Northern Queenslanders who endured last month's major flood event are being urged to recount their experiences in a James Cook University survey aimed at improving preparedness for the next severe weather event.
Run by JCU's Centre for Disaster Studies, the survey aims to not only understand how affected communities accessed information and responded during the floods, but gauge how prepared they were for the disaster that followed.
"What we're really trying to find out is how prepared they were in terms of things like disaster kits, insurance and evacuation plans, because that's obviously become an issue in some of those areas," Centre Co-Ordinator Dr Yetta Gurtner said.
"And then we go further on to investigate where did they get their information from and how credible did they perceive that information to be."
Dr Gurtner said an increasing number of residents are turning to social media to get their information, which poses risks during a severe weather event if it isn't accurate.
"We want to determine the specific sources of information that people found really useful and any sources they found which were actually spreading misinformation or misconceptions about what was happening," she said.
"What we're hoping to do with that information is feed it back into the emergency services, councils and those organisations that provide up-to-date information in order to help them refine their message, improve their messaging, or reinforce their messaging."
Dr Gurtner said a similar survey run by the Centre in the wake of the 2019 Townsville floods found a number of residents were underinsured and were not prepared to evacuate due to having pets or not having anywhere to evacuate to.
"Some of the findings, which we see continuously, include people not having a redundancy plan, like an AM/FM radio, when telecommunications go out to get information. So even though there are changes in the way people access information, we still need to have those redundancies in place," she said.
"We did, however, find an increasing number of people turning to credible sources like the Bureau of Meteorology, the radio and particularly the Disaster Dashboard."
Dr Gurtner said the survey was not limited to residents in Townsville and Ingham, but anywhere in the broader region that was impacted in some way by the recent flooding event.
"The impact was quite variable. For example, residents of Cairns may feel they were impacted because they actually lost food supplies for several days. They may have also been directly impacted in terms of flooding or rain and not being able to go to work," she said.
"And that extends to those living in the Burdekin, Hinchinbrook and Cassowary Coast local government areas too.
"We need as much feedback as possible, so I would encourage impacted residents to not only complete the survey for themselves but share it with others who may have been impacted as well."
Residents aged 18 years and over can participate in the survey by heading to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NQrainevent25
