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.

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.

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.

A community Safety Capbility Flyer was produced to showcase the work undertaken in the Community Safety Value Stream. The flyer includes an introduction to the Community Safety Value Stream, case studies of the work Geoscience Australia does in this space and information on how to engage with Geoscience Australia via the products, tools, models and applications that are produced. This flyer is intended for use a conferences and where promotional material would beneficial to showcase the work undertaken at Geoscience Australia such as the Floodplain Management Association Conference on 19-22 May 2015.

On 23 March 2012, at 09:25 GMT, a MW 5.4 earthquake occurred in the eastern Musgrave Ranges region of north-central South Australia, near the community of Ernabella (Pukatja). This was the largest earthquake to be recorded on mainland Australia for the past 15 years and resulted in the formation of a 1.6 km-long surface deformation zone comprising reverse fault scarps with a maximum vertical displacement of over 50 cm, and extensive ground cracking. Numerous small communities in this remote part of central Australia reported the tremor, but there were no reports of injury or significant damage. The maximum ground shaking is estimated to have been in the order of MMI VI. The earthquake occurred in Stable Continental Region (SCR) crust, over 1900 km from the nearest plate boundary. Fewer than fifteen historic earthquakes worldwide are documented to have produced coseismic surface deformation (i.e. faulting or folding) in the SCR setting. The record of surface deformation relating to the Ernabella earthquake therefore provides an important constraint on models relating surface rupture length to earthquake magnitude. Such models may be employed to better interpret Australia's rich prehistoric record of seismicity, thereby improving estimates of seismic hazard.

Coastal communities in Australia are particularly exposed to disasters resulting from the coincidence of severe wind damage, storm surge, coastal flooding and shoreline erosion during cyclones and extra-tropical storms. Because the climatic drivers of these events are stronger during or across specific years (e.g. during La Nina periods), they can repeatedly impact the coast over periods of weeks, months or up to a few years. The consequences of individual events are therefore exacerbated with little or no opportunity for recovery of natural systems or communities. This poster summarises the objectives, approach and methodology for this storm surge project. A contribution to the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC.

Geoscience Australia has recently released the 2012 version of the National Earthquake Hazard Map of Australia. Among other applications, the map is a key component of Australia's earthquake loading code AS1170.4. In this presentation we provide an overview of the new maps and how they were developed. The maps take advantage of significant improvements in both the data sets and models used for earthquake hazard assessment in Australia since the map currently in AS1170.4-2007 was produced. These include: - An additional 20+ years of earthquake observations - Improved methods of declustering earthquake catalogues and calculating earthquake recurrence - Ground motion prediction equations (i.e. attenuation equations) based on observed strong motions instead of intensity - Revised earthquake source zones implementing a multi-layer model - Improved maximum magnitude earthquake estimates based on palaeoseismology - The use of open source software for undertaking probabilistic seismic hazard assessment, which promotes testability and repeatability Hazard curves are presented for a range of response spectral acceleration (RSA) periods between 0.0 and 1.0 s and for return periods between a few hundred to a few thousand years. These curves and maps are compared with the current earthquake hazard values in AS1170.4-2007. For a return period of 500 years, the hazard values in the 0.0 s RSA period map are generally lower or the same as the hazard factor values in the AS1170.4 map. This is also true for most of the other RSA periods up to 1.0s for the cities in Australia with Darwin being the main exception. By contrast, the hazard for return periods above 1000 years is higher than the values derived from the tables in AS1170.4 for all RSA periods.

On 23 March 2012, at 09:25 UTC, an Mw 5.4 earthquake occurred in the eastern Musgrave Ranges of north-central South Australia, near the community of Ernabella (Pukatja). Several small communities in this remote part of central Australia reported the tremor, but there were no reports of injury or significant damage. This was the largest earthquake recorded on mainland Australia in the past 15 years and resulted in the formation of a 1.6 km long surface deformation zone that included reverse-fault scarps with a maximum vertical displacement of more than 0.5 m, extensive ground cracking, and numerous rock falls. The earthquake occurred in non-extended stable continental region (SCR) cratonic crust, more than 1900 km from the nearest plate boundary. Surface deformation from the Ernabella earthquake provides additional constraint on relations of surface-rupture length to earthquake magnitude. Such relations aid in interpreting Australia’s rich record of prehistoric seismicity and contribute to improved estimates of SCR seismic hazard worldwide. Based upon an analysis of new and reinterpretation of existing surface-rupture length data, faults in non-extended stable cratonic Australia appear to produce longer surface ruptures (for earthquakes larger than Mw ∼ 6:5) than rupture lengths estimated using existing moment-to rupture length scaling relations. The implication is that the estimated maximum, or characteristic, magnitude of paleoearthquakes in such settings may be overestimated where the estimate is based only on the length of the prehistoric fault scarp.

Manila is one of the world's megacities, and the Greater Metro Manila Area is prone to natural disasters. These events may have devestating consequences for individuals, communities, buildings, infrastructure and economic development. Understanding the risk is essential for implementing Disaster Risk Reduction programs. In partnership with AusAID, Geoscience Australia is providing technical leadership for risk analysis projects in the Asia-Pacific Region. In the Philippines, Geoscience Australia is engaging with Government of the Philippines agencies to deliver the "Enhancing Risk Analysis Capacities for Flood, Tropical Cyclone Severe Wind and Earthquake in the Greater Metro Manila Area" Project.

<div>The wind hazard climate in South East Queensland is a combination of tropical cyclones, thunderstorms and synoptic storms. This dataset provides estimated average recurrence interval (ARI) or annual exceedance probability (AEP) wind speeds over the region, based on an evaluation of observational (thunderstorms and synoptic winds) and simulated data (tropical cyclones). </div><div><br></div><div>The tropical cyclone wind hazard was evaluated using Geoscience Australia's Tropical Cyclone Risk Model (TCRM), which provides a spatial representation of the AEP wind speeds arising from tropical cyclones. Thunderstorm wind hazard was evaluated from analysis of observed wind gusts across South East Queensland, aggregated into a single 'superstation' to provide a single representative hazard profile for the region.</div><div><br></div><div>The resulting combined wind hazard estimates reflect the dominant source of wind hazard in South East Queensland for the most frequent events (exceedance probabilities greater than 1:50) is thunderstorm-generated wind gusts. For rarer events, with exceedance probabilities less than 1:200, TC are the dominant source of extreme gusts.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Local effects of topography, land cover and the built environment were incorporated via site exposure multipliers (Arthur & Moghaddam, 2021), which are based on the site exposure multipliers defined in AS/NZS 1170.2 (2021).</div><div><br></div><div>The local wind hazard maps were used to evaluate the financial risk to residential separate houses in South East Queensland.</div><div><br></div><div>Wind speeds are provided for average recurrence intervals ranging from 1 year to 10,000 years. No confidence intervals are provided in the data. </div>