Mark Drew

This project has estimated the impact of four natural hazards in recent Australian history on income of individuals residing in disaster-hit areas. By defining individuals’ ability to return to their pre-disaster income levels as economic resilience, the research team focused on the following case studies: the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires, the 2009 Toodyay bushfires, 2013’s Tropical Cyclone Oswald in Queensland, and the 2010-11 Queensland floods. Through real-life case studies, this research helps illustrate how these events—of different types, localities, and scales—impact and ripple through communities and the broader economy over time. The research found that the extent of the economic impact of disasters on individuals’ income depends on the type, intensity, and location of the disaster. The project has produced four research reports pertaining to each case study, along with four policy briefs that summarised each report. The project also produced demographic profiling analyses for each disaster analysed. The findings from these four case studies were disseminated to a national audience through a webinar in August 2020.