Sea state

BAE Systems has started construction on HMS Cardiff, the second of Britain’s Type 26 City-class frigates, which are set to replace the current anti-submarine warfare Type 23 frigates. The new class will ‘contribute to UK and allied security, but also make a strong economic contribution to the country’, says defence procurement minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan. The project milestone also provides a confidence boost for Australia’s own frigate program, which is using the Type 26 design as the baseline for the new Hunter-class warships.

According to a report by the US Naval Facilities Engineering Command, the earthquakes that hit Southern California in July caused more than US$5 billion in damage to the Naval Air Weapons Station in China Lake. The station supports research, development and testing of cutting-edge weapon systems, and getting it up and running again is now a major priority for the navy. It’s just one of several US military facilities that have been severely damaged in a series of recent natural disasters.

Australian shipbuilder Austal has signed a contract to construct two Cape-class patrol ships for Trinidad and Tobago. Metal cutting has already commenced under the $126 million contract, and delivery of the the vessels is expected in the second half of 2020. Austal has already built 10 Cape-class boats for the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Border Force.

Flight path

Russia has conducted another round of surveillance missions over the US, this time photographing a number of military facilities in Hawaii. The mission was conducted as part of an agreement under the Treaty on Open Skies, which allows member countries to perform aerial surveillance activities over the airspace of other parties to the treaty. The US last undertook an Open Skies surveillance mission over Russia in February.

A Syrian Air Force Sukhoi SU-22 fighter jet has been shot down over the rebel-held province of Idlib, near the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, has claimed responsibility for the attack. Though the group didn’t say how it shot the aircraft down, news agencies assert that the warplane was targeted and hit by a ground-based anti-aircraft missile.

The Royal Air Force is about to receive its 160th and final Eurofighter Typhoon from BAE Systems, 16 years after the first aircraft was delivered. A series of upgrades will keep the Typhoons operational until their planned retirement in 2040. Under Project Centurion, new Meteor, Brimstone and Storm Shadow missiles will be integrated on the Typhoon fleet within the next four years. Further upgrades to the aircraft and EJ2000 engine will be conducted under the long-term evolution program.

Rapid fire

Ceremonies marking the 53rd anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan were held across the country on Sunday to remember the sacrifices made by Australians who served in the Vietnam War. Long Tan, which took place on 18 August 1966, was the most famous battle fought by Australian soldiers during the war. Against all odds and in torrential rain, 108 Australian and New Zealand soldiers fought off as many as 1,000 Viet Cong fighters. Australian casualties were 18 dead and 24 wounded.

Cubic Defence New Zealand has won a contract to train Australian soldiers for chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) defence missions. The company will deliver a ‘simulation-enabled collective training capability’ that is ‘capable of projecting synthetic CBRN effects over large numbers of soldiers’ in a live training environment. The technology is meant to give soldiers experience in the tactical and logistical effects of a CBRN attack.

In centuries past, the humble yak has helped China defend its strategic interests from invaders coming over the northern steppes. Nowadays, the People’s Liberation Army still uses yaks to patrol China’s far-west regions of Tibet and Xinjiang where modern transport and horses can’t venture. Yaks are well suited for traversing the high-altitude rocky escarpments and snow-capped mountains because of their adapted respiratory system and warm outer coats.

Final frontier

Satellite imagery showing increased activity at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in recent weeks suggests Iran is preparing to launch a satellite into orbit following two unsuccessful attempts at the start of the year. Amid allegations that the launch could contravene UN Security Council resolution 2231, Tehran has maintained that there’s no military component to its launches. It is expected that the launch will take place before the end of the year.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is teaming up with researchers from Caltech, MIT and KAIST (a South Korean science and technology university) to participate in DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge. The team sent six robots to the competition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They’ll be competing against 10 other teams, including one from Australia, led by CSIRO’s Data61 project. The competition has the potential to assist with developing space technology for exploration and prospecting, as the robots are required to map and locate hidden objects underground using artificial intelligence.

Virgin Galatic has announced that its new headquarters and customer centre at Spaceport America in New Mexico is ‘operationally ready’, with journalists offered the opportunity to tour the facility this week. Virgin’s mothership—VMS Eve—has already been moved into the new facility, but it remains unclear when commercial flights will start.

