New CRC research is now available in the following journal papers and theses.
Crowdsourcing‐based data acquisition methods have been used to review different methods of data collection and published as open source in Advancing Earth and Space Science. The paper, by Feifei Zheng, Ruoling Tao,Holger Maier, Linda Se, Dragan Savic, Tuqiao Zhang, Qiuwen Chen, Thaine H. Assumpção, Pan Yang, Bardia Heidari, Jörg Rieckermann, Barbara Minsker, Weiwei Bi, Ximing Cai, Dimitri Solomatin and Ioana Popescu, is connected to the Improved decision support for natural hazard risk reduction project and is titled Crowdsourcing Methods for Data Collection in Geophysics: State of the Art, Issues, and Future Directions. The paper looks at crowdsourcing‐based data acquisition methods that have been