Telecommunications and natural disasters in rural Australia: The role of digital capability in building disaster resilience

Abstract

Telecommunications infrastructure and services are essential for rural communities to respond to natural disasters, like bushfires, cyclones and floods. Such disasters are becoming increasingly frequent in rural Australia. This cross-disciplinary study draws together community disaster resilience and digital capability concepts to address a critical gap in our understanding how rural individuals and organisations can effectively prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters using telecommunications. The study adopts an ethnographic methodology, including semi-structured interviews and community workshops, in rural Far North Queensland, Australia. A socio-technical approach enabled the authors to analytically highlight both technical and social aspects of digital capability at each phase of disaster resilience: preparedness, response, and recovery. In contrast to the dominant focus on technical infrastructure and capability in the literature, this study builds on emerging work focused on social factors of disaster resilience that are facilitated by digital technologies. It particularly demonstrates how digital capabilities contribute to the essential disaster resilience factors of social capital, community competence, economic development, and information and communication. This research problem is particularly critical as rural Australia and other parts of the country and the world experience more frequent and more severe natural disasters.