Improving Crisis Communication: A Case Study of Brisbane Council

This case study focuses on the January 2011 floods in Queensland and how the information in the form of communication from the City council and Bureau of Meteorology could better reach the stakeholders. It discusses communication issues, barriers, channels, group decision making, and social media utilization. Recommendations include optimum utilization of social media channels and community engagement communication campaign.

Business Communication
Case Study- Brisbane Council

Table of Content
Introduction..........................................................................................................................................2
Overview of the Situation...................................................................................................................2
Communication...................................................................................................................................2
Communication Issues...................................................................................................................2
Impacted by the communication...................................................................................................3
Communication Responsibility..........................................................................................................3
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................4
Recommendation................................................................................................................................4
Optimum utilization of Social Media Channels............................................................................4
Community engagement communication campaign..................................................................4
References..........................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
The case study is based on the January 2011 floods in Queensland, which swept off almost
3 quarters of the entire state. The report here will address on how the information in the form
of communication from the City council and Bureau of Meteorology could better reach the
stakeholders. The research report will focus on topics such as the communication process,
barriers to communication, channels of communication, group decision making, using social
media channels and others. Towards the end, a couple of recommendation in the form of
strategy will be provided to the government and council to improve the disaster management
communication.
Overview of the Situation
The situation described in the case study is based on the January 2011 floods of
Queensland, which resulted in wreckage in the state and destructing life in almost three
quarters of Queensland. During such difficult times, it becomes extremely difficult to manage
the communication to the people who are more likely to be impacted by the floods. Issues
such as failure of certain communication channels, power outages, isolation of some
communities are quite common due to which the effectiveness of the communication gets
lost for the stakeholders. The stakeholders in this case are the communities such as
business and individuals who are impacted by the disaster; it includes external stakeholders
such as government and councils as well (Wickes, Britt & Broidy, 2017).
Communication
The section here will discuss on the communication issues faced during the disaster, people
impacted in the situation and the people who were responsible for communicating with the
stakeholders in the situation.
Communication Issues
 Almost all the residents were fanatically searching for information on the flood and
the recovery measures being undertaken by the government and the councils. There
was huge traffic on the website through Brisbane and also on the council’s website.
This resulted in big time failure of communication, which also disabled other
communication channel such as email for the residents. At the same given time, the

council’s office was filled with many people, and most of the people had to work from
home to provide communication to the impacted residents (Carayannopoulos, 2017).
 Council’s and government three fold objective for the flood required to provide
detailed and accurate information on the impact of flood and what actions were
needed, inform the residents that a plan is in place and proactively address the
concerns and queries of the residents were badly hampered due to Power outage.
Medium such as TV, radio were badly affected and the communication could not
reach the residents creating a situation of Mayhem in Queensland.
 There were a number of communities which were isolated due to the flood situation,
thus addressing to them was again a big concern for the councils. These isolated
groups had to be communicated on the impact of the flood and the plan in place,
which was difficult to set up due to power outage, high traffic on the website and
internet challenges. At such a time, the only possible option or the best option was
utilizing the social media channels to communicate with the residents and monitor the
progress in a timely manner (Brockie & Miller, 2017).
Impacted by the communication
The entire population of Brisbane including business people and individuals were the prime
beneficiaries of the communication. As this group of people were most impacted by the
situation and wanted relief package from the government and the council body. The
assurance in the form of communication would have helped them to calm down and wait for
the help to come from the government and the supporting agencies. Almost 40,000 homes
and businesses across Brisbane were badly impacted by the disastrous flood, which could
have been reduced significantly if a crisis communication strategy was in place, beforehand
(Cook, 2018).
Communication Responsibility
There were primarily two bodies that were responsible for putting up the communication
online and further distribute it using web 2.0 and traditional communication channels to the
population of Brisbane. It was the duty and responsibility of the government body and city
council to drive communication from the top. The three pronged objectives to communicate
to the public of Brisbane were:
 Providing detailed and accurate information on the flood and the recovery plan in
place.

 To install confidence and faith in the public of Brisbane by communicating to them
the plan decided to take them out of their existing troubles.
 Quickly and proactively address the issues at hand.
Conclusion
January 2011 Brisbane flood was a lesson to the city council and the government body in
action to awaken them towards the growing need of crisis communication. The
communication failure in Brisbane can be attributed to many reasons such as power outage,
high traffic, congestion on the web and many more, but the biggest reason was inability to
utilize and manage the online communication through the use of social media. Using the
social media to communicate could have lessened the impact of the flood and generated
confidence in the population of Brisbane. Thus, the need of the hour is to create a crisis
communication strategy and effective utilization of communication channels to create the
desired impact.
Recommendation
Optimum utilization of Social Media Channels
Over 85% of Australia population is net savvy and social media is the platform which
consumes most of their time. Thus, the popularity and growth and social media channels can
be used as an advantage by the government and council to spread the word about the flood
and other important communication to the stakeholders. The social media platform can be
used to respond quickly to the stakeholders, and can also be used to coordinate various
activities in the impacted region. This would also restore the confidence of the public on
Government and the city council and better utilization of the relief package (Moon, 2017).
Community engagement communication campaign
A campaign designed to engage the community in the cleaning up activity and other
programs would have ensured better communication in the flood impacted areas.
Technologies such as SMS, Social media and emails can be used to gather the volunteers
and communicate with them about the roles they have to play to help the people in need.
This will eventually drive the community through the efficient use of communication channel,
resulting in improving the situation at hand (Carayannopoulos & McConnell, 2018).

References
Brockie, L. and Miller, E., 2017. Understanding older adults’ resilience during the Brisbane
floods: Social capital, life experience, and optimism. Disaster medicine and public health
preparedness, 11(1), pp.72-79.
Carayannopoulos, G. and McConnell, A., 2018. Bringing lessons from crisis management
into the realm of wicked problems. Australian Journal of Political Science, pp.1-17.
Carayannopoulos, G., 2017. Disaster Management in Australia: Government Coordination in
a Time of Crisis. Routledge.
Cook, M., 2018. “It Will Never Happen Again”: The Myth of Flood Immunity in
Brisbane. Journal of Australian Studies, 42(3), pp.328-342.
Moon, B., 2017. Rebuild and Improve Queensland: Continuous Improvement After the
2010–2011 Floods in Australia. Flood Damage Survey and Assessment: New Insights from
Research and Practice, 228, p.173.
Wickes, R., Britt, C. and Broidy, L., 2017. The resilience of neighborhood social processes: a
case study of the 2011 Brisbane flood. Social science research, 62, pp.96-119.