Natural disasters in Australia are very costly, and often have devastating socio-economic effects on impacted communities. With the severity and frequency from natural disasters set to increase, there is a need—now more than ever—for Australia to have a sustainable disaster recovery model that helps build resilience within Australian communities to such disasters.

Currently, a major research gap is the lack of estimates of the full economic impact of natural disasters covering all the affected households and sectors of the economy. For individuals and communities, a key dimension of disaster resilience is economic resilience, with income being an important buffer to disruptions caused by disaster shocks.

By incorporating real-life Australian natural disaster case studies, utilising a natural experimental design economic modelling, and confidential Australian Bureau of Statistics data on disaster hit individuals, this project aims to:

1. estimate both the sector-disaggregated and demographic-specific economic impact of natural disasters on individuals’ income levels in Australia.
2. equip policymakers with evidence-based research to optimise disaster recovery expenditure for individuals affected by natural disasters in Australia, and inform an evidence-based sustainable disaster recovery model in Australia.

The natural disasters case studies we investigate are of varying scales and types:

• The Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires (2009)
• The Queensland Floods (2010-11)
• Cyclone Oswald (2013)
• The Western Australian Toodyay fires (2009)