Product catalogue
Severe Wind Hazard Assessment: Tropical Cyclone Scenarios for coastal Western Australian Communities
The northwest Australian coastline from Broome to Exmouth has experienced the greatest number of landfalling Tropical Cyclones (TCs) in Australia since records began in 1908 (Bureau of Meteorology, 2020). Despite this, direct impacts of a TC on individual communities are comparatively unusual, especially for severe TCs (category 3-5) as the coastline is sparsely populated. Communities are generally hundreds of kilometres apart, and a TC can cross the coast between them with little impact. However, the highest recorded wind gust in the world was 408 km/h (category 5) at Barrow Island during TC Olivia on 10 April 1996 (Courtney et al., 2012). The highest wind gust on the Australian mainland was 267 km/h (category 4) at Learmonth during TC Vance on 22 March 1999 (Australian Bureau of Meteorology, 2000). This emphasises the fact that no regional centre in WA, with the exception of Exmouth, has experienced a high-end TC impact in the past 30 years, but there is the potential for extreme events to strike these communities.
While the impacts of past cyclone events have been well-documented, it is unlikely that communities have experienced the ‘worst-possible’ (either most intense or most damaging) cyclone impact in the past 30 years.
To understand the scale of impacts that would occur if a TC were to make a direct impact on any of these communities the West Australian Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) applied for funding through the Natural Disaster Resilience Program. In July 2017 funding was obtained to conduct the Severe Wind Hazard Assessment (SWHA) project. This initiative is aligned with the National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework (Department of Home Affairs, 2018), which outlines a national, comprehensive approach to proactively reducing disaster risk in Australia.
To better understand the potential impacts of cyclones and extra-tropical transitioning cyclones on Western Australian communities, the project has modelled a number of scenarios to demonstrate the impacts of realistic, but perhaps not experienced, cyclones for Broome, Port Hedland, South Hedland and Wedgefield, Karratha, Dampier, Roebourne, Wickham and Point Samson, Exmouth, Carnarvon, Geraldton and Perth
A consistent message that comes from this analysis is the excellent performance of modern residential construction to withstand the impacts of these scenario TCs. However, a house built to code’s performance is reliant on being maintained during its life so that its resilience is retained; just because a building was built to standard doesn’t mean it has been maintained to that standard.
Investigations conducted into previous cyclones demonstrate that houses built pre-1980s (pre-code) under perform and offer lesser protection compared to those houses built to code post-1980s. In line with that the work undertaken in this report shows clearly that communities with a larger proportion of pre-code residential construction will suffer greater damage, due to the greater vulnerability of older building stock.
Houses not originally built to current standards cannot, in general, be expected to perform to the current design levels, irrespective of the maintenance level. The only way to increase performance of these older residential buildings is to retrofit to modern standards.
The analysis undertaken in the project has provided emergency managers from local, district and State level with a wealth of information on the potential impacts a major cyclone would have on Western Australia. This information has provided opportunity to strengthen planning processes and raise community awareness of mitigation actions that can reduce impacts.
This collection comprises reporting and data developed as part of the Severe Wind Hazard Assessment for Western Australia. The collection includes all reports, publications (e.g. conference presentations, posters and news articles, etc.), and data delivered to Department of Fire and Emergency Services (Western Australia).
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2020-01-31
- Date (Publication)
- 2021-08-25T01:59:36
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/131910
- Citation identifier
- Digital Object Identifier/http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2021.009
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Author Arthur, W.C.
Author Gray, S.
External Contact Author Wehner, M.
PSCD Internal Contact Author Martin, S.
External Contact Author Edwards, M.
PSCD Internal Contact
- Name
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Record
- Issue identification
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GA RECORD: 2021/009
- Purpose
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Natural Hazard Impact Reduction
- Status
- On going
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Resource provider Place and Communities Division
External Contact Point of contact Kendall, D.
Place and Communities Internal Contact
- Spatial representation type
Extent
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
Resource format
- Title
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Product data repository: Various Formats
- Website
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Data Store directory containing the digital product files
Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes
- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
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EARTH SCIENCES
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Natural Hazards
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- Theme
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Tropical cyclone
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- Theme
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Wind
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- Keywords
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
- Title
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
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CC-BY
- Edition
-
4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- License
Resource constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
- OnLine resource
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Download the Record (pdf) [10 MB]
Download the Record (pdf) [10 MB]
- Distribution format
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pdf
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Resource lineage
- Statement
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DFES Severe Wind Hazard Assessment Project: http://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/safety/severe-wind
Metadata constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/98544138-fe65-4b56-b152-c7be4a715411
- Title
-
GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
-
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Owner Arthur, C.
Place and Communities Internal Contact Point of contact Kendall, D.
Place and Communities Internal Contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Document
- Name
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Severe Wind Hazard Assessment: Tropical Cyclone Scenarios for coastal Western Australian Communities
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
-
Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/131910
- Date info (Creation)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
- Date info (Revision)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
Metadata standard
- Title
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AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
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Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
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Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551