Coastal community resilience project | UniSC | University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

Accessibility links

Coastal community resilience project

Using research to build community resilience to coastal climate hazards in Australia.

The impacts of climate change will translate to increased hazards, including extreme storm activity and in turn, storm surge, coastal erosion, and coastal flooding – impacts already being felt in Australia.

Climate mitigation is urgently needed. Yet, even with severe and rapid declines in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature will continue to increase at least until mid-century and sea-level rise will continue throughout the 21st Century.

Building community resilience to climate hazards is imperative to national well-being and security. Yet how to build community resilience remains uncertain.

Research focus

Our research seeks to:

  1. Explore how local scale connection in neighbourhoods vulnerable to coastal climate hazards facilitates access to, and mobilisation of, capacity.
  2. Critically analyse and demonstrate how connection and capacity change in response to socio-ecological change, and the impacts of these factors on local scale preparation, response and recovery.
  3. Identify leverage points to build community resilience to coastal climate hazards that optimise and guide government interventions.

Learn more about the project aims.

Research impact and findings

Explore publications and key findings from our research.

Meet the team

Meet the cross-disciplinary researchers that form the coastal community resilience project team.

Contact

Dr Carmen Elrick-Barr

Senior Research Fellow, School of Law and Society
Email: celrick@usc.edu.au