 Some more research with potential to really improve lives in our Northern neighbour is our next contestant. I'd like to introduce Kristina Griffin. Kristina is from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific and the title of her three minute thesis tonight is Rational Risk-Taking Why Farm Potatoes on an Active Volcano. Think about the risks you take each and every day that improve or make your life easier. When you drive your car, ride to work or reheat that leftover takeaway that's been sitting in the fridge a little too long. The farmers in this image are also taking risks. This photograph was taken in the years between eruptions in the highlands of central Java. While it looks green and lush here, that white cloud to the right is actually steam rising above a volcanic crater. This crater periodically expels poisonous concentrations of carbon dioxide gas. During the worst event, 150 people suffocated. The farmers here are skirting the crater's rim while carrying 80 kilograms of potatoes over a single shoulder. While risk-taking is a normal part of daily life, many disaster textbooks still tell us that people are taking dangerous activities because they are uneducated or they have no other choice. This leads to policies that restrict activities near or forcibly move people away from volcanoes. In the process, destroying the livelihoods that these farmers depend on to survive. What if there are good reasons to farm the land around an active crater? My thesis collects the stories of farmers such as these. I seek to understand why are they there and how does the threat of the volcano look from their perspective? In the months I spent collecting data here in the Dieng Plateau, I came to understand the many good reasons people have to live and work here. In the past, this volcano provided farmers with vast expanses of land and an escape from colonial forced labour. And then the potato came. With Dieng's fertile volcanic soils and its cool wet climate, it began producing the best potatoes in Indonesia's marketplaces. Living standards were radically transformed, cars were purchased, bamboo homes were replaced with permanent concrete dwellings and more children began attending school. My findings have important lessons for disaster management. Firstly, that policies should be flexible and support access to livelihoods wherever possible. And secondly, that something as simple as a spud can encourage people to make educated and rational decisions to take risks near a volcano. Just as we decide to reheat that leftover takeaway, disaster management must weigh the risk of an eruption against the rewards of farming on a volcano.