Lessons Management Forum 2027

The 2027 Lessons Management Forum will be a hybrid event held at Hotel Grand Chancellor Hobart, Tasmania and online.

Learning at the speed of change.

The forum has 3 objectives:

1. Provide introductory level presentations, training and workshops to educate, encourage, and empower those new to lessons management. Particularly presentations on how to do lessons at a tactical/agency level and what is working well.
2. Provide presentations and workshops that challenge and advance the thinking and practice of experienced lessons management practitioners.
3. Share lessons identified or learned (refer to AIDR's Lessons Management Handbook for the definition/use of these terms).

The 2027 Lessons Management Forum will on focus on emerging trends, technologies, challenges and opportunities that are shaping the future of lessons management across the emergency management spectrum (including recovery). It will explore new thinking, innovative practice and the evolving role of lessons management in increasingly complex and interconnected environments.

Topics:

In addition to aligning with the objectives above, the committee is interested in abstracts that cover, or include, the following topic areas as they relate specifically to lessons/learning from experience and lessons management:

• Learn before: Predictive learning – how can we learn for the future?
  How can we use lessons to anticipate challenges? Explore approaches that shift learning from reactive to proactive and support better decision-making in an uncertain future.
   
• Learn during: Learning during operations
  How can we capture, share and learn lessons during periods of rapid change? Explore techniques that enable learning, despite operational pressures such as high tempo or long duration events, workforce turnover and lessons fatigue.
   
• Learn after: Getting from lessons identified to lessons learned
  How can we convert insights into sustained improvement? Explore approaches for embedding lessons into policy, practice, capability, culture and decision--making at tactical, operational and strategic levels.
   
• Learn across: Learning across organisations, communities, jurisdictions, sectors and systems
  How can lessons be shared, adapted and embedded across communities, agencies, jurisdictions, and sectors? Explore collaboration, communities of practice and lessons management approaches that strengthen collective capability and accelerate improvement.
   
• Value: The economics of learning
  How can we demonstrate the operational, strategic, cultural, resilience and economic value of lessons management, and understand the consequences of failing to learn?
   
• Enablers: Leveraging technology and artificial intelligence
  How can digital platforms, data analytics and artificial intelligence improve the capture, analysis, sharing and application of lessons? Explore how technology can augment human judgement, increase organisational insight and accelerate learning.
   
• Perspectives and context: Diverse ways of knowing and learning
  How can lessons management practices benefit from diverse ways of knowing, sharing knowledge and learning across generations? Examine how insights from Indigenous knowledge traditions, alongside other learning systems, can inform more resilient, adaptive and inclusive approaches to organisational learning and decision-making.

Registrations open November 2026

The Lessons Management Forum will be delivered as a hybrid event, allowing those unable to join AFAC and AIDR in Hobart, Tasmania to participate online. 

Virtual attendees will join via an online platform, and all delegates will use an online Q&A to engage with speakers.