Analysing impacts of natural disasters on logistics activities: flood risks and petroleum fuels in Queensland, Australia

Natural hazards cause much damage to lives, assets, and the economy as a whole. The functional discontinuity of businesses impacted by a natural disaster has a direct impact on affected community's quality of live. In regional and remote communities petroleum fuels are an essential commodity, particularly in post-disaster situations, given the supply chains of many other commodities are dependent on fuel supply. The aim of this study was to develop a framework and use it to analyse petroleum supply to communities affected by flooding across Queensland, Australia. The intent was to assist industry partners in identifying vulnerable localities and to development methods for application to other commodities. The approach focused on both the demand and supply side and used socio-spatial datasets, transport and commodity data. A multi-agent model was developed to represent the situation of petroleum fuel supply chain before and after a disaster event. The results identify both the broad sweep of vulnerable locations in key regions in Queensland as well as particular issues for communities in Cape York in far north Queensland. The approach proved viable, despite the limitations of publically available commodity datasets in Australia, and should therefore be of assistance to policy makers elsewhere seeking to identify system vulnerabilities and increase resilience.