Vulnerability of remote area infrastructure and lifelines to tropical cyclone and flood hazards

Abstract

In common with much of the world, urban and infrastructural development in the tropics has concentrated people and their settlements onto the coastal fringes where the hazards of floods and tropical cyclones (hurricanes) constitute a regular threat to safety and structures. Cyclone storm surge scenarios for coastal cities in northern Australia have demonstrated that critical infrastructure and community lifelines are particularly concentrated in the most hazardous zones. The same level of concentration of services is true for the small remote and isolated settlements in Australia's northern outback, but critical infrastructure and lifelines are much more primitive and limited such that the communities are far more vulnerable to the hazards of the tropical wet season. Because these hazards are regular and predictable, communities have developed strategies of endurance and resilience. However the regular loss of roads, drainage, sewerage, airstrips, power, water supply, restricted food supply, and access to education and health facilities makes these remote communities critically vulnerable during the wet season, and curtails economic development as resources are regularly directed to repairing losses. These characteristics of northern Australia are shared by the equally remote and isolated developing communities of the South Pacific, where the loss of the most basic infrastructure exacerbates vulnerability and secondary disaster crises.