End User representatives
Exposure in disaster risk reduction describes what is at risk; including people, buildings, infrastructure, businesses, hazardous substances and primary industries. Exposure information comprises the details needed to support situational awareness at all levels of governance and in various phases of disaster management.
The severity of a disaster depends on how much impact it has on exposure. The scale of impact in turn depends on the decisions made as a part of disaster mitigation. Therefore, exposure information is a fundamental requirement for decision making in disaster mitigation.
This project, now in its utilisation phase, has addressed the data and knowledge gaps and requirements for disaster resilience, resource assessment, emergency management, risk mitigation policy and planning. It identified the fundamental data requirements and modelling framework to derive exposure information to enable a better understanding of the vulnerability of people, buildings and infrastructure.
The project is a significant step towards developing national exposure information capabilities in Australia. The framework will support impact assessments on people, economy, infrastructure and the environment, caused by natural hazards such as bushfires, floods, cyclones and earthquakes.
A number of nationally consistent frameworks were developed, which will help a diverse range of end-users. The frameworks include:
- Built environment exposure – considers the attributes of assets to assess their vulnerability to natural hazards. The building exposure considers usage, type, structural system, number of storeys, size, age, attachments, replacement value and contents value. The infrastructure sectors considered are transportation, energy, communication, urban water supply, waste management, hazardous substances and major industries. The primary industries considered are agriculture, fishing, forestry and mining sectors.
- Business and economics exposure – consists of business definitions, assets and activities which are deemed necessary for assessment of business continuity, disruption, resilience and recovery indicators in disaster management.
The study also reviewed current exposure information provision capabilities to identify key issues, needs, gaps, overlaps and deficiencies. An extensive literature review has been undertaken, along with stakeholder consultations to identify comprehensive list of information requirements. A survey with end-users identified significant gaps in the availability of existing data and the translation into meaningful information for evidence based disaster decision making. The built environment exposure information framework has been completed. To reduce the complexity, it categorises the information into three levels depending on the requirements of the user: policy and planning; response and recovery; research and analysis. The framework presents the fundamental characteristics of exposed assets to natural hazards as components, elements and attributes. The exposure components considered in the framework are buildings, people, businesses and infrastructure.
|2017||Report||Natural hazards exposure information framework: annual project report 2016-17. (Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, 2017).|
|2016||Report||Built environment exposure information framework. (Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, 2016).|
|2016||Report||Natural hazards exposure information framework: Annual project report 2015-2016. (Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, 2016).|
|2015||Presentation||Natural hazard exposure information framework. (2015).|
|2015||Report||Natural hazard exposure information modelling framework: Annual project report 2014-2015. (Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, 2015).|
|2015||Report||Natural Hazards Exposure Information Modelling Framework Annual Report 2014. (2015).|
Exposure is referred to as the elements at risk within a given area that have been, or could be, subject to the impact of natural hazards.
Ready access to information improves business resilience. The same type of information can be used to identify business vulnerability and to perform an economic impact assessment in the event of a natural disaster. This framework identifies the types and sources of information to perform economic analysis. As an outcome, it equally identifies the gaps in the existing datasets.
This project will identify the data requirements and modelling framework to derive exposure information to enable a better understanding of the vulnerability of people, buildings and infrastructure.
Exposure information comprises the details needed to support various phases and all levels of governance in disaster management. There is a wide variety of fundamental data required for end users and also analysts to enable informed decision making.
|Improved decision support systems for optimal natural hazard mitigation||Prof Holger Maier||University of Adelaide|
|Mapping and understanding bushfire and natural hazard vulnerability and risks at the institutional scale||Prof Roger Jones||Victoria University|
|Economics of natural hazards||Dr Veronique Florec||University of Western Australia|
|Optimising post-disaster recovery interventions in Australia||Prof Mehmet Ulubasoglu||Deakin University|
|Natural hazard exposure information modelling framework||Dr Krishna Nadimpalli||Geoscience Australia|
|Cost-effective mitigation strategy for building related earthquake risk||Prof Michael Griffith||University of Adelaide|
|Cost-effective mitigation strategy for flood prone buildings||Dr Tariq Maqsood||RMIT University|
|An analysis of building losses and human fatalities from natural disasters||Dr Katharine Haynes||Macquarie University|
|Using realistic disaster scenario analysis to understand natural hazard impacts and emergency management requirements||Dr Thomas Loridan||Macquarie University|
|The Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index: A system for assessing the resilience of Australian communities to natural hazards||Dr Melissa Parsons||University of New England|