The Asia-Pacific region is home to well over half the world's population and is also the focus of some of earth's most intense geological activity. It is no surprise therefore that geological hazards, in particular earthquake and volcano hazards, make the Asia-Pacific region the scene of som e of the worlds most lethal natural disasters. While this is evident form a perusal of historical data relating to natural disasters, it is not clear how well such historical data can be used as a guide for high -impact events that might be expected in the future. This uncertainty is due to (1) how poorly extreme geological events having long recurrence intervals are represented in the relatively short historical record, and (2) the failure of the historical record to account for recent demographic trends, in particular the explosive growth of population in the Asia -Pacific region and its rapid urbanisation during the 20 th century. We present here two novel techniques for assessing the potential impacts of volcanic and earthquake events on human population in the Asia Pacific region. For volcanic risk, we have calculated the frequency of large eruptions, aggregated for the countries of the Asia -Pacific region, using data provided by the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program. These eruption frequ encies have been combined with an analysis of population data for the region to estimate the average number of people who might be affected, in the broad sense of death, injury or loss of essential services, by a major volcanic eruption. For earthquake, risk, we have considered that the potential future high -impact events will be driven by the probability that an earthquake might occur in or adjacent to one of the many megacities of the Asia -Pacific region. Earthquake probabilities near megacities are cal culated from catalogue data, and these are combined with a rough criterion for damage based on earthquake ground motion, to asses potentially affected populations. We present preliminary results of these analyses, which suggest the potential for earthquakes and volcanoes in the Asia-Pacific region to cause future `mega-disasters', for which affected populations may be much larger than the numbers indicated by the historical record.

As part of the Climate Futures for Tasmania project (CFT) Geoscience Australia's Risk and Impact Analysis Group (RIAG) is conducting a severe wind hazard assessment for Tasmania under current climate conditions as well as two future climate scenarios. The assessment uses climate-simulated data generated by a high resolution regional model. A poster presented to this workshop shows the main results of the project [1]; a brief description of the methodology developed for the project is discussed in a paper also presented to this workshop [2]. In this paper three possible sources of error in the calculation of the severe wind hazard (using the methodology discussed in [2]) will be examined and recommendations on ways to improve the model results will be provided.

The National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) is a capability developed by Geoscience Australia, an agency within the portfolio of the federal Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism. NEXIS is a nationally consistent database of building assets, essential infrastructure, economic activity and demographic information. All these community elements are at risk to natural hazards and will be exposed to the unavoidable, long term influences of climate change. The system collects and collates a broad range of information for research and policy development in Australia, including that associated with climate change adaptation. The development of NEXIS has been undertaken in parallel to ongoing national assessments of climate change risk for hazards such as storm surge, severe wind, bushfire and extreme temperature NEXIS employs a largely statistical approach to developing a national definition of exposure using a number of existing databases maintained by others. These include the Geocoded National Address File (GNAF), the Property Cadastre, the Business Registry, and census datasets from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Costing modules developed by quantity surveyors have also been incorporated to provide estimates of building replacement costs across Australia. State Government departments have supplied data on local building information in Tasmania and South Australia. The Census of Land Use and Employment (CLUE) has also been made available by local government for comprehensive information about land use, employment and economic activity across the entire Greater Melbourne area.

Geoscience Australia (GA) began the development of the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) in response to COAG reform Commitment 2 'establish a nationally consistent system of data collection, research and analysis to ensure a sound knowledge base on natural disasters and disaster mitigation' (COAG, 2003). It was also recognised as a priority for the development of better models and tools to allocate investment across prevention, preparedness, response and recovery (PPRR) and also to assess the impact of emergencies on the community in the Emergency Management Information Development Plan (Harper, 2006). The NEXIS underpins various activities of risk assessment modelling, critical infrastructure failures, early warning systems and several national priority initiatives. This system will provide consistent and best available information at a national scale (for example, the number and type of buildings, businesses, people, critical infrastructure, and institutions such as schools and hospitals) to understand hazard exposure, at all locations in Australia.

The Climate Futures for Tasmania (CFT) research project is the Tasmanian Government's most important source of climate change data at a local scale. The project has created fine-scale (14 kilometre) climate information for Tasmania by downscaling five global climate models (GCM-s) with two IPCC emission scenarios (A2 and B1) to generate climate information from 1961 to 2100. This new dataset is being used to interpret the impact of the changing climate on four main disciplines: General Climate, Water and Catchments, Extreme Events and Agriculture. As part of the extreme events component, Geoscience Australia is conducting severe wind hazard and risk studies in the Tasmanian region under both current and future climate conditions. In this paper we present severe wind hazard maps for Tasmania for current and future climate. The CFT fine scale climate simulations which provide high-resolution spatial detail of the wind speed (hourly maximum time-step mean wind speed used) were used. The methodology is described in an accompanying paper ('Dynamical downscaling of severe wind hazard: Methodology', in these proceedings).

