Evidence based disaster management enables decision makers to manage more effectively because it yields a better informed understanding of the situation. When based on evidence, the decision making process delivers more rational, credible and objective disaster management decisions, rather than those influenced by panic. The translation of fundamental data into information and knowledge is critical for decision makers to act and implement the decisions. The evidence from appropriate information helps both tactical and strategic responses to minimise impacts on community and promote recovery. The information requirements of such a system are quite comprehensive in order to estimate the direct and indirect losses; the short and long term social and economic resilience. Disasters may be of rapid onset in nature like earthquakes, tsunamis and blast. Others are slow onset such those associated with gradual climate change. Climate change has become a real challenge for all nations and the early adaptors will reduce risk from threats such as increased strength of tropical cyclones, storm surge inundations, floods and the spread of disease vectors. The Australian Government has recognised the threats and prioritised adaptation as an opportunity to enhance the nation's existing infrastructure and thereby reduce risk. A thorough understanding of the exposure under current and future climate projections is fundamental to this process of future capacity building. The nation's exposure to these increased natural hazards includes all sectors from communities to businesses, services, lifeline utilities and infrastructure. The development of a National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) is a significant national capacity building task being undertaken by Geoscience Australia (GA). NEXIS is collecting, collating, managing and providing the exposure information required to assess multi-hazard impacts.

The tectonic origin, paleoearthquake histories and slip rates of six normal faults (referred to here as the Rahotu, Oaonui, Kina, Kiri, Ihaia and Pihama faults) have been examined for up to ~26 kyr within the Taranaki Rift, New Zealand. A minimum of 13 ground-surface rupturing paleoearthquakes have been recognised on four of the faults using analysis of displaced late Quaternary stratigraphy and landforms. These data, in combination with 21 new radiocarbon dates, constrain the timing, slip and magnitude of each earthquake. The faults have low throw rates (~0.1-0.8 mm/yr) and appear to be buried near the Mt Taranaki volcanic cone. Recurrence intervals between earthquakes on individual faults typically range from 3-10 kyr (average ~ 6 kyr), with slip/earthquake ranging from ~0.3-1.5 m (average ~0.7 m). Recurrence intervals and slip/earthquake typically vary by up to a factor of three on individual faults, with only the Oaonui Fault displaying near-characteristic slip (of about 0.5 m) during successive earthquakes. The timing and slip of earthquakes on individual faults appear to have been interdependent, with each event possibly relieving stress and decreasing the likelihood of additional earthquakes across the system. Earthquake magnitudes are estimated to be M 6.5-6.7. The dating resolution of paleoearthquakes is generally ±1-2 kyr and is presently too imprecise to test the temporal relations between seismic events and either volcanic eruptions or lahars formed by debris avalanches during cone collapse. It is unlikely, however, that formation of the ~7.8 kyr Opua Formation lahar was triggered by a large earthquake on the Rahotu, Oaonui or Kina faults which, of the faults studied, are farthest from the Mt Taranaki volcanic cone.

The tragic events of the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004 highlighted shortcomings in the alert and response systems for tsunami threats to Western Australia's (WA) coastal communities. To improve community awareness and understanding of tsunami hazard and potential impact for Western Australia, the Fire and Emergency Services Authority of WA (FESA) established a collaborative partnership with GA in which science and emergency management expertise was applied to identified communities.

Global climate change is putting Australia's infrastructure and in particular coastal infrastructure at risk. More than 80% of Australians live within the coastal zone. Almost 800,000 residences are within 3km of the coast and less than 6m above sea level. Much of Australia's land transport is built around road and rail infrastructure which is within the threatened coastal zone. A significant number of Australia's ports, harbours and airports are under threat. Australia's coastal zone contains several major cities, and supports agriculture, fisheries, tourism, coastal wetlands and estuaries, mangroves and other coastal vegetation, coral reefs, heritage areas and threatened species or habitats. Sea level rise is one physical effect of rising sea temperatures and is estimated at about 0.146m for 2030 (IPCC 2007) and up to 1.1m for 2100 (Antarctic and Climate Ecosystems CRC). The warming is likely to result in increases in intensity of both extra-tropical and tropical storms (spatially dependent) which are predicted to increase storm surge and severe wind hazard. Beaches, estuaries, coastal wetlands, and reefs which have adapted naturally to past changes in climate (storminess) and sea level over long time scales, now are likely to face faster rates of change. In many cases landward migration may be blocked by human land uses and infrastructure. Adaptation options include integrated coastal zone assessments and management; redesign, rebuilding, or relocation of capital assets; protection of beaches, dunes and maritime infrastructure; development zone control; and retreat plans.

A comprehensive earthquake impact assessment requires an exposure database with attributes that describe the distribution and vulnerability of buildings in the region of interest. The compilation of such a detailed database will require years to develop for a moderate-sized city, let alone on a national scale. To hasten this database development in the Philippines, a strategy has been employed to involve as many stakeholders/organizations as possible and equip them with a standardized tool for data collection and management. The best organizations to tap are the local government units (LGUs) since they have better knowledge of their respective area of responsibilities and have a greater interest in the use of the database. Such a tool is being developed by PHIVOLCS-DOST and Geoscience Australia. Since there are about 1,495 towns and cities in the country with varying financial capacities, this tool should involve the use of affordable hardware and software. It should work on ordinary hardware, such as an ordinary light laptop or a netbook that can easily be acquired by these LGUs. The hardware can be connected to a GPS and a digital camera to simultaneously capture images of structures and their location. The system uses an open source database system for encoding the building attributes and parameters. A user-friendly GUI with a simplified drop-down menu, containing building classification schema, developed in consultation with local engineers, is utilised in this system. The resulting national database is integrated by PHIVOLCS-DOST and forms part of the Rapid Earthquake Damage Assessment System (REDAS), a hazard simulation tool that is also made available freely to partner local government units.

