Quick response for flood assessment

A new project has investigated the impact on Townsville from the February floods. 

Townsville 2019 flood: insights from the field was funded as a quick response project by the CRC to evaluate how the community has recovered from the floods.  

The project led by Andrew Gissing of Risk Frontiers assessed the damage impacts and the ways in which the emergency warnings were delivered and received. Interviews with residents and business owners were undertaken to analyse their perceptions of the warnings and communications during the flood and examine the initial recovery. 

The findings from the project outlined several important factors, most notably disaster recovery. 

Although Townsville had just experienced a significant and very damaging flood, the researchers were left with a sense that the community was functioning, and that there was resilience amongst community members. They also found that many members of the community appeared to be caught off-guard by the scale of the flooding by basing their decision making from previous floods.  

Access the full report here.