2022 news

NCIS Fatal facts has undergone a major upgrade and is now available online.

The refreshed tool includes:

• new search functionality
• screen and user help improvements
• updated category tags
• updated case summaries
• additional summaries for cases closed up until June 2022.

Fatal facts is a unique service providing access to coronial recommendations from across Australia. It is a publicly accessible online tool that enables searching for coronial recommendations by topic.

Cases are added to the tool regularly by the NCIS Unit. NCIS users with authorised access can look up further case information using the NCIS number assigned to each case summary.

View Fatal facts

See system updates for further information about this upgrade.

Ensure you have cleared your browser history and cache to view the updated tool.

An average of 71 sport and recreation deaths occur in New Zealand every year, according to a new fact sheet released by the National Coronial Information System (NCIS) Unit.

The fact sheet, Sport and recreation deaths in New Zealand, reviewed the circumstances of 848 deaths reported in New Zealand and made several key findings, including:

• The highest proportion of deaths involved water and boating activities (58.3%).
• Males were significantly over-represented, comprising more than eight in every 10 sport and recreation deaths (83.3%).
• Deaths occurred most frequently among those aged 25–44 years and 45–64 years (30.7% and 34.2% of deaths, respectively).
• Among people who died due to sport and recreation, 11.1 per cent were international visitors to New Zealand. Of these, the majority of visitors usually resided in Australia (35.1%), followed by Europe (31.9%) and North America (16.0%).
• Nearly a third (33.1%) of people who died undertaking adventure activities were international visitors.
• In 22 sport and recreation deaths, the person was engaged in the activity in a professional capacity.

View fact sheets

The NCIS Annual report 2021-22 is now available. It provides details of NCIS operations and achievements during the 2021-22 financial year, and the NCIS’ financial position as at 30 June 2022.

Significant progress was made towards the NCIS’ mission to provide comprehensive coronial data to those who need it and vision to save lives through the power of data in the last year. Information detailing progress is available in the Key achievements and Operational report sections.

Read the annual report

The NCIS Unit provides operational statistics on a quarterly basis to assist users in interpreting search results.

The NCIS Operational statistics as of 3 october 2022 have now been released.

The operational statistics that have been updated are:

• case closure statistics
• document attachment statistics.

View operational statistics

An average of 38 intentional self-harm deaths of farmers and farm workers occur in Australia every year, according to a new fact sheet released by the National Coronial Information System (NCIS) Unit.

The fact sheet, Intentional self-harm deaths of farmers and farm workers in Australia, reviewed the circumstances of 730 deaths reported in Australia and made several key findings, including:

• Males were significantly over-represented, comprising 92.3% (n=661) of intentional self-harm deaths of farmers and farm workers.
• Deaths occurred most frequently among those aged 35–44 years and 45–54 years (21.1% and 20.8% of deaths, respectively).
• Farmers and farm workers were significantly more likely to die due to a firearm-related incident (40.5% of farmer and farm worker intentional self-harm deaths) compared to people employed in any occupation (7.9% of intentional self-harm deaths among all employed people).

View fact sheets

An average of 52 residential fire-related deaths occur in Australia every year, according to an updated fact sheet released by the National Coronial Information System (NCIS) Unit.

The fact sheet, Residential fire-related deaths in Australia, reviewed the circumstances of 992 unintentional deaths reported in Australia and made several key findings, including:

• Males were over-represented, comprising 66.6% (n=661) of residential fire-related deaths.
• Persons aged 65 years and over were at greatest risk (346 deaths), followed by persons aged under 25 years (194 deaths).
• Drugs and/or alcohol were determined to have contributed to 20.3% of residential fire-related deaths (201 deaths).

View fact sheets

Several updates have been made to the supplementary data that supports coronial information in the NCIS:

• final ICD-10 codes for Australian deaths registered in 2018
• revised ICD-10 codes for Australian deaths registered in 2019
• indigenous status and place of birth data sourced from Births, Deaths and Marriages Registries for deaths reported to an Australian coroner in 2020.

Read the system update for further information.

Several enhancements have been implemented in the NCIS Fatal facts search tool to improve search functionality and user experience.

These include enhancements that enable:

• searching by multiple specific jurisdictions
• searching by a specific year range
• searching without selecting a category tag
• ‘and/or’ options where searching across multiple category tags.

Other enhancements include help icons explaining the different functionality, results screen modifications and a modernised appearance.

See Fatal facts for further information.

The NCIS Unit provides operational statistics on a quarterly basis to assist users in interpreting search results.

The NCIS Operational statistics as of 1 July 2022 have now been released.

The operational statistics that have been updated are:

• case closure statistics
• document attachment statistics.

View operational statistics

An average of 800 benzodiazepine-related deaths occur in Australia every year, according to a new fact sheet released by the National Coronial Information System (NCIS) Unit.

The fact sheet, Benzodiazepine-related deaths in Australia, reviewed the circumstances of 15,215 deaths reported in Australia.

View fact sheets

Other NCIS resources

NCIS Fatal facts is a unique tool that allows public access to Australian coronial recommendations. Users can search the tool by a variety of category tags. A search using the drugs and alcohol category can identify summaries of relevant deaths and associated coronial recommendations made to improve public health and safety.

A variety of organisations use NCIS data to conduct research into drug-related deaths. View research publications.

There were over 7900 and over 870 injury-related deaths in Australia and New Zealand respectively in 2019, according to the latest in a series of fact sheets released today by the National Coronial Information System (NCIS) Unit.

The fact sheets Mortality data series 2019 examined all closed case injury and drug-related deaths reported to an Australian or New Zealand coroner, as well as intentional self-harm deaths reported to an Australian coroner, in the 2019 calendar year. The series provides yearly data on each type of death to enable comparisons over time.

View fact sheets

Fatal facts edition 70 contains summaries of cases and recommendations made between July and September 2021.

A coroner may make recommendations following an investigation that relate to public health and safety to help prevent similar deaths in the future.

Fatal facts is a unique NCIS service providing access to coronial recommendations from across all Australian states and territories. It contains cases closed by a coroner from 2000.

View Fatal facts

A bug fix has been implemented to allow the extraction of ICD-10 underlying codes using the NCIS query design screen.

A number of updates have also been made to the supplementary codes that support coronial data in the NCIS, including:

• geocoding of incident, residential and death addresses for the October to December 2021 quarter
• preliminary ICD-10 codes for Australian deaths registered in 2020
• ICD-10AM codes for New Zealand deaths registered in 2019
• additional codes for work related deaths that occurred in 2020.

See system updates for further information.