From pandemics to bushfires - Data visualisation holds the key to recovery from crises.
The 2019-2020 bushfire season was the worst in NSW recorded history. As the community struggled to come to terms with the scale of devastation, an even bigger crisis was brewing. In late January 2020, the state reported its first case of COVID-19.
As the pandemic spread, the challenges for the NSW Government became clear. How would these crises impact NSW communities, both immediately and in the future? Where did the challenges created by them overlap? And how, and where, should the Government allocate resources to support regional recovery?
The problem
The catastrophic impact of the NSW bushfires was still being felt when the state crisis snowballed with the emergence of COVID-19. Communities already reeling from the effects of the bushfires, were soon hit by the social and economic impacts of the pandemic. As the NSW Government sought to provide support and resources to aid the recovery of the state’s 128 local government areas (LGAs), the next steps were far from clear.
The opportunity
Researchers at the UTS Data Science Institute, in partnership with the NSW Government, had already developed a geographic information system (GIS) to model the impacts of COVID-19 and government policy responses for various areas of the state. This research provided the foundations for an additional project to explore the ‘double whammy’ impact of COVID-19 and the bushfires using data analytics techniques. The result was a data visualisation system that used satellite image data from the Rural Fire Service and the Metropolitan Wildlife Service to demonstrate the impacts of the bushfires across the whole of NSW. The research team then overlaid their COVID-19 modelling to create a detailed analysis of the impacts of both crises occurring at once.
The impact
The data showed that while the bushfires and COVID-19 both had devastating effects, few communities were seriously affected by both crises at once. The bushfires wreaked havoc in regional areas like Shoalhaven and the Blue Mountains, while COVID-19 was most pronounced in densely populated urban areas. These findings established an evidence base to support the allocation of NSW Government resources during the recovery process.
The data can also be applied to future scenario planning, preparing the government to respond to future bushfires, pandemics or other catastrophic events.
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