AARES Federal Webinar: Are Australians building back better after the Black Summer fires?

Date

Time

1:00pm - 2:00pm AEDT

Venue

Online via Go To Webinar

Speakers

Sonia Akter is Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Her research is situated on the nexus of agriculture, environment and development in the Asia-Pacific region. She has worked extensively on agriculture and food policy, natural disasters and women’s empowerment in South and Southeast Asia. She is presently a Senior Editor for the journal Food Security and an Associate Editor for the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AJARE). She graduated with a PhD in Environmental Management and Development from the Australian National University in 2010, and holds a MS degree in Economics from York University, Canada.

Description

Are Australians Building Back Better After The Black Summer Fires?

Exploring socio-economic and spatial variations in Australia's bushfire resilience using night-time light data.

This study examines how the Black Summer fire affected Australian communities are recovering after a year since the fires ravaged through large areas of New South Wales and Victoria with extraordinary intensity and extent. Using night-time light (NTL) as an indicator of economic and social activity in a geographic area (mesh block), I compare monthly night-time radiance score obtained from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument in bushfire affected and unaffected communities of New South Wales and Victoria during the period of 2019 ̶ 2021. The findings reveal a significant drop in the radiance score among affected communities after the Black Summer fires. This implies that, on average, economic and social activities in the Black Summer fire affected areas have significantly declined compared to the unaffected communities. A large degree of heterogeneity in night-time radiance change is observed across spatial and socio-economic groups. Socio-economically disadvantage communities, on average, appear to be on a slower resilience trajectory relative to socio-economically advantaged communities. Fire affected communities located in major cities and inner regions exhibit a higher degree of resilience to bushfire relative to communities who live in outer regional and remote areas.