Improving flood resilience through coordination and collaboration: The 2022 New South Wales Floods in Australia

Flooding is the deadliest and most damaging natural hazard worldwide. Despite efforts to make communities more flood-resilient, global flood impacts are on the rise due to ongoing climate change. Amid the expected increase in the intensity and frequency of flood disasters, there is an urgent need to understand the roles of network governance in ensuring coordinated efforts in response to floods. The goal of this study is to examine interorganizational coordination and collaboration in the aftermath of the New South Wales (NSW) Floods in Australia in 2022. Specifically, this study addresses two primary research questions: (1) Which agencies coordinated and collaborated during the response to the NSW Floods? (2) What were the characteristics of the interorganizational coordination system in response to the NSW Floods in 2022? This study uses Natural Language Processing techniques to extract relevant information from the NSW Government (2022) Flood Inquiry Report and the NSW Legislative Council Report (2022) to answer the research questions. The findings indicate that several agencies played a critical coordinating role and collaborated during the response to the NSW Floods. In addition, the analysis of the collaborative networks indicates strong connections between certain entities and weak or absent connections among other entities in the response network. These results provide valuable insights into the relationships and thematic focus of flood-related policies in Australia and underscore the need for enhanced collaboration and coordination among key stakeholders, including government agencies, to ensure a unified and effective approach to flood resilience.