This brochure describes the work undertaken at Geoscience Australia (GA) to develop a blast loss estimation capability for the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation. This brochure was developed to accompany a GA record on the same subject. (<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2016.022">eCat #101902</a>) Geoscience Australia has developed a modelling capability to estimate the potential impact of terrorist blasts in Australian central business districts (CBDs). With this information, the Australian Government is now able to more reliably estimate insured loss on behalf of the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation (APRC). Insured loss is determined based on impact to buildings, contents and business interruption. This capability can now provide blast loss estimates to ARPC in a single business day for the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane CBDs. This capability is still in development for the Perth CBD and is expected to be operational by the end of 2016. This blast modelling capability allows ARPC to understand their financial exposure to a range of blast scenarios and assists them to ensure appropriate levels of reinsurance are held to respond to a terrorist incident. Should a terrorist incident occur, loss estimates can be continually reassessed as intelligence from the field is incorporated. Furthermore, the capability provides the ability to assess expected losses across CBDs through simulating many blast locations.

Many scientific talks by Geoscience Australia staff are published on YouTube. These documents provide summaries (‘crib sheets’) of the presentations along with easy access links to each part of the video. They are intended to help teachers of Year 11/12 classes learning about natural hazards

Knowledge of the nature of buildings within business precincts is fundamental to a broad range of decision making processes, including planning, emergency management and the mitigation of the impact of natural hazards. To support these activities, Geoscience Australia has developed a building information system called the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) which provides information on buildings across Australia. Most of the building level information in NEXIS is statistically derived, but efforts are being made to include more detailed information on the nature of individual buildings, particularly in business districts. This is being achieved in Southbank through field survey work.

<p>Critical infrastructure systems provide essential services central to the functioning of Australian communities and the economy. Research into historic catastrophic failures of infrastructure suggests two factors have the strongest influence on such failures: system complexity and tight coupling within such systems. While complexity of these lifeline systems is recognised, the latter factor is often not well-understood, especially in the context of severe natural hazards. <p>Proposed in this paper is a methodology to study the performance of lifeline infrastructure under hazard impact, where key component parameters of complex lifeline systems, along with component interactions, are integrated within an executable model. This model can then be subjected to any number of virtual hazards to assist in identification of non-obvious failure mechanisms, quantify post-hazard system performance, and conduct experimentation with alternate mitigation measures. <p>This process allows for investigating the combined effect of various parameters including component fragilities, system topology, restoration times and costs with their uncertainties, redundancies, and the expected hazard. Much of this information is commercially sensitive or only accessible to specialist groups. Ensuring access to, and effective combination of, such information requires a trusted information-sharing collaboration framework between cross-sectoral experts. This collaboration requires participation from infrastructure operators, researchers, engineers, and government entities. This paper outlines a methodology and tools that have been utilised within such a collaborative project, and documents key learnings from the effort, along with observations on improvement strategies.

Knowledge of the nature of buildings within business precincts is fundamental to a broad range of decision making processes, including planning, emergency management and the mitigation of the impact of natural hazards. To support these activities, Geoscience Australia has developed a building information system called the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) which provides information on buildings across Australia. Most of the building level information in NEXIS is statistically derived, but efforts are being made to include more detailed information on the nature of individual buildings, particularly in business districts. This is being achieved in Sydney through field survey work.

Knowledge of the nature of buildings within CBD areas is fundamental to a broad range of decision making processes, including planning, emergency management and the mitigation of the impact of natural hazards. To support these activities, Geoscience Australia has developed a building information system called the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) which provides information on buildings across Australia. Most of the building level information in NEXIS is statistically derived, but efforts are being made to include more detailed information on the nature of individual buildings, particularly in CBD areas. This is being achieved in the Gold Coast through field survey work.

Knowledge of the nature of buildings within CBD areas is fundamental to a broad range of decision making processes, including planning, emergency management and the mitigation of the impact of natural hazards. To support these activities, Geoscience Australia has developed a building information system called the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) which provides information on buildings across Australia. Most of the building level information in NEXIS is statistically derived, but efforts are being made to include more detailed information on the nature of individual buildings, particularly in CBD areas. This is being achieved in Hobart through field survey work.

<div>Global steel demand is forecast to grow in the coming decades with continued development across Asia and Africa. Over the same period, the International Energy Agency suggests that the carbon intensity of steel production will need to decrease rapidly to align with projected pathways to net zero emissions by 2050. Balancing these competing priorities is a challenge that could shift global steelmaking business models. With abundant resources of both iron ore and metallurgical coal, Australia has benefited significantly from traditional steelmaking value chains. In the face of potential disruption, how should Australia navigate the challenges and opportunities accompanying the transition to ’green’ steel? How can geoscience help to identify and leverage Australia’s specific advantages?&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>The Green Steel Economic Fairways Mapper is a free, online tool that models the costs of hydrogen-based green ironmaking and steelmaking and maps how these costs vary across Australia. Developed through collaboration between Geoscience Australia and Monash University, it represents a novel approach to model multiple interconnected resource facilities. Following the Economic Fairways approach, the Mapper combines large-scale infrastructure and geoscience datasets to provide a high-level, geospatial analysis of the economic viability of hypothetical green steel projects. In doing so it creates a new capability within Australia—filling the void before the detail and expense of feasibility studies—to understand the broad contours of the decarbonization challenge, and to inform early-stage decision making in the pursuit of low-carbon steel. In this seminar, we introduce the Green Steel Economic Fairways Mapper, demonstrate its capabilities, and discuss some of the insights it reveals.&nbsp;</div>

<b>This record has been made internal on 27/11/2024 since it was superseded by eCat 149806.</b> NEXIS (National Exposure Information System) Residential Dwelling Density is a set of four raster layers representing the density of residential dwellings across Australia at different scales and resolutions. Resolutions include 2km, 1km, 500m and 100m. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines dwelling units as self-contained suites of rooms including cooking and bathing facilities and intended for long-term residential use. Such dwelling units include houses-detached buildings used for long-term residential purposes-and other dwellings including flats. This product is based on NEXIS version 13 (2022) data.

Knowledge of the nature of buildings within CBD areas is fundamental to a broad range of decision making processes, including planning, emergency management and the mitigation of the impact of natural hazards. To support these activities, Geoscience Australia has developed a building information system called the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) which provides information on buildings across Australia. Most of the building level information in NEXIS is statistically derived, but efforts are being made to include more detailed information on the nature of individual buildings, particularly in CBD areas. This is being achieved in Brisbane through field survey work.