Disaster-affected communities form the backbone of any disaster response. But survivors are often underutilised in shaping plans for their community’s longer-term recovery and preparedness efforts.
Even if you’re well covered, your area may struggle long after a disaster if most locals don’t have enough home and/or contents insurance. Search our map by postcode or suburb name to check your area.
There’s evidence that people who have been through multiple disasters experience poorer mental and physical health compared to people who have been exposed to a single disaster.
One quarter of monitored social housing properties recorded winter temperatures below World Health Organisation standards for more than 80% of winter, new research shows.
For Indigenous people, Country is more than a landscape. But climate change, and the natural disasters it produces, present a clear and present threat to Country, culture and heritage.
Researchers are using mixed reality technologies to investigate how people behave in in emergency situations. The findings are helping shape disaster responses.
Australia can take great strides forward in climate policy and action. A reactionary, incremental approach to adaptation will fall short. Now is the time to think big.
The real success of the National Recovery and Resilience Agency will be not only in what it does, but in how it carries out its work, in the relationships it forges, and in the trust it gains.
Low-income retirees have long found affordable housing in caravan parks and relocatable home estates. But they are becoming harder to find, and often come with a risk of hazards such as flooding.
Australians have endured floods, bushfires and hailstorms and more over the last two years. The government is better aligning policy to deal with disasters, but its plan is somewhat half-baked.
Those with disaster experience said they hadn’t received proper warnings, which led to confusion, helplessness and panic. There was a sense that ‘we always come last’.
First the fires, then the pandemic. It’s not just the damage to infrastructure, houses, environment and farmland that makes recovery difficult; the emotional and physical toll is often gruelling too.