The vulnerability of urban coastal cities to inundation from the impacts of climate change such as sea level rise has been highlighted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. In addition, predictions of an increased intensity of rainfall are likely to result in subsequent disaster flooding events, particularly in coastal areas.

The city of Mackay is situated on the coast in Northern Queensland and was founded on an estuarine wetland floodplain in 1860. The township has developed around the port and services that support the primary industries of the region. A study was conducted in Mackay using a purposive sampling research design that was composed of three phases of data collection. Each phase of data collection was targeted at a different group of stakeholders: household residents, businesses and government institutions. Research was undertaken to determine the extent to which those who had applied mitigation measures prior to the 2008 disaster flood event were resilient. Consequently the effectiveness of the Queensland State Planning Policy 1/03: Mitigating the Adverse Impacts of Flood, Bushfire and Landslide (SPP 1/03) introduced in 2003, was particularly examined under the recently enacted Queensland Sustainable Planning Act 2009 which will cause state planning policies to expire after ten years.
The case study highlighted the financial cost of natural disasters with insurance payouts totalling $410 million and millions in expenditure by government institutions on response and recovery operations. This study showed that businesses in Mackay were more resilient than households to the disaster flood event but that the community displayed significant levels of adaptive capacity using various strategies.
Whilst the SPP 1/03 was found to be better than the lack of disaster planning policies in Queensland prior to 2003, it is limited and open to misinterpretation. Requirements to ensure that buildings are above the 1/100 year Annual Recurrence Interval, were found to have the effect of contributing to the development of wetlands, storm surge and flood prone areas by effectively advocating infilling or reclamation of land. This increase in the built environment was found to have the effect of increasing the severity of flooding impacts to residences and businesses.
Policy solutions that rely heavily on emergency management are irresponsible under climate change scenarios. Planning policy solutions which effectively address development patterns in floodplains are critical to increasing the resilience of communities and decreasing the cost of natural disaster recovery so that insurance premiums, for example, remain affordable to all Australians.