Cyclone Alfred, Brisbane floods: publication flashback

Cyclone Alfred made landfall in Queensland and New South Wales yesterday as a tropical low with heavy rainfall prompting warnings and evacuations. We researched how this played out during the 2011 Brisbane floods for a 2018 issue of Disasters Journal:

Risk communication and risk perception are critical factors in disaster management. Governments at all levels play a part in communicating risk, whereas the perception of risk entails active roles by community participants, including potential and actual victims of disasters. This paper discusses these matters in relation to the floods in Brisbane, Australia, in 2011. The findings are based on interviews with representatives of households whose dwellings or business premises were fully or partially inundated by the waters. The research shows how important it is to recognise the problems of institutional fragmentation in terms of communication and the active engagement of recipients in understanding and interpreting flood risk information (especially for slow-onset riverine flooding, such as that suffered by Brisbane). Locally targeted information on risk is of vital importance in avoiding the misinterpretation of warning information in relation to environmental cues and in promoting adequate responses. The paper concludes with some recommendations.

During my Visiting Fellowship in Planning at the School of Geography, Planning & Environmental Management of the University of Queensland, I had the opportunity to research this together with my colleague John Minnery. We supervised students within a course on planning who contributed to our joint field research. The research paper is available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/disa.12311