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Household resilience to flooding: the experience of two floods in Brisbane and Ipswich

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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In January 2011 severe flooding resulted in over 17000 homes inundated in Brisbane and Ipswich. Two years later a smaller flood event also inundated homes. Geoscience Australia conducted a postal survey of household impacts in 2012, and returned in late 2013 to see the changes. The initial survey received 1267 responses covering 40kms along the Brisbane and Bremer Rivers. This paper showcases the surveys’ findings, grouped into related themes: • Inappropriate risk perception meant households disregarded or failed to recognise warnings. In contrast in the smaller 2013 event many households were unnecessarily cautious and evacuated. • The impact on mental health was not specifically studied, but was found to be just as important to households as the physical damage. • The financial impacts on households extend far beyond the damage to the home. Even fully insured households had large costs for a range of other items. • The role of friends, family and neighbours was a recurring theme important to many other themes. Social networks and social capital had roles to play across the surveys, from being a warning source to helping respondents recover. • A large number of households returned to unrepaired homes as a coping strategy. While not specifically studied, the strategy appeared to be ineffective with households reporting physical and mental health issues, an inability to move forward and social isolation. These themes are guiding GA’s future research program and the development of a framework for understanding household resilience to disasters. Abstract presented at the Institute of Australian Geographers (AIG) 2016 conference.

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Field Value
Title Household resilience to flooding: the experience of two floods in Brisbane and Ipswich
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/1d064821-7ecc-4b21-8d63-801530a19f5a
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Household resilience to flooding: the experience of two floods in Brisbane and Ipswich". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/household-resilience-to-flooding-the-experience-of-two-floods-in-brisbane-and-ipswich