Authors / CoAuthors
Abstract
The 2002 report to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) <i>Natural disasters in Australia: Reforming mitigation, relief and recovery arrangements</i> advocated a 'fundamental shift in focus towards cost-effective, evidence-based disaster mitigation'. The report stated that in Australia there was a 'lack of independent and comprehensive systematic natural disaster risk assessments, and natural disaster data and analysis'. One key solution proposed to address this gap in our knowledge is outlined in Reform Commitment 1 in the report: <i>Develop and implement a five-year national programme of systematic and rigorous disaster risk assessments</i>. This framework is designed to improve our collective knowledge about natural hazard risk in Australia to support emergency risk management and natural hazard mitigation. The natural hazards covered are those defined in the report to COAG: bushfire, earthquake, flood, storm, cyclone, storm surge, landslide, tsunami, meteorite strike and tornado. Many events have demonstrated that the importance of natural hazards does not lie simply in the generation and passage of events such as severe storms or floods, but in the wide-reaching and profound impacts that these events can have on communities. Risk 1 is defined as: A concept to describe the likelihood of harmful consequences arising from the interaction of hazards, communities and the environment. This framework focuses on risk assessment for sudden onset natural hazards to underpin natural hazard risk management and natural hazard mitigation. The framework does not focus on risk management or mitigation, although its outcomes support and benefit these. The framework covers the following risks arising from natural hazards: financial, socio-economic, casualty, political and environmental risk. Each of these risks contributes to the overall impacts of natural hazards on communities . This framework is aimed foremost at those who seek an improved evidence base for risk management of natural hazards, in all levels of government. The framework is also intended for risk assessment practitioners, researchers and information managers. The primary driver of the framework is the need to develop an improved evidence base for effective risk management decisions on natural hazards. Developing this improved evidence base will also deliver on COAG Reform Commitment 1. Other key drivers include: - Cooperative approaches across all levels of government to managing natural hazards; - A consistent approach to natural hazard risk assessment; - Risk management for cross-jurisdictional and catastrophic disasters; - The potential impacts of climate change from possible changes in the frequency or severity of weather related natural hazards; - Increasing exposure of populations to natural hazards through demographic change and increases in personal assets.
Product Type
nonGeographicDataset
eCat Id
68009
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Cnr Jerrabomberra Ave and Hindmarsh Dr GPO Box 378
Canberra
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2601
Australia
Keywords
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- External Publication
- ( Theme )
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- risk assessment
- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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- Earth Sciences
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- Published_Internal
Publication Date
2007-01-01T00:00:00
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geoscientificInformation
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