Burnett Regional Resilience Strategy

The Queensland Government has partnered with the four members of the Wide Bay Burnett Regional Organisation of Councils (WBBROC) to deliver the Burnett Regional Resilience Strategy which harnesses local expertise to champion a holistic approach to disaster resilience for the region.

This locally-led and regionally coordinated strategy is the result of a co-design process and outlines the shared vision for resilience for the councils of the region, their resilience challenges, opportunities, exposure, risks, pathways to resilience and implementation.

Project background

By 2022, every region across Queensland will be part of a locally-led and regionally-coordinated blueprint to strengthen disaster resilience. These Regional Resilience Strategies and local resilience action plans will help to keep Queenslanders safe by providing a coordinated approach to identify and prioritise disaster resilience actions. 

This multi-hazard approach will build on work completed by project partners to develop the award winning Burnett Catchment Flood Resilience Strategy, released in May 2018 as one of the four pilot projects delivered under Resilient Queensland.

Multi-hazard approach

The Burnett Regional Resilience Strategy focuses on supporting local government in the areas of connectivity, infrastructure resilience, social wellbeing, natural resource management, and disaster management resources.

Delivery of Regional Resilience Strategies in Queensland aim to address hazards such as cyclone (severe storm and wind), bushfire, earthquake and heatwave, is a key outcome of Resilient Queensland: Delivering the Queensland Strategy for Disaster Resilience, and is a published commitment under the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Sendai Framework.  

Implementation

Implementation of the Strategy will now be overseen by WBBROC in partnership the WBBROC member councils:

  • Bundaberg Regional Council
  • Cherbourg Regional Council
  • North Burnett Regional Council
  • South Burnett Regional Council.

Resilience Action Plans

QRA has worked with the councils of the Burnett Region to develop and deliver Local Resilience Action Plans that will help keep communities safe by providing a coordinated approach to identifying and prioritising disaster resilience actions, and embedding resilience and risk reduction into decision making and investment.

All councils that participated in the co-design process now have a Resilience Action Plan providing a clear forward plan for how we can make lasting change into the future through sustained investment in resilience and mitigation activities. Statewide more than 4400 local resilience actions have been identified.

These Resilience Action Plans aim to support councils to be as proactive as possible to describe their local resilience needs, and to build a forward program of effort that can be matched to funding opportunities over time as they emerge. The benefit of this is that local communities needs will be well known at all levels of government, and we can progressively deliver on these needs over time. 

Map

Related project: The Burnett Catchment Flood Resilience Strategy (pilot project)

The purpose of the Burnett Catchment Flood Resilience Strategy is to guide how we work together to proactively reduce flood risk and increase resilience throughout the catchment. It provides pathways for improving resilience over time, and a clear suite of strategies outlining the range of approaches required to improve the flood resilience of the catchment as well as government systems that are critical to its success.

The Wide Bay Regional Organisation of Councils was a joint winner in the Resilient Australian Awards 2018 Government Award category for the Burnett River Catchment Flood Resilience Strategy, and the project received a commendation at the 2018 Planning Institute of Australia Awards category for Improving Planning Processes and Practices.