Sir Robert Torrens, South Australia's third Premier, introduced the Real Property Act in 1858 which established a new system of land transfer through one document recorded at a single registry. This simplified the existing requirements and allowed ownership to be easily identified through the registration of the certificate of title. The Torrens model is now used throughout Australia and has been widely adopted by many other countries including the UK and USA.

The Torrens Resilience Institute is located in the Torrens Building in the centre of Adelaide. It is hoped that the Institute will follow the lead of Sir Robert by developing an improved understanding of the concept of resilience and by developing management tools that will have real operational impact at the State, Federal Government and international levels.