Tropical cyclones present a significant hazard to countries situated in the warm tropical waters of the western Pacific. These severe storms are the most costly and the most common natural disaster to affect this region (World Bank, 2006). The hazards posed by these severe storms include the extreme winds, storm surge inundation, salt water intrusion into ground water supplies, and flooding and landslides caused by the intense rainfall. Despite the high vulnerability of the islands in this region, there have been relatively few previous studies attempting to quantify the hazard from tropical cyclones in this region (i.e. Shorten et al. 2003, Shorten et al. 2005, Terry 2007). Understanding this hazard is also vital for informing climate change adaptation options. This study aims to address the limited understanding of the extreme wind hazard in this region. The wind hazard from tropical cyclones is evaluated for the current climate and projections were made to assess how this hazard may change in the future. The analysis is performed using a combination of historical tracks and downscaled climate models with Geoscience Australia's Tropical Cyclone Risk Model. The work was funded as part of the Pacific Climate Change Science Program (PCCSP), which forms the science component of the International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative (ICCAI), an Australian government initiative designed to meet high priority climate change adaptation needs of vulnerable countries in our region. This study assesses the wind hazard for the fifteen PCCSP partner countries which include 14 islands located in the West Pacific as well as East Timor.

As part of its response to the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004, the Australian Government funded the establishment of the Australian Tsunami Warning System (ATWS). The ATWS has three objectives: (i) provide a comprehensive warning system for Australia, (ii) contribute to international efforts to establish an Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System, and (iii) facilitate tsunami warnings in the Pacific Ocean. The ATWS has been issuing warnings for Australia since July 2006, and in 2007 started sharing advisories with other warning centres. It expects to begin issuing advisories directly to other countries during 2009. To be successful, an end-to-end warning system must develop mitigation strategies to prepare communities for tsunami. Mitigation strategies include taking steps to minimise the impact of a tsunami, eg., avoiding building in the likely inundation zone and building sea walls when this can't be avoided, and response procedures, such as evacuations, when an event occurs. The warning system must monitor for tsunami and issue warnings; and it must implement response strategies when a tsunami approaches the coastline and a recovery phase afterwards (Figure 1). In Australia, responsibility for these phases is shared by Commonwealth, State/Territory and Local Governments. Etc ...

An assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on coastal communities has been undertaken in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE). This first-pass national assessment includes an evaluation of the exposure infrastructure (residential and commercial buildings, as well as roads and rail) to sea-level rise (SLR), storm surge and coastal recession. Some of the information contained in this report was included in the Department of Climate Change (now Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) report "Climate Change Risks to Australia's Coast", published in 2009, and its supplement published in 2011.

Abstract: Severe wind is one of the major natural hazards affecting Australia. The main wind hazards contributing to economic loss in Australia are tropical cyclones, thunderstorms and mid-latitude storms. Geoscience Australia's Risk and Impact Analysis Group (RIAG) has developed mathematical models to study a number of natural hazards including wind hazard. In this paper we describe a model to study 'combined' gust wind hazard produced by thunderstorm and mid-latitude or synoptic storms. The model is aimed at applications in regions where these two wind types dominate the hazard spectrum across all return periods (most of the Australian continent apart from the coastal region stretching north from about 27 degrees south with for large return periods are dominated by tropical cyclones). Each of these severe wind types is generated by different physical phenomena and poses a different hazard to the built environment. For these reasons, it is necessary to model them separately. The return period calculated for each wind type is then combined probabilistically to produce the combined gust wind return period, the indicator used to quantify severe wind hazard. The combined wind hazard model utilises climate-simulated wind speeds and hence it allows wind analysts to assess the impact of climate change on future wind hazard. It aims to study severe wind hazard in the non-cyclonic regions of Australia (region 'A', as defined in the Australian/NZ Wind Loading Standard, AS/NZS 1170.2:2002) which are dominated by thunderstorm and synoptic winds.

The cyclonic wind hazard over the Australian region is determined using synthetic tropical cyclone event sets derived from general circulation models (GCMs) to provide guidance on the potential impacts of climate change. Cyclonic wind hazard is influenced by the frequency, intensity and spatial distribution of tropical cyclones, all of which may change under future climate regimes due to influences such as warmer sea surface temperatures and changes in the global circulation. We evaluate the tropical cyclonic wind hazard using a statisticalparametric model of tropical cyclones - the Tropical Cyclone Risk Model (TCRM) - which can be used to simulate many thousands of years of tropical cyclone activity. TCRM is used to generate synthetic tracks which are statistically similar to the input event set, which can be either an historical record of tropical cyclone activity or a record of tropical cyclone-like vortices identified in general circulation models. A parametric wind field is used to estimate the swath of winds associated with the simulated tracks. The resulting wind fields are then used to evaluate the average recurrence interval wind speeds using extreme value statistics. We present the average recurrence interval wind speeds based on three IPCC AR4 scenarios and draw comparisons with current climate simulations and the historical record.