Regional Futures
CRESC focuses on research for new regional economic base development and the supporting research needed for regional industries, communities, and governments. Our research focuses on best-practice development for new industries, co-designing the research and development with key regional stakeholders, and transformational research in regional and rural industries. Partnering with communities, industries, and governments, our researchers bring novel and appropriate solutions to wide-ranging agricultural, renewable energy, drought resilience, and productivity-related research.
Key areas of research and activities include:
- New economic base analysis for regional communities
- Analysis of regional strengths and emerging industries
- Modelling opportunities and barriers of regional significance
- Developing regional ecosystem’s capability
- Identification of future prosperity and resilience.
Theme leader
Professor John Rolfe is a resource economist who is a Professor of Regional Economic Development in the School of Business and Law at CQUniversity at Rockhampton, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Professor Rolfe has a number of research interests but specialises in non-market valuation, regional development, environmental, resource and agricultural economic issues, agricultural adoption, and economic impact assessment in regional areas. He co-edited two important reference books on the topic of non-market valuation and benefit transfer in 2006 and 2015 and has published in a number of discipline areas outside his core skills in Applied Economics, including agricultural management, environmental reporting, impact assessment, and regional development. is the course co-Ordinator of the Masters of Sustainable Tourism Management at CQU. Bruce’s research interests include climate change, the impacts of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy on tourism, crisis and disaster management, tourism transport, regional tourism development, rural tourism and sustainable tourism.