Wired watchtower

Twitter has identified a significant information operation involving hundreds of accounts linked to China. The information operation—directed at undermining the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong—promoted paid advertisements and tweets that supported China’s version of events. The accounts have since been removed from Twitter. Facebook has also removed several pages, groups and accounts originating from China that it says were associated with ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ centred on Hong Kong.

Researchers from Israeli cybersecurity firm vpnMentor revealed last week that a database containing the fingerprints of one million people, along with the corresponding metadata, was inadvertently made freely available to the public. The biometric data, used by the UK Metropolitan Police, as well as banks and defence contractors, was kept in a centralised database controlled by South Korean security company Suprema ‘as a means of identifying people attempting to gain access to buildings’. The vulnerability has since been addressed.

Government officials in Tonga are considering whether to ban Facebook amid escalating tensions online. Tonga is currently grappling with a ‘digital war’ following the government’s proposal of a new set of rules that would transfer certain powers of the king to the government. Monarchists and pro-government forces have mobilised ‘thousands of mostly anonymous Facebook accounts’ to direct abuse and threats against each other.

The beat

Australia’s new security college in the Pacific

Ahead of this week’s Pacific Islands Forum meeting, the Australian government announced plans to set up an Australian Pacific Security College in partnership with the Australian National University. Police and security officials from the region will be provided training through the security college, with the hope that it will encourage ‘closer links between the Australian security apparatus and security officials across the Pacific’. The $19 million investment comes amid rising concerns in Australia’s security establishment about China’s steadily expanding investment and influence in the region.

Mafia boss unaware of tapped smartphone

Italian police have issued a number of arrest warrants following the recent trip of an Italian mafia boss to Toronto. The mafia boss warned associates that the Canadian police could be listening to their conversations, not realising that his own smartphone had been ‘transmitting his closed-door conversations’ to the Italian authorities.

Facebook helps French police make arrest

Facebook has assisted in the arrest of a man accused of assaulting and threatening to kill another man by alerting the French gendarmes to a livestream of the attack. Using images posted on social media and the streamer’s Facebook account, police were able to track the offender to a house in the rural area of Britanny, France, where they made the arrest. Facebook used the French government’s Pharos platform—a public portal for reporting illicit online content—to alert the police.

Checkpoint

New Zealand prepares to roll out visa waiver system

On 1 October, New Zealand will roll out its Electronic Travel Authority (ETA). The system will screen travellers offshore for any border entry and immigration risks. The ETA will apply to citizens from countries on New Zealand’s visa waiver list and require them to declare any criminal history before they are cleared to board any flights or ships travelling to New Zealand. Immigration New Zealand’s general manager Stephen Dunstan said that under the pre-arrival vetting an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people could be turned away from the country annually.

US border intercepts drop below 100,000 a month

On Friday, US Customs and Border Protection released a statement saying that, in July, it intercepted 82,049 individuals who either ‘crossed the border illegally or were deemed inadmissible at Southwest border ports of entry’, a 21% decrease from the numbers posted in June. The reduction comes as the US steps up collaboration with Mexico and Guatemala to crack down on the flow of migrants coming from Central America. Despite the drop, the figure is still more than double that at the same time last year.

Migrants beaten at Bosnia–Croatia Border

A group of 18 migrants from Pakistan and Iraq have alleged that they were beaten by Croatian police while attempting to cross illegally into Croatia from Bosnia. The group were trying to reach the European Union, but were transferred to a Bosnian hospital after being found by local police. Authorities in Bosnia say they will now start recording injuries sustained by migrants as the Croatian government begins investigating the incident.

CT scan

India claims Pakistan supporting terrorists to fuel Kashmir unrest

Indian media is reporting that Pakistan has sent between 150 and 200 Kashmiri locals to terrorist training camps near the Line of Control (LoC) following India’s revocation of Article 370. The Times of India cited unnamed Indian intelligence officials, claiming that Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed had met with Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency to finalise a plan to attack Indian Kashmir ahead of India’s independence day on 15 August. The commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corp, claimed that terrorists are ‘attempting to infiltrate every night’, across the LoC, warning that the Indian army would respond to any armed provocations from Pakistan.

