Advancing understanding of the resilience of coastal communities
Investment to build Australia’s resilience has focused on infrastructure investments (such as flood levees) and supporting government and emergency response authorities as critical responders. But individuals, households, and neighbourhoods also play a significant role in responding to climate hazards.
By working with community members, NGOs and state and local government agencies across three states (Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales), this research seeks to generate new knowledge to guide the delivery of targeted support to communities: empowering at-risk neighbourhoods to prepare and respond to natural disasters and other social-ecological changes.
The research:
- Focuses on the neighbourhood scale. Neighbourhoods connect local and higher scales of governance, enabling cross-scale interaction among individuals, households, non-government organisations, government agencies and the private sector.
- Adopts a next-generation adaptive capacity framework to optimise interventions to build resilience.
Case study communities
Kalbarri, Western Australia
Deception Bay, Queensland
Ballina, New South Wales
Capacity to prepare and respond to change is shaped by access to assets, levels of organisation, flexibility, agency, learning, and socio-cognitive aspects. The three case study communities have varying levels of access to services and hazard exposure. Each is coastal, recently experienced a severe climate hazard, has different resilience characteristics, and is in a different Australian region (State and regionality/remoteness). Together, the communities provide diverse settings to explore neighbourhood resilience to coastal climate hazards.
The research will:
- Work with communities. Community reference groups will guide and support the research to ensure outputs and outcomes address community needs.
- Seek depth and breadth of knowledge through mixed methods, involving (i) household surveys and (ii) interviews with residents and service providers (e.g., NGOs, local government, hazard responders).