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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:
- estimate both the sector-disaggregated and demographic-specific economic impact of natural disasters on individuals’ income levels in Australia.
- 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)
