Published works

The study of historical occurrences of natural disasters only provides a very limited view of the full range of risk Australia is exposed to. Catastrophe models have been designed as a tool to extrapolate beyond past experience and as such can help risk practitioners prepare for the types of events yet to be seen.

In this project we apply the same techniques at the core of catastrophe models to design realistic disaster scenarios. The focus is not only on the hazard magnitude to be expected from rare extreme events but also on the likely impact in terms of building damage, infrastructure disruption and injuries / loss of human lives. To provide a global picture of natural disaster risk in Australia a range of perils and locations have been selected through the 3 years of the project. The scenarios cover Tropical Cyclones, Earthquake, Heatwaves and flooding induced by East Coast Lows while the regions around Adelaide, Melbourne, Northern New South Wales and Southeast Queensland are at the center of our analysis.

To facilitate communication of our key results a web content has been drafted to provide a description of each catastrophic event studied. The web content is hosted by the Australian Institue for Disaster Resilience (AIDR) knowledge Hub and targets a broader audience than the technical reports delivered as part of the project’s milestones.

It is our hope that emergency services can leverage the type of information generated from such scenarios to assess their capabilities to cope with the response and recovery task. The web content also offers a source of information for a wider audience and plays a role in educating the general public on the potential threat posed by Australian natural disasters.