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 North Sydney through field survey work.

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 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.

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 Adelaide 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.

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/).

<p>Rare Australian earthquake events can cause extensive damage and present significant logistical challenges for emergency management agencies and local governments. Evidence of this can be seen from recent earthquake events that include the 2010 Kalgoorlie earthquake and the 1989 Newcastle earthquake of 30 years ago. Emergency managers do not experience damaging earthquakes on the same regular basis as storms, floods, and bushfires and therefore don’t always fully understand the consequences they may face. Scenario modelling can provide insights to inform response and recovery by emergency management and recovery agencies as well as demonstrate how these impacts can be moderated by the retrofit of the most vulnerable building types. <p>The Shire of York is partnering with the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES), the University of Adelaide and Geoscience Australia in a collaborative project that explores the current earthquake risk in the heritage town of York, Western Australia, and how the risk could be moderated through targeted retrofit. The project forms part of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre project “Cost-effective Mitigation Strategy Development for Building Related Earthquake Risk”. This paper describes the approach taken and the predicted consequences modelled for a range of credible earthquake scenarios. Significantly, based on the recommendations from a stakeholder workshop in York on the 9th August 2018, it is also assessing how these consequences would be moderated in future decades through two rates of retrofit uptake in the town. This work is informing emergency management planning by DFES and the Shire of York. It is also illustrating the benefits of targeted community level retrofit to address the risk posed by the community building types most vulnerable to earthquakes.

<p>The Shire of York is partnering with the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES), the University of Adelaide and Geoscience Australia in a collaborative project that will examine the opportunities for reducing the vulnerability of the township of York to a major earthquake. The project forms part of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Collaborative Research Centre project “Cost-effective Mitigation Strategy Development for Building related Earthquake Risk”. The township of York has a number of valuable historical buildings that contribute greatly to the town’s economic prosperity and, at the same time, are vulnerable to earthquakes. <p>One of the benefits of retrofitting old buildings is the reduction in physical building repair required following a damaging earthquake. To evaluate this benefit it is necessary to know the vulnerability of the unmitigated building and how this changes following retrofit. This paper describes the approach taken to quantitatively estimate the vulnerability of unmitigated and retrofitted pre-WW1 URM buildings typical of the buildings found in York. Challenges in estimating vulnerability are discussed. Vulnerability curves are presented for one of six generic building types subjected to a range of retrofit scenarios and the economic benefit of each retrofit scenario is discussed.

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>We performed an earthquake risk assessment of the state of Tasmania through a collaboration between the Tasmania Department of State Growth and Geoscience Australia with geotechnical and geological support from Mineral Resources Tasmania (MRT). We developed local surface earthquake hazard maps for Tasmania, focusing on the twenty largest communities, based on the 2018 National Seismic Hazard Assessment and seismic site conditions map for Australia augmented by geotechnical information provided by MRT. For the building exposure database, the National Exposure Information System was augmented with an engineering survey of Hobart central business district (CBD) undertaken by GA. We used GA’s current vulnerability functions including a range of models for high-risk unreinforced masonry buildings (URM). With a focus on the Hobart CBD, retrofit measures were applied to the URM building types in order to quantify the effectiveness of mitigation. This study provided a synoptic state-wide view that enabled the identification of communities of high risk and low resilience by combining the damage related risk with the Australian Disaster Resilience Index. In addition, three earthquake scenario events centred on Hobart were modelled along with the impact reduction achieved through a virtual retrofit of old URM buildings in the Hobart CBD.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div>This paper was presented to the 2022 Australian Earthquake Engineering Society (AEES) Conference 24-25 November (https://aees.org.au/aees-conference-2022/)