@article {bnh-4240, title = {Using realistic disaster scenario analysis to understand natural hazard impacts and emergency management requirements: annual project report 2016-17}, number = {347}, year = {2017}, month = {09/2017}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The study of historical occurrences of natural disasters only provides a very limited view of the full range of risk Australia is exposed to. Catastrophe models have been designed as a tool to extrapolate beyond past experience and as such can help risk practitioners prepare for the types of events yet to be seen.

In this project we apply the same techniques at the core of catastrophe models to design realistic disaster scenarios. The focus is not only on the hazard magnitude to be expected from rare extreme events but also on the likely impact in terms of building damage, infrastructure disruption and injuries / loss of human lives. To provide a global picture of natural disaster risk in Australia a range of perils and locations have been selected through the 3 years of the project. The scenarios cover Tropical Cyclones, Earthquake, Heatwaves and flooding induced by East Coast Lows while the regions around Adelaide, Melbourne, Northern New South Wales and Southeast Queensland are at the center of our analysis.

To facilitate communication of our key results a web content has been drafted to provide a description of each catastrophic event studied. The web content is hosted by the Australian Institue for Disaster Resilience (AIDR) knowledge Hub and targets a broader audience than the technical reports delivered as part of the project{\textquoteright}s milestones.

It is our hope that emergency services can leverage the type of information generated from such scenarios to assess their capabilities to cope with the response and recovery task. The web content also offers a source of information for a wider audience and plays a role in educating the general public on the potential threat posed by Australian natural disasters.

}, issn = {347}, author = {Thomas Loridan and M. S. Mason} } @article {bnh-5078, title = {The Excess Heat Factor as a metric for heat-related fatalities: defining heatwave risk categories}, journal = {Australian Journal of Emergency Management}, volume = {31}, year = {2016}, month = {07/2016}, abstract = {

Heatwaves represent Australia{\textquoteright}s most significant natural disaster in terms of mortality. A unanimous definition of what constitutes a heatwave does not currently exist. However, recent work from the Bureau of Meteorology (Nairn \& Fawcett 2013) has provided a metric designed to summarise their intensity. This metric, called the Excess Heat Factor, is being increasingly adopted by the research community as it is well-suited to characterise heatwave hazards. Yet the link between the Excess Heat Factor and the potential societal or economic impacts heatwaves can have is still not well understood. Using the PerilAUS archive of heat-related fatalities in Australia, this paper proposes to develop a classification of heatwave events in terms of their risk potential for human loss of life. This paper also quantifies the likely death toll from populations exposed to each of these categories. The category scheme is used to analyse the risk gradient of the three most lethal events in south-east Australia since 1900. The scheme helps communicate about heatwave fatality risk in Australia and provides some insight into the location of the populations under greatest threat. This study also catalogued 466 events in south-east Australia using the Excess Heat Factor and the newly developed heatwave categories. Using principal component analysis to identify the key modes of variability, a synthetic catastrophic heatwave scenario is generated and analysed for projected fatalities.

}, url = {https://ajem.infoservices.com.au/items/AJEM-31-04-13}, author = {Thomas Loridan and Coates, Lucinda and Daniel Arg{\"u}eso and Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick and John McAneney} } @article {bnh-3037, title = {Using realistic disaster scenario analysis to understand natural hazard impacts and emergency management requirements: Annual project report 2015-2016}, number = {181}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The study of historical occurrences of natural disasters only provides a very limited view of the full range of risk Australia is exposed to. Catastrophe models have been designed as a tool to extrapolate beyond past experience and as such can help risk practitioners prepare for the types of events yet to be seen.

In this project we propose to apply the same techniques at the core of catastrophe models to design realistic disaster scenarios. The focus is not only on the hazard magnitude to be expected from the rare extreme events simulated but also on the likely impact in terms of building damage, infrastructure disruption and injuries / loss of human lives. To provide a global picture of natural disaster risk in Australia a range of perils and locations are selected through the 3 years of the project. To date the scenarios delivered cover Tropical Cyclones, Earthquake and Heatwave perils while the regions around Adelaide, Melbourne and Southeast Queensland have been at the center of our analysis. In the last year of the project our focus will shift towards flooding events triggered by Tropical Cyclones in Queensland and East Coast Lows in New South Wales.

It is our hope that emergency services can leverage the type of information generated from such scenarios to assess their capabilities to cope with the response and recovery task. Several examples of utilisation to date are listed in this report along with promising leads for the coming year.

}, issn = {181}, author = {Thomas Loridan} }