Tailored Earthquake Risk Mitigation Information for Decision Makers

In Australia there is a lack of retrospective building regulation to address earthquake prone buildings within communities. The commitment of funds to retrofit high risk buildings either by property owners for by government requires decisions to commit constrained resources for this purpose. Engineers are able to communicate the physical solutions to address these buildings but may be less able to articulate the risk reduction proposition to property owners who may reside or operate a business in the building. Further, emergency managers and government policy makers may not understand the broader issues and benefits of targeted intervention. This paper focusses on unreinforced masonry and describes a program of work that has translated earthquake hazard and engineering vulnerability into a range of communication products. Learnings from the application of masonry mitigation research in two case study communities are presented along with their translation into a range of communication products tailored to a range of decision makers and users. The range of benefits considered are broader than damage avoidance, extending to emergency management logistics, economic activity and avoiding losing heritage value in communities. It also describes forward initiatives to integrate earthquake retrofit into broader resilience building interventions that address other natural hazard deficiencies. Abstract submitted to/presented at the 2022 Australian Earthquake Engineering Society (AEES) Conference (https://aees.org.au/aees-conference-2022/).