Supervisors:

Dr. Yogi Vidyattama (Yogi.Vidyattama@natsem.canberra.edu.au), Dr Krishna Nadimpalli (Krishna.Nadimpalli@ga.gov.au) Institutions: University of Canberra, Geoscience Australia

Moderating the socio-economic impact from natural hazards and lifeline utility failures is always a challenge for all levels of government. An improved risk assessment tools underpin the planning, preparedness, response and recovery of disaster management and enables well informed decision making. Risk is described as the probability of loss, which is a function of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Exposure refers to the elements at risk including communities, businesses, services, lifeline utilities and infrastructure subjected to risk. The exposure information systems source the data from various sources having varied resolutions, quality, standards, aggregations, dis-aggregations, statistical approximations and estimations. The reliability of available exposure information depends on the end user requirements.

The PhD project aims to understand the exposure databases, assess the error distribution, tolerance area and develop reliability assessment framework of the databases. The project is focused on developing a framework to assess the reliability associated with exposure data for various disaster management end uses such as planning, preparation, response and recovery. The framework provides guidelines to develop a model to assess the reliability and implement on existing information systems and able to provide guidance. The framework will enable the systems to examine the uncertainty in the risk assessment models for various natural hazards. The scope of the study involves developing the framework and a tool to test the framework.