Hydrometeorological events make up or contribute to a majority of disasters in Australia and around the world. Scientists expect climate change will accelerate the frequency and intensity of these events in the future. Information on the location and characteristics of the built and social environment combined with hazard modelling and spatial analysis can facilitate the identification of buildings, people and infrastructure exposed to a particular natural hazard event. This information informs evidence based decision making and future planning to aid in the preparedness, response and recovery to severe hazard events. In Australia, the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) is a significant national project being undertaken by Geoscience Australia (GA). In 2006 GA embarked on the development of NEXIS in response to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) reform commitment on Australian's ability to manage natural disasters and other emergencies. The COAG commitment called for the establishment of a 'nationally consistent system of data collection, research and analysis to ensure a sound knowledge base on natural disasters and disaster mitigation' (DOTARS 2002). NEXIS database contains information on buildings, people, businesses and infrastructure and is derived from publicly available demographic, structural, economic and statistical data. Exposure profiles contain information on: building type, size, construction materials, age, replacement costs and population demographics for all residential, commercial and industrial buildings in Australia. Aggregated exposure information underpins risk assessment, emergency management, climate change adaptation, urban planning, insurance industry and research to help assist evidence based decision making. NEXIS development and operationalisation is crucial to support the decision makers and underpins community safety, emergency management and disaster risk reduction initiatives Australia This paper will discuss the development of NEXIS and its application in several national projects with the Department of Climate Change Energy and Efficiency (DCCEE) in Australia and recent national disaster impacts assessments on: Queensland tropical cyclone Yasi, Victoria bushfires and the Queensland floods.

Exposure refers to the elements at risk which may be subjected to the impact of severe hazards within a defined geographic area or region. These elements include the built environment, i.e buildings, infrastructure services and utilities, and also population and business activity. Geoscience Australia (GA) is developing the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) as a national capability to provide an exposure profile to underpin analysis of natural hazards; potential disaster footprints, risk assessments and climate change adaptation research. The NEXIS capability enables modelling to gain a greater understanding of the impact and risk exposure to these events. The information is used to inform evidence based decision making and future planning to aid in the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery to severe hazard events and climate change adaptation. The current NEXIS database provides exposure profile on building type, building construction materials (roof and wall), number of floors, floor area, year built and population demographics, business activity (turnover) and employee numbers. NEXIS is a demonstrated capability used in response to Tropical Cyclone Yasi, Victoria Bushfires, Queensland Floods and other recent national disaster events. The database also provides input data for use with the Earthquake Risk Model (EQRM) and Tropical Cyclone Risk Model (TCRM) to estimate direct and indirect losses to the built environment and possible population casualities. Further development of the database is planned to incorporate infrastructure and facilities data to enhance the capability and availability of nationally consistent data and exposure information.

The Rapid Inventory Collection System (RICS) is a vehicular data collection system (image and GPS) used for building/infrastructure damage and inventory assessment. The system consists of Ethernet cameras attached to a tripod mounted on a motor vehicle, a GPS receiver and software written in C++. The RICS data was used by the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission for the impact assessment (field survey) which quantified the extent and severity of the damage caused by the fire-storm.

We develop globally applicable macroseismic Intensity Prediction Equations (IPEs) for earthquakes of moment magnitude MW 5.0 to 7.9 and intensities of degree II and greater for distances less than Rrup 300km. The IPEs are developed for two distance metrics: closest distance to rupture Rrup, and hypocentral distance, Rhyp. The key objective for developing the model based on hypocentral distance in addition to more rigorous and standard measure Rrup is to provide an IPE which can be used in near real-time earthquake response systems anywhere in the world, where information regarding the rupture dimensions of a fault may not be known in the immediate aftermath of the event. We observe that our models, particularly the model for the Rrup distance metric, generally have low median residuals with magnitude and distance. We provide distance-dependent intra-event uncertainties, in addition inter-event bias uncertainty. In particular, we address whether the direct use of IPEs lead to a reduction in overall uncertainties when compared to methods which use a combination of ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) and ground-motion to intensity conversion equations (GMICEs). Finally, we derive intensity-based site amplification factors given the predicted intensity and proxy estimates of near-surface shear-wave velocity. However, we find that these amplification factors lead to little, if any significant reduction of intensity residuals. This is in part due to the observation that the median site condition for intensity observations is approximately near the NEHRP site-class CD.

Crucial elements for assessing earthquake risk are exposure and vulnerability. In assessing earthquake risk to the Australian built environment we need to know what is exposed to earthquake ground motion and also how vulnerable the exposed infrastructure is to the severity of shaking. While central business district (CBD) buildings make up a relatively small proportion of Australia's built environment their function and the business activity they support is vital to Australia's economy. This paper describes an ongoing effort by the Australian Government to undertake engineering and architectural surveys of buildings within state capital CBDs. With funding from the Attorney-General's Department Geoscience Australia has recently completed a survey of the Melbourne CBD and will complete surveys of the Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane CBDs this financial year. Survey teams comprise a structural engineer and a GIS operator who populates survey fields on a handheld computer. Approximately 90 survey data fields are incorporated in the template to enable capture of the variety in building features. The fields cover building characteristics that are understood to influence earthquake vulnerability. A summary of the survey activity undertaken to date is presented here along with some examples of the type of data that is being collected.