Jihadists at odds over fundraising goals

The spread of jihadist fundraisers in Syria reflects an ‘ongoing lack of unity’ as they compete for funds, according to BBC Monitoring. A number of fundraising platforms have been established in response to the Russian-backed siege by Syrian government forces in Northern Syria. One fundraiser seeks to free Islamic State women held in detention camps while another provides fighters with basic food, military equipment and medical supplies.

IS using tactics of attrition in Nigeria

Islamic State’s West African Province, or Boko Haram, has claimed responsibility for several attacks on the Nigerian army in the northeast of the country as part of its campaign of attrition launched in early June. More than 20 Nigerian troops were killed or injured as IS seized military vehicles, weapons and supplies. IS detailed its latest attacks on the encrypted messaging service Telegram.

First responder

A cure for Ebola?

The World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health have announced that healthcare workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have held clinical trials for a number of experimental treatments to combat Ebola and found that two ‘appear to dramatically boost survival rates’ of those infected by the virus. This is a significant development in the effort to combat Ebola—building on the success of the experimental vaccine trialled last year to prevent health workers and frontline responders from being infected by Ebola.

Typhoon Lekima wreaks havoc in China

More than one million people were evacuated by authorities before Typhoon Lekima made landfall early on Saturday morning, according to Chinese officials in Zhejiang province. Roughly 700,000 people had been settled in over 12,000 shelters as winds of up to 187 kilometres per hour hour battered China’s east coast. The typhoon damaged an estimated 34,000 homes and has caused around 14.57 billion yuan ($3.06 billion dollars) in economic losses. The death toll stands at 33, with another 16 people still missing.

Legionnaires’ outbreak claims first victim

Last week, US health officials confirmed that an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease has left one person dead, and resulted in at least 12 confirmed cases and 61 probable cases of the dieases. The exact source of the outbreak is yet to be identified but has been linked to the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel. Some guests who visited or stayed there between 12 June and 15 July were affected by the outbreak. The hotel remains closed while public health authorities determine whether it was the source of the Legionella outbreak.

The world

India’s surprise decision to revoke Article 370 from its constitution this week ended the special status enjoyed by the now erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. For a detailed explainer contextualising the recent developments against Kashmir’s history, see the Observer Research Foundation. The Print published two great articles, one arguing that India’s decision was motivated by concerns surrounding US President Donald Trump’s perceived ‘meddling’ in the dispute; the second showing how the dream of conquering Kashmir is entrenched in the Pakistani psyche. Ramesh Thakur argues in The Strategist that New Delhi has bitten off more than it can chew. Foreign Policy is of the view that India is using economic ‘excuses’ to cover for its nationalist project to convert the country into a ‘Hindu nation’. For a quick and objective fact-check, read Christine Fair’s Twitter thread.

For those following the talks between the US and Afghanistan on the so-called peace process, this article in Time lays out exactly what’s happening and the likely future trajectory. This Foreign Policy article shows how the Central Intelligence Agency intends to maintain a presence in Afghanistan after US troops withdraw. Listen to this War on the Rocks podcast for, among other things, a deep assessment of the US war in Afghanistan [46:19].

Across to northern Russia, where a spike in radiation levels has got some worried. The Drive analyses what caused the spike; Russian news is blaming the event on the explosion of liquid propellant that may have been used in a rocket. So, is Russia testing new nuclear weapons? The National Interest seems to think that could be the case, stating that there’s ‘little uncertainty about increasing Russian nuclear capabilities’. And as protests grip Moscow, the Financial Times looks into the impact President Vladimir Putin’s regime is having on the Russian economy.

Following the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, there’s renewed debate (intensified by this viral tweet) on whether a gun buyback scheme would work in the US. The US has more firearms per capita than anywhere else in the world at 120 guns per 100 citizens. The Conversation offers an insightful piece on whether a buyback would work, analysing past attempts to introduce buyback programs in some American cities. See Vox for more on America’s gun problem. Former vice president and contender for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 election, Joe Biden, meanwhile, has called for a federal gun buyback scheme and for assault weapons to be made illegal (about time).

If there’s one thing you read on the Hong Kong protests this week, make sure it’s Michael Shoebridge’s Strategist piece, in which he posits that the crisis is much larger than it appears, and that it opens wider questions on the Chinese Communist Party’s future as an authoritarian government ruling over a ‘multi-ethnic empire’. We also recommend this piece in The Economist, which makes a strong case against any armed intervention in Hong Kong by Beijing.

