster Reduction Week
RMIA’s inaugural Disaster Reduction Week (13-17 October) marked a significant step forward in fostering collaboration, innovation, and leadership in resilience across sectors. Delivered in partnership with Battleground, the week-long initiative brought together over 500 registrants from industries spanning finance, infrastructure, education, and government, reflecting the growing appetite to strengthen risk maturity and organisational readiness in a complex and unpredictable world.
Across a dynamic program of conversations, webinars, and simulations, participants explored how emerging technologies, practical leadership frameworks, and data-driven tools are reshaping the way organisations anticipate, absorb, and adapt to disruption.
Resilience in Action: Live Podcast with Battleground
The week began with a live Battleground Chats podcast featuring Craig Goldberg, Founder of Battleground, and Simon Levy, RMIA CEO. Together, they unpacked the evolving landscape of disaster reduction and reflected on the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s observation that many investment decisions remain risk blind.
“It is a sobering reminder of the gap between understanding risk and acting on it,” said Simon. “Scenario planning is not just about predicting what might happen, it is about testing the strength of our strategies and revealing where resilience begins to break.”
The discussion set a powerful tone for the week, emphasising that effective resilience requires not just systems, but leadership and alignment between intent and investment.
AI-Powered Resilience in Action: Software Showcase
On Monday afternoon, Peter Duffy and Joe McDavitt from Battleground demonstrated how Battleground Live, their integrated Risk and Resilience system, connects the dots across people, systems, and data to enhance decision-making in times of disruption.
Attendees gained insights into the challenges of traditional risk systems, which are often fragmented, governance-heavy, and disconnected from daily operations. The presentation showcased how Battleground Live places an organisation’s operating engine at the centre of its resilience strategy.
Key takeaways included:
The importance of integrated, user-focused systems that make quality data entry easy and meaningful.
How end-to-end visibility enables both rapid response and long-term root-cause analysis.
The power of technology in simplifying collaboration and turning data into actionable insights.
This session helped participants reimagine how technology can underpin a living, evolving approach to resilience.
Risk Leadership Unplugged: CRO Roundtable
Thursday morning’s invitation-only CRO Roundtable brought together senior leaders from finance, higher education, infrastructure, and beyond for an open discussion on resilience tolerances and service level priorities.
As one attendee shared, “The roundtable this morning was invaluable. It was a really good use of time with genuine, practical insights shared across industries.”
The dialogue revealed a shared truth: resilience is not just about continuity, but about clarity of purpose under pressure. Themes that resonated strongly included:
Customer-first continuity, defining what the community values most during disruption.
Making tough trade-offs, as setting Minimum Service Levels often means prioritising one group of customers over another.
Understanding the resilience tolerances of critical third-party providers.
Testing for unknown vulnerabilities through challenging, realistic exercises.
Fostering a learning culture by framing drills as opportunities to learn, not tests to pass.
Simon noted that the session’s central question, “Are resilience decisions driven by public perception, commercial realities, or ethical imperatives?” captured the complexity risk leaders face every day.
“Resilience is not just a technical challenge; it is a leadership imperative,” he said.
Lessons in Risk Management: Cutting-Edge Case Study
Thursday afternoon’s Cutting-Edge Case Study webinar was one of the week’s most popular sessions, attracting over 100 attendees for an in-depth exploration of real-world resilience lessons. The event’s success has led to its insights being developed into a feature article with popular online publication, StrategicRISK. Readers can look forward to seeing the story published in the coming months.
Learning in Real Time: The Crisis Simulation
The week concluded with a live crisis simulation attended by more than 80 professionals from over 50 organisations. The session immersed participants in a fast-evolving scenario involving financial misconduct within a fictional company.
Facilitated by Craig Goldberg and Luke Smailes, the “choose your own adventure” simulation used the Battleground Live Simulations Module to deliver real-time injects, polls, and media challenges, testing participants’ decision-making under pressure.
The exercise sparked debate on when to activate a Crisis Management Team, who should be involved when a senior executive is implicated, and how to balance transparent communication with reputational risk.
Battleground emphasised a key principle throughout the session:
“Simulations are not about passing or failing. They are about learning. Every exercise should leave participants more confident, more capable, and better prepared for when the unexpected happens.”
By the Numbers
Across the week, over 500 professionals registered for Disaster Reduction Week events, with more than 75 percent of attendees coming from outside the RMIA membership base. Engagement was strongest in the software showcase and case study sessions, highlighting growing interest in practical, technology-enabled approaches to resilience.
Looking Ahead
RMIA’s inaugural Disaster Reduction Week set a new benchmark for how the risk community collaborates, learns, and leads in building resilience.
“This week reaffirmed that when we bring together diverse voices, challenge assumptions, and centre resilience in our decision-making, we unlock new pathways to sustainable risk reduction and shared progress,” said Simon Levy.
Craig Goldberg, Battleground Founder and CEO added, "The week proved that resilience and risk work hand in hand to assist organisations and communities to reduce the impact of disasters. Battleground was proud to bring to life this inaugural week to life with RMIA."
RMIA looks forward to continuing this conversation and building Disaster Reduction Week into a flagship annual event that drives practical resilience, innovation, and stronger partnerships across Australasia.
*If you missed any of these events, you can access the recordings through RMIA’s Exclusive Member Webinar Library.