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John Schneider, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Trevor Jones, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Bob Cechet, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Trevor Dhu, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Ole Nielsen, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
David Robinson, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
David Burbidge, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Craig Arthur, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Jane Sexton, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Mark Edwards, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Krishna Nadimpalli, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Ken Dale, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
Monica Osuchowski, Geoscience Australia (Australia)
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The annual cost of sudden onset natural hazards in Australia was estimated in 2001 to be more than 1.1 billion Australian dollars. The cost of events since then indicates that ongoing efforts are required to manage the risks from bushfires, floods, tropical cyclones, storm surge, severe storms, earthquakes and tsunami in Australia. In 2003 the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) published a review of natural disaster relief and mitigation arrangements in Australia, recommending the development and implementation of a "national programme of systematic and rigorous disaster risk assessments". The report advocated a 'fundamental shift in focus towards cost-effective, evidence-based disaster mitigation'. As a result, the Natural Disaster Mitigation Programme (NDMP) was implemented by the Australian Government in collaboration with the State and Territory Governments. The aim of the NDMP was to reduce the costs of natural disasters in Australia, including government disaster relief payments, by supporting risk assessment and mitigation efforts.
Geoscience Australia has been engaged as a technical advisor as part of the programme, and has also begun a series of national risk assessments for a range of natural hazards. Significant progress has been made in developing methods, models and tools for application to impact and risk assessment studies. Geoscience Australia has also facilitated the development of a national risk assessment advisory structure and risk assessment framework. In this presentation we examine three risk/impact assessment models and associated case studies for earthquake, cyclone/severe wind and tsunami. Each risk/impact model consists of modules for hazard, building and population exposure, and consequence/damage. The hazard component considers the probability of occurrence of events of different magnitudes (or categories) and locations, and the propagation of energy from the hazard source to sites of interest. The exposure information is captured in the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS), which captures key attributes of residential and commercial buildings, critical infrastructure, population statistics, and business information. Vulnerability models consider the relationship between hazard parameters (e.g., ground shaking, wind speed, or wave height and speed) and the resulting damage to buildings/infrastructure, and human casualties. Building damage is then linked to cost-of-repair models that have been developed using quantity survey data. Finally, the costs and repair times are used to evaluate direct and indirect economic impacts at a regional and national scale. Geoscience Australia is making these risk/impact assessment models and information available to the States and Territories and other stakeholders through the release of open source software, interoperable databases, web-based information access, and training of technical experts.
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