Investigating bushfire risk on the Sunshine Coast of south east Queensland
Creators: name: Swan, Lorraine
Publisher: name: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Year: 2023
Subjects: bushfire risk
fire weather
fire danger rating
government policy
shared responsibility
community awareness
Climate change impacts and adaptation

description: South east Queensland (SEQ) has been recognised as vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate. For the coastal parts of the region, where population is growing, the main climate concerns are flooding, coastal erosion, heat waves, droughts and water supply. Since the area enjoys summer rainfall, a moist environment generally lowers bushfire risk during the hot season, but periods of low rainfall in winter and spring raise bushfire risk in spring and early summer. The possibility that bushfires could become more frequent and more severe in this region has received little attention, despite several destructive bushfires experienced since 2017. The contribution that this thesis made was to understand the risks, in terms of changing fire danger ratings, for one Local Government Area (LGA) in this region, and to equip policy-makers with informed strategies for increasing community awareness of the risks. The Sunshine Coast of SEQ was a relevant case study area because large bushfires are not generally anticipated, and because the population is growing rapidly. Residential areas are expanding into forest margins and some established suburbs are within forest margins. To explore the risks for these communities, three research questions were framed: 1. Is weather that is conducive to bushfires changing through time on the Sunshine Coast? 2. Are periods of consecutive dry days between rainfall events becoming longer on the Sunshine Coast? 3. Does existing government policy support communication to the community of the need to prepare for bushfire risk? A systematic review of the published literature on changes in bushfires regimes in eastern Australia showed that weather that is conducive to severe bushfires has increased in the south east, and climate modelling has projected continued increases. Applying the question to the study area, historical fire weather patterns and rainfall patterns on the Sunshine Coast were analysed using R programming language to visualise and test significance of trends in the data through heat maps, time series, box plots, t-tests and linear regression. The research revealed a clear increase in fire danger ratings in the study area during the seventy years of available data. Dry periods had increased slightly at some stations but did not show any clear trend. A second literature review consulted academic and grey literature about best practice for community engagement for bushfire risk preparedness. Drawn from the literature, a framework was constructed to measure whether government policy and legislation fulfil the requirements of bushfire risk communication for community preparedness. Federal and State Governments adopt a principle of building community capacity to prepare for the challenges of changing weather patterns, but communication methods for bushfire preparedness, prescribed by Local Government policy, do not meet the criteria established as best practice in the analysis framework. The combined analysis of academic literature, local climate data, and policies around risk communication, represented a multi-method approach that drew together science and its practical application for policy-makers.