Across the world, humans are having an increasingly adverse impact on the environment. Al Jazeera investigates the growing illegal transnational timber industry in Cambodia that is destroying wildlife sanctuaries to fuel growing luxury timber demand from China and Vietnam. Brahma Chellaney dives into the environmental impact Chinese-built dams are having on the Mekong basin. In some good news, The Conversation has compiled research that suggests water reserves in Africa are 20 times larger than originally believed and will be much more resilient to climate change than first thought. Closer to home, see The Interpreter for how climate change will increasingly destabilise our region, making Australia’s commitments that much more difficult to maintain. See this ABC interview for a discussion of how nuclear power may be a way for Australia to address climate issues.

Tech geek

The Sierra Nevada Corporation (a contractor for the US military) has developed what it claims is the most powerful aerial surveillance platform ever created. Dubbed ‘Gorgon Stare’, it consists of a series of surveillance balloons that can travel at altitudes of up to 65,000 feet. Gorgon Stare is in its initial testing phase and is being rolled out in South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri and Illinois.

Seemingly out of a science-fiction novel, a group of Romanian engineers have created a fully functioning ‘flying saucer’. The ‘All-Directional Flying Object’ is a proof of concept that has been developed through decades of research. You can watch it in in flight here. Operating much like a quadcopter, four ducted fans and a pair of rear jet engines provide thrust and allow easy manoeuvrability. A pair of lateral thrust nozzles is located on either side of the body to allow for rapid rotation mid-flight. The designers believe the disk will eventually be capable of ‘sudden lateral transitions and sudden yaw’ and ‘smooth transitions during subsonic to supersonic flight’.

Astronomers from the University of Tokyo have discovered 39 formerly ‘invisible’ galaxies. According to the study published in Nature, the discovery challenges our current understanding of early galaxy formation. The finding was made with the help of the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a collection of 66 radio antennas in the Chilean desert.

This week in history

This week in 1945 was the only time nuclear weapons have been used in war. On 6 and 9 August, ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. Japan surrendered on 14 August, ending World War II. See Al Jazeera for an explainer on the events as well as a short documentary that examines whether the use of atomic weapons was necessary to win the war.

Multimedia

Reuters has compiled a photo series on North Korea’s missiles, showing launches, stockpiles and, of course, Chairman Kim Jong-un.

For the latest on Brexit, including what’s going on behind the scenes in Brussels, see BBC Newsnight. [10:25]

Podcasts

The National Security Law Podcast discusses right-wing terrorism in America and the need for domestic terrorism to form its own legal category [1:05.58].

Matters of State illustrates the advantages and limitations of the methodology used to forecast and prevent genocide [33:02].

Events

It’s your last chance to purchase tickets for ASPI’s State of the Region Masterclass. It’s being held on 14 August and is an opportunity not to be missed. Tickets sold here.

Canberra, 14 August, 6–7.30 pm, Australian National University: ‘The changing landscape of terror: from 9/11 to right-wing extremism’. Register here.

Sea state

Last Wednesday, a Chinese naval warship collided with a Taiwanese freighter in the Taiwan Strait at around 8 pm local time. Both vessels suffered hull damage. The cargo ship made it safely to Liaoluo Port in Kinmen but the Chinese vessel kept going. The Taiwan coastguard caught up with the ship at around midnight but was unable to identify its hull number in the darkness. Authorities are now investigating the incident to determine whether it was an accident or a deliberate act.

Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, has said that his country won’t participate in a US-led naval patrol mission in the Strait of Hormuz. The announcement came amid rising tensions between Iran and the West as Iran continues to seize foreign oil tankers in the area. However, Germany has not ruled out joining a European-led initiative to protect shipping in the Gulf.

The US Justice Department has filed corruption charges against the head of a Korean port services company. The department alleges that the CEO provided a former US navy captain with various gifts and paid expenses in exchange for sensitive and confidential naval information. This comes as another blow to the US Navy, with observers pointing to similarities with the ‘Fat Leonard’ scandal that has troubled the navy since 2013.

