UNSW-led research shows how the Black Summer bushfires strained the systems built to coordinate Australia’s response, and how emergency services can avoid a repeat scenario.
Research led by UNSW Sydney has identified five specific ways complex climate disasters overwhelm the emergency systems built to manage them, using the 2019/2020 “Black Summer” bushfires as a case study, with practical recommendations for governments, emergency services and businesses managing large-scale crises.
The study, published in the Journal of Management Studies, draws on 62 interviews with fire chiefs, incident controllers, Australian Defence Force personnel, police, government officials, NGOs and community groups involved in the Black Summer response.
Over six months, the fires burnt 24 million hectares, destroyed more than 3000 homes and killed 33 people, while spreading across five states and territories and drawing in international firefighting crews from the United States, Canada and New Zealand. It has been estimated that the fires caused nearly $100 billion in economic losses and property damage, making them the costliest natural disaster in Australia’s history.
“Our research was motivated by the very experiences of many of our team living through the 2019/2020 bushfires,” said project lead, Professor Markus Höellerer from the School of Management and Governance at UNSW Business School.
“As researchers, we were struck not only by the scale and intensity, but also by the way they challenged Australia’s highly developed response systems that are widely regarded as world-leading. Indeed, the Black Summer revealed how even sophisticated institutional arrangements can struggle when confronted with climate-driven events of such magnitude.
“We were eager to fully understand what these disruptions mean for organisations and governance systems, and to explore how societies can better prepare for, and respond to, the increasingly complex challenges posed by contemporary climate crises.”
Five ways the system buckled
The research found that as the crisis spread across multiple regions, jurisdictions, and drew in multiple organisations, the usual systems for coordinating bushfire response came under increasing strain. Resources became harder to allocate and share effectively, responsibilities less clear, and communication more difficult. As responders tried to cope with these disruptions, many organisations and individuals turned inward and relied on familiar routines, while others created ad hoc workarounds that ultimately added further complexity to the response.
As fires broke out across the country almost simultaneously, the usual systems for sharing people, equipment and expertise came under enormous strain. “There were simply fires everywhere,” one responder told the researchers, making it “really, very challenging to get resources where you needed them”.
As fire fronts merged and overlapped, it became much less clear who was responsible for what. One incident controller described being held responsible for an area he had no way of monitoring: “People were telling me I was responsible for [a distant fire incident]... I’ve got absolutely no influence on what’s going on there.”
At the same time, communication systems were overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of incoming information. One firefighter said the systems supporting planning and coordination “basically crumbled” and “the whole planning cell was crippled because of it.”
Two more mechanisms emerged as a result of how people tried to cope with these disruptions. Organisations under pressure turned inward, focusing on immediate priorities and defaulting to familiar systems – a response the researchers call ossifying. This dynamic was evident between states competing for scarce resources and between emergency agencies, such as fire services and land management agencies, that increasingly retreated into their own ways of working. While this created local clarity, it hardened the boundaries that needed to be bridged for effective collaboration, with one respondent describing how key decisions were increasingly made “behind closed doors, literally”.
At the same time, isolated individuals and agencies began improvising workarounds that were often disconnected from the wider response, in some cases duplicating decisions or “re-creating new structures and new processes” adding further complexity to an already strained system.
Three ways to prepare for the next crisis
“Contemporary climate crises are not simply more intense versions of past events,” said research lead author Dr Jaco Fourie, a lecturer in the School of Management and Governance at UNSW Business School, who also serves as chief investigator for the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response.
“They unfold across multiple scales and disrupt the governance arrangements designed to support collaboration during crisis response, relief and recovery. Understanding how these mechanisms interact gives policymakers and emergency services a clearer view of how coordination breaks down, and where vulnerabilities are likely to emerge.”
In their study, the authors argue that even a perfectly designed governance system can fail to accommodate the growing complexity of the fallout of natural disasters. Instead, crisis governance requires adaptive systems capable of responding to changing conditions.
The research identifies three areas that support this adaptability and help create a more effective way to manage crises that affect multiple areas at once.
The first is designing for complexity from the outset, including integrated cross-border information systems and stronger national resource-sharing arrangements so jurisdictions can coordinate when multiple large-scale incidents hit at once.
The second is balancing control and integration, ensuring diverse expertise stays connected to decision-making rather than allowing agencies to retreat into silos as pressure builds.
The third is coordinating improvisation itself, developing flexible “meta-routines” that let responders collectively identify emerging gaps and adapt without losing connection to the broader response effort.
“Many organisations prepare for the crisis they expect – not the ones they will get in a climate-changed era. Our findings show that as crises become more complex, even well-designed systems can come under pressure,” said Dr Fourie.
“The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate improvisation, which is impossible, but to build the capacity to coordinate it. Organisations that can do that will be far better positioned to respond to the disruptions of a climate-changed future,” he concluded.
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