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  • Tropical Cyclone (TC) Yasi crossed Queensland's Cassowary Coast during the night of the 2nd and 3rd of February, 2011. The cyclone was forecast by BoM (2011) to be a severe storm with wind gusts forecast to exceed the design gust wind speeds for houses set out in AS4055. Following the passage of the cyclone, it was evident that the severe wind and large coastal storm surge had caused significant damage to the region's building stock. Geoscience Australia (GA), together with collaborators from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand (NIWA), Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) and Maddocks & Associates, undertook a survey of damage to the region's buildings caused by severe wind and storm surge.

  • The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) and Geoscience Australia (GA) have developed a long-term partnership in order to better understand and reduce the risks associated with earthquake hazards in the Philippines. The Project discussed herein was supported by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). Specifically, this partnership was designed to enhance the exposure and damage estimation capabilities of the Rapid Earthquake Damage Assessment System (REDAS), which has been designed and built by PHIVOLCS. Prior to the commencement of this Project, REDAS had the capability to model a range of potential earthquake hazards including ground shaking, tsunami inundation, liquefaction and landslides, as well as providing information about elements at risk (e.g., schools, bridges, etc.) from the aforementioned hazards. The current Project enhances the exposure and vulnerability modules in REDAS and enable it to estimate building damage and fatalities resulting from scenario earthquakes, and to provide critical information to first-responders on the likely impacts of an earthquake in near real-time. To investigate this emergent capability within PHIVOLCS, we have chosen the pilot community of Iloilo City, Western Visayas. A large component of this project has been the compilation of datasets to develop building exposure models, and subsequently, developing methodologies to make these datasets useful for natural hazard impact assessments. Collection of the exposure data was undertaken at two levels: national and local. The national exposure dataset was gathered from the Philippines National Statistics Office (NSO) and comprises basic information on wall type, roof type, and floor area for residential buildings. The NSO census dataset also comprises crucial information on the population distribution throughout the Philippines. The local exposure dataset gathered from the Iloilo City Assessors Office includes slightly more detailed information on the building type for all buildings (residential, commercial, government, etc.) and appears to provide more accurate information on the floor area. However, the local Iloilo City dataset does not provide any information on the number of people that occupy these buildings. Consequently, in order for the local data to be useful for our purposes, we must merge the population data from the NSO with the local Assessors Office data. Subsequent validation if the Iloilo City exposure database has been conducted through targeted foot-based building inventory surveys and has allowed us to generate statistical models to approximate the distribution of engineering structural systems aggregated at a barangay level using simple wall and roof-type information from the NSO census data. We present a comparison of the national and local exposure data and discuss how information assembled from the Iloilo City pilot study - and future study areas where detailed exposure assessments are conducted - could be extended to describe the distribution of building stock in other regions of the Philippines using only the first-order national-scale NSO data. We present exposure information gathered for Iloilo City at barangay level in a format that can be readily imported to REDAS for estimating earthquake impact.

  • A compilation of short animations, describing the key processes involved in tsunami generation.

  • The Flood Study Summary Services support discovery and retrieval of flood hazard information. The services return metadata and data for flood studies and flood inundation maps held in the 'Australian Flood Studies Database'. The same information is available through a user interface at http://www.ga.gov.au/flood-study-web/. A 'flood study' is a comprehensive technical investigation of flood behaviour. It defines the nature and extent flood hazard across the floodplain by providing information on the extent, level and velocity of floodwaters and on the distribution of flood flows. Flood studies are typically commissioned by government, and conducted by experts from specialist engineering firms or government agencies. Key outputs from flood studies include detailed reports, and maps showing inundation, depth, velocity and hazard for events of various likelihoods. The services are deliverables fom the National Flood Risk Information Project. The main aim of the project is to make flood risk information accessible from a central location. Geoscience Australia will facilitate this through the development of the National Flood Risk Information Portal. Over the four years the project will launch a new phase of the portal prior to the commencement of each annual disaster season. Each phase will increase the amount of flood risk information that is publicly accessible and increase stakeholder capability in the production and use of flood risk information. flood-study-search returns summary layers and links to rich metadata about flood maps and the studies that produced them. flood-study-map returns layers for individual flood inundation maps. Typically a single layer shows the flood inundation for a particular likelihood or historical event in a flood study area. To retrieve flood inundation maps from these services, we recommend: 1. querying flood-study-search to obtain flood inundation map URIs, then 2. using the flood inundation map URIs to retrieve maps separately from flood-study-map. The ownership of each flood study remains with the commissioning organisation and/or author as indicated with each study, and users of the database should refer to the reports themselves to determine any constraints in their usage.

  • In 2012 Geoscience Australia produced a National Seismic Hazard Map (NSHM) of Australia using the Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) methodology. The primary product of the project was single 500 year return period Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) map GA record 2012/71. For this assessment the hazard has been calculated for 14 return periods (100 - 100,000 years) and 21 SA periods (0.0 - 5.0s), giving 294 hazard layers (maps) for 48000 sites across Australia. We show five of the possible 294 hazard maps and 34 of the tens of thousands of possible hazard curves and spectra. These were selected to cover the main types of additional maps that have been requested since the NSHM was released and to cover a reasonable range of return periods, SA periods and locations. In this record, the probability factor (Kp) curve given in AS1170.4 is also compared to the curves calculated for the eight capital cities. Finally, the hazard spectra for the capital cities and some selected locations is compared to the spectra for site class Be given in AS1170.4.

  • This document describes a structure for exchanging information to assist discovery and retrieval/transfer of flood information, including GIS flood mapping data. The draft class model represents metadata, data and summary information that supports the goals of the National Flood Risk Information Project (NFRIP) to improve the quality, consistency and accessibility of flood information. This document describes the data model that will be used to create an application schema.

  • A multi-hazard and exposure analysis of Asia. A GIS study that incorporates regional data for: landslide, tsunami, earthquake, tropical cyclone, volcanic, drought and flood hazard.

  • This document is intended to provide a record of the participants, program, and discussions held at the Fire Weather and Risk Workshop, held at Peppers Craigieburn in Bowral, from 1st -4th September 2011. The workshop was attended by 77 delegates and was sponsored by the ACT Emergency Services Agency, Geoscience Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the Federal Attorney Generals Department. These proceedings include the: - workshop program - executive summary by the workshop organizers - presentation abstracts (optional) - summaries of presentations and discussions (compiled at the workshop by the session chairs and scribes) - survey of participants- expectations of the workshop (received prior to the workshop) - results of a post-workshop evaluation - list of participants. This document also includes an invited journalistic-styled article by science journalist, Nick Goldie (Senior Deputy Captain, Colinton Rural Fire Brigade, NSW RFS) which provided an independent view on the activities that occurred over the three days.

  • This metadata relates to the ANUGA hydrodynamic modelling results for Busselton, south-west Western Australia. The results consist of inundation extent and peak momentum gridded spatial data for each of the ten modelling scenarios. The scenarios are based on Tropical Cyclone (TC) Alby that impacted Western Australia in 1978 and the combination of TC Alby with a track and time shift, sea-level rise and riverine flood scenarios. The inundation extent defines grid cells that were identified as wet within each of the modelling scenarios. The momentum results define the maximum momentum value recorded for each inundated grid cell within each modelling scenario. Refer to the professional opinion (Coastal inundation modelling for Busselton, Western Australia, under current and future climate) for details of the project.

  • The datasets created to produce the emergency mapping support products which contributed to fulfilling GA's arrangements in supporting the outcomes sought by the Australian Government during disaster events.