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 Brisbane through field survey work.

NEXIS (National Exposure Information System) Residential Dwelling Density is a set of four raster layers representing the density of residential dwellings across Australia at different scales and resolutions. Resolutions include 2km, 1km, 500m and 100m. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines dwelling units as self-contained suites of rooms including cooking and bathing facilities and intended for long-term residential use. Such dwelling units include houses-detached buildings used for long-term residential purposes-and other dwellings including flats. This product is based on NEXIS version 15 (2024) data. Resolutions: 1. Number of residential dwellings per 100sqm. Visible at zoom scales 1:250,000 minimum with no maximum. 2. Number of residential dwellings per 500sqm. Visible at zoom scales 1:700,000 minimum with 1:250,001 maximum. 3. Number of residential dwellings per 1km square. Visible at zoom scales 1:3,000,000 minimum with 1:700,001 maximum. 4. Number of residential dwellings per 2km square. Visible at zoom scales with no minimum and 1:3,000,001 maximum

Since 2012, Geoscience Australia (GA) has been providing spatial support and advice to the National Situation Room (NSR) (formally the Crisis Coordination Centre (CCC)) within Emergency Management Australia (EMA) as part of GA’s collaboration with the Attorney-General’s Department. A key information requirement identified by EMA was the need to quickly understand what is in an event area. To address this requirement Geoscience Australia designed the Exposure Report which greatly simplifies the interpretation of exposure information for timely emergency response and recovery decision-making. The Exposure Report is generated by extracting the relevant attributes from the Geoscience Australia National Exposure information System (NEXIS) such as demographics, building, business, agriculture, institutions and infrastructure in an event footprint, geographical boundary or potentially threatened area. This automated process quickly presents the required information in a clear and easily accessible report detailing estimates of what exists in the event area. By improving the timeliness and accuracy of information used by the NSR, Geoscience Australia is enhancing the government’s ability to respond to disaster and activate appropriate financial assistance for recovery.

Through Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Geoscience Australia has been working closely with the Government of Papua New Guinea technical agencies (Rabaul Volcano Observatory, Port Moresby Geophysical Observatory, and Engineering Geology Branch) since September 2010 to enhance their capabilities to monitor and assess natural hazards. The objective of this program is to support the Government of Papua New Guinea in developing fundamental information and practices for the effective response and management of natural hazard events in PNG. Earthquakes as natural hazards are one of the key focus points of this project, as they continue to cause loss of life and widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure in Papua New Guinea. The country’s vulnerability to earthquakes is evident from the significant socio-economic consequences of recent major events in Papua New Guinea, e.g., a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that occurred in the Hela Province of Papua New Guinea in 2018. Earthquake risk is likely to increase significantly in the years to come due to the growth in population and urbanization in Papua New Guinea. However, earthquake risk, unlike hazard, can be managed and minimized. One obvious example would be minimizing earthquake risk by constructing earthquake-resistant structures following building standards. The high level of earthquake hazard of Papua New Guinea has been long recognised and the suite of building standards released in 1982 contained provisions to impart adequate resilience to buildings based on the best understanding of seismic hazard available at that time. However, the building standards and incorporated seismic hazard assessment for Papua New Guinea has not been updated since the 1980s. The integration of modern national seismic hazard models into national building codes and practices provides the most effective way that we can reduce human casualties and economic losses from future earthquakes. This report aims at partially fulfilling this task by performing a probabilistic seismic hazard assessment to underpin a revision of the earthquake loading component of the building standards of Papua New Guinea. The updated assessment offers many important advances over its predecessor. It is based on a modern probabilistic hazard framework and considers an earthquake catalogue augmented with an additional four decades-worth of data. The revised assessment considers advances in ground-motion modelling through the use of multiple ground-motion models. Also, for the first time, the individual fault sources representing active major and microplate boundaries are implemented in the input hazard model. Furthermore, the intraslab sources are represented realistically by using the continuous slab volume to constrain the finite ruptures of such events. This would better constrain the expected levels of ground motion at any given site in Papua New Guinea. The results suggest a high level of hazard in the coastal areas of the Huon Peninsula and the New Britain–Bougainville region, and a relatively low level of hazard in the southern part of the New Guinea Highlands Block. In comparison with the seismic zonation map in the current design standard, it can be noted that the spatial distribution used for building design does not match the bedrock hazard distribution of this study. In particular, the high seismic hazard of the Huon Peninsula in the revised assessment is not captured in the current seismic zoning map, leading to a significant under-estimation of hazard in PNG’s second-largest city, Lae. It can also be shown that in many other regions and community localities in PNG the hazard is higher than that regulated for the design of buildings having a range of natural periods. Thus, the need for an updated hazard map for building design has been confirmed from the results of this study, and a revised map is developed for consideration in a revised building standard of Papua New Guinea.

NEXIS (National Exposure Information System) Residential Dwelling Density is a set of four raster layers representing the density of residential dwellings across Australia at different scales and resolutions. Resolutions include 2km, 1km, 500m and 100m. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines dwelling units as self-contained suites of rooms including cooking and bathing facilities and intended for long-term residential use. Such dwelling units include houses-detached buildings used for long-term residential purposes-and other dwellings including flats. This product is based on NEXIS version 15 (2024) data. Resolutions: 1. Number of residential dwellings per 100sqm. Visible at zoom scales 1:250,000 minimum with no maximum. 2. Number of residential dwellings per 500sqm. Visible at zoom scales 1:700,000 minimum with 1:250,001 maximum. 3. Number of residential dwellings per 1km square. Visible at zoom scales 1:3,000,000 minimum with 1:700,001 maximum. 4. Number of residential dwellings per 2km square. Visible at zoom scales with no minimum and 1:3,000,001 maximum

Refined wind vulnerability curves for residential houses in Western Australia. The dataset contains heuristic vulnerability curves for individual communities in WA, initially provided by Geoff Boughton (JCU), and modified by Martin Wehner (GA), in line with commentary from Geoff that the curves are representative of individual houses. The vulnerability would increase in a community situation due to debris generation from upwind houses. An additional curve for the reinforced masonry/concrete roof houses observed in Exmouth is also included.

<div>Report on expression of interest, assessment and identification process of case studies to be included in the Exploring for the Future Geoscience Knowledge Sharing Project Remote Community Education Module and Building Relationships with Aboriginal Peoples Modules. &nbsp;The Geoscience Knowledge Sharing Project is a pilot study to discover best practices to improve engagement with non-technical stakeholders. </div>

Geoscience Australia (GA), in partnership with the Bushfire & Natural Hazard CRC, has made available the Australian Exposure Information Platform (AEIP), for users to access nationally consistent exposure information.

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>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 Parramatta through field survey work.</div>