Two shallow sub-surface CO2 controlled release experiments were conducted at the Ginninderra test site during 2012. The theme of the first experiment was CO2 detection in the soil and surface emissions quantification. The theme for the second experiment was investigating sub-surface migration and broad scale detection technologies. Our objective overall is to design cheaper monitoring technologies to evaluate leakage and environmental impact in the shallow sub-surface. Over 10 different monitoring techniques were evaluated at the site against a known CO2 release. These included soil gas, soil CO2 flux, soil analysis, eddy covariance, atmospheric tomography, noble gas tracers, ground penetrating radar, electromagnetic surveys, airborne hyperspectral, in-field phenotyping (thermal, hyperspectral and 3D imaging), and microbial soil genomics. Technique highlights and an assessment of the implications for large scale storage are presented in the following corresponding talks.

40 years atmospheric reanalysis for Australia region. http://www.ecmwf.int/products/data/archive/descriptions/e4/index.html

Modelling tropical cyclone Yasi using TCRM

To determine the magnitude of severe wind gust hazard due to thunderstorm downbursts using regional climate model output and analysis of observed data (including radar reflectivity and proximity soundings).

The Assessment of Tropical Cyclone Risks in the Pacific Region project represents a collaboration between DIICCSRTE and Geoscience Australia with PCRAFI and AIR Worldwide. Building on the expertise of each organisation, the project will deliver an assessment of the financial risks to buildings, infrastructure and agriculture arising from tropical cyclones (TCs) under current and future climate regimes. This extends previous risk assessments undertaken by incorporating the influence of climate change on the hazard (TCs) into the assessment process. The output of this study is a set of peril matrices, which detail the relative change in parameters describing TC behaviour: e.g. annual mean frequency, mean maximum intensity and mean latitude of genesis. The relative changes are evaluated as the fractional change between TC behavior in current climate GCM simulations and future climate GCM simulations.

The Bushfire Attack Level Toolbox provides access to ArcGIS geoprocessing scripts that calculate the Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) as per Method 1 in AS-3959 (2009). BAL is a measure of the severity of a building's potential exposure to ember attack, radiant heat and direct flame contact in the event of a bushfire. It serves as a basis for establishing the requirements for construction to improve protection of building elements from attack by bushfire. The BAL Toolbox User GUIDE provides users an overvoew of the Toolbox, instructions on installation, any customisations, execution and evaluation of results.

In late 2012, Cyclone Evan swept across Samoa and Fiji, wreaking a path of destruction. Losses in Samoa were estimated at A$200 million - somewhere around 30% of Samoa's GDP. The capacity of small island states in the Pacific to recover from such large impacts is hampered by their small economies and comparatively high vulnerability to the impacts of natural hazards. What are the chances of an impact the size of Evan? And will the magnitude of those losses change under future climate scenarios due to changes in tropical cyclone activity? The Tropical Cyclone Risk Assessment in the Pacific Region project delivered information and methods for evaluating vulnerability and risks from tropical cyclones. This project was supported under the Pacific-Australia Climate Change Science and Adaptation Planning Program with co-financing from the Global Fund for Disaster Risk Reduction. A collaboration between the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, Geoscience Australia and AIR Worldwide, the project drew together complementary skills to deliver an integrated and consistent risk assessment of likely damages to key infrastructure and assets in the Pacific from future tropical cyclones arising from severe winds and other hazards. This risk information will allow partner country governments to better integrate climate risk considerations into infrastructure development and ex-ante disaster planning. The presentation will detail the methods used in the analysis, and present outcomes of the risk assessment for current and future climate scenarios.

Geoscience Australia has produced a National Tropical Cyclone Hazard Assessment (TCHA18). The 1%/0.2% Annual Exceedance Probability Maps provides 0.2-second duration, 10-metre above ground level gust wind speeds across Australia arising from tropical cyclone events over a 2-km grid, for 1% and 0.2% annual exceedance probability (100- and 500-year annual recurrence interval respectively). Surface conditions are assumed to correspond to terrain category 2 conditions as defined in AS/NZS 1170.2 (2011).

This dataset contains various code and outputs developed in demonstrating potential methods of generating 3-D topographic (and possibly other) multipliers for use in wind risk modelling activities. The 'wrf' folder contains output and configuration settings Chris Thomas developed in 2010 to test the feasibility of using WRF locally to derive topographic multipliers.

Developing a framework and computational methodology for evaluating the impacts and risks of extreme fire events on regional and peri-urban populations (infrastructure and people) applicable to the Australian region. The research considers three case studies of recent extreme fires employing an ensemble approach (sensitivity analysis) which varies the meteorology, vegetation and ignition in an effort to estimate fire risk to the case-study fire area and adjacent region.