Flight path

Scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories have been studying the dragonfly to see if its hunting abilities can be mimicked in missile defence systems. Led by neuroscientist Frances Chance, the research examines the insect’s neural network and aims to build computer algorithms that simulate its information-processing skills to help improve missile capabilities. While it’s unknown whether the research will lead to more efficient missile systems, such a model could also have benefits in other fields, such as artificial intelligence and self-driving cars.

Israeli company BIRD Aerosystems has received an additional order from the UN for airborne missile protection systems to protect helicopters engaged in peacekeeping operations in Africa. BIRD claims that its system offers ‘the most enhanced protection’ against surface-to-air missiles. The newly ordered systems will be installed on Russian-made UN Mi-17 helicopters, which are currently operating in West Africa and the Sudan.

The German government has disclosed that only 512 of the Luftwaffe’s 875 pilots met the mandatory 180 training flight hours last year. Chronic underfunding has contributed to equipment shortages and extensive maintenance issues, with only 39 of Germany’s 128 Eurofighters in a state of operational readiness in 2018. Defence spending currently accounts for just 1.35% of Germany’s GDP and falls short of NATO targets. The US has continued to pressure Germany to lift defence spending to meet the NATO target of 2% of GDP.

Rapid fire

The soaring murder rate in Cape Town is generating an undercurrent of fear in the port city. The over-crowded poverty-stricken townships on the Cape flats are being terrorised by gang violence and local police have been unable to quell the disturbances. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has deployed a battalion of several hundred soldiers to help ‘restore law and maintain order’ in the troubled areas. The three-month operation has been welcomed by local residents. However, critics argue that it is a band-aid solution for deeply rooted social problems stemming from the systemic oppression of the apartheid era.

Within months, the US could have ground-based conventional intermediate-range missiles deployed in Asia. US Defense Secretary Mark Esper made this announcement en route to Australia for the AUSMIN meeting, which was held on Sunday. The US plan comes on the heals of the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last week that the treaty’s breakdown ‘will likely heighten, not reduce, the threat posed by ballistic missiles’.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has affirmed his support to end the ‘unfair trials’ of British soldiers being prosecuted for their role in the Troubles in the early 1970s in Northern Ireland. The appointment of Johnny Mercer, who has labelled the prosecution of veterans as an ‘abhorrent process’, as veterans affairs minister reflects a wider desire in the Conservative Party to halt historic prosecutions of veterans. Sinn Fein fears that an amnesty would slow reconciliation and prevent ‘public consultation on dealing with the legacy of the past’.

Final frontier

Following French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement last month that he had approved the creation of a space command in the French air force for defence and surveillance, the scope of the unit’s role has been clarified. French Defence Minister Florence Parly confirmed in a speech last week that France plans to defend its constellation of military satellites using a new generation of Syracuse satellites armed with defensive weapons.

The European Space Agency has selected Airbus to build the European component of the ‘Solar-wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer’ (SMILE) satellite. The satellite is part of a joint mission between the ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to monitor and understand space weather.

Astronauts on the International Space Station are set to bake chocolate-chip cookies in space for the first time thanks to a partnership between Double-Tree Hilton, Zero G Kitchen and NanoRacks. While the astronauts won’t be able to consume their creations—the first batch will be sent back to earth for analysis—this experiment will bring them one step closer to understanding the art of baking in microgravity.

Wired watchtower

In response to growing concern about the changing nature of warfare, the UK is establishing a specialist army hybrid warfare division that will study unconventional warfare, below and above the threshold of conflict. The 6th Division, as it will be known, will focus on intelligence-gathering and information operations, as well as cyber and electronic warfare.

Industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos has identified a new hacker group targeting the telecommunication and energy sectors across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. The group, which Dragos has named ‘Hexane’, has become more active in recent months and is likely targeting telecommunication companies as a means of gaining third-party access to oil and gas companies.

Young hackers accused of committing cybercrimes will be offered a second chance thanks to a joint initiative between the British and Dutch authorities called ‘Hack_Right’. Instead of opting for legal proceedings against first-time offenders, police in the UK and the Netherlands will set out to educate young hackers about the consequences of their actions and engage them in ethical computer training.

In the past decade, the concept of urban resilience has become integral to the development and design strategies of city planners and decision-makers around the world. As cities have grown larger, there’s been a concerted effort to ensure they can endure a multitude of threats to social cohesion and public health.

One particularly well-known approach to this problem is the 100 Resilient Cities program, an initiative started by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2013. Dedicated to developing resilience frameworks for cities with sprawling populations, the program views urban resilience as ‘the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience’.  While the program has been implemented in ‘megacities’ (large cities with millions of people), its key rationale applies to all cities regardless of size or density.

Of the 100 cities in the program, 16 can be considered ‘small’, with a population under 500,000. Within this category, only three are comparable in population size to Darwin (148,393 people in 2017): Berkeley (122,324), Vejle (113,720) and Boulder (107,125). It’s a small pool of cities that Darwin could use to benchmark itself against on resilience challenges and to inform options for city planning and decision-making. Of course, while their population sizes may be similar, the three cities’ geopolitical, strategic, environmental and economic challenges don’t fully fit the uncertainties that Darwin is currently facing.

From economic pressures to water sustainability and border security, Darwin has a unique set of challenges. Population growth is slowing down, the economy is struggling, and the city is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events related to climate change. Those challenges are compounded by Darwin’s growing strategic importance as Australia thinks about its national security needs and its future defence posture.

In that regard, supporting the Northern Territory government’s efforts to make Darwin a better, more liveable and adaptable city—one that’s able to cope with the uncertainties of climate change, demographic changes, a fluctuating economy and changing security demands—is not only beneficial but necessary.

As members of the 100 Resilient Cities project, Melbourne and Sydney rely on extensive and detailed resilience frameworks. While their implementation differs, these cities apply variations of the city resilence framework developed by Arup as a basis for their ongoing policy and planning development.

The framework uses four broad dimensions: infrastructure and the environment, economy and society, leadership and strategy, and health and wellbeing. These four categories underpin a multitude of indicators (Arup’s city resilience index has 52 indicators) that decision-makers can use to detail opportunities to enhance the liveability and adaptability of large cities to a range of stressors.

But would such a framework be useful for Darwin? Melbourne, for example, is coping with explosive population growth and an expensive housing market. It will also have to adapt to periods of extreme heat, a higher frequency of intense rainfall events in parallel with water scarcity, and varying degrees of ecological instability.

While these conditions already exist in the north of Australia, Melbourne has a range of resources and capacities available that can’t be matched in Darwin.

Full implementation of the large-scale approaches in the city resilience framework that could work for Melbourne may be less suited to smaller cities like Darwin. Arguably, those approaches are designed for cities with dense populations and complex infrastructure systems across wide urban and industrial landscapes.

But it’s worth considering whether subsets of the framework might allow Darwin to more effectively capture current vulnerabilities and plan for future developmental needs. Such considerations may offer new options for addressing Darwin’s economic, demographic and environmental challenges.

There are several benefits to this proposal. One is that it would give Darwin’s city planners opportunities to benchmark existing planning regimes against a subset of a framework that has become an informal gold standard for resilience planning in cities and urban spaces globally. Luckily for Darwin, its relatively small size provides an opportunity to focus on a more limited, but nonetheless important, set of challenges.

A second benefit for Darwin goes beyond the Australian context. Developing an urban resilience framework for small cities and towns would enable Darwin to be a leader in the design and planning of cities facing similar issues around the world. It’s been notoriously difficult to attract foreign investment and attention to Darwin. Developing adaptable resilience frameworks is a particularly attractive proposition Darwin’s city planners should consider.

There’s also a strong argument for creating a resilience framework for Darwin as a public benefit, which is based on developments embodied in the World Commission on Environment and Development, established in 1983 by Gro Harlem Brundtland (former prime minister of Norway and director-general of the World Health Organization), and the commission’s 1987 report titled ‘Our common future’ and known as the Brundtland report.

Encompassing many of the early ideas of sustainable development, the Brundtland report emphasises the benefits of a healthy and inclusive economy, thriving community life and hospitable urban environments. It also influenced the development of the World Health Organization’s Healthy Cities movement: a global initiative with strong policy and practice links to current notions of resilient cities.

Darwin’s development of its own resilience plan would respond to and help strengthen the city’s importance as a viable, vibrant and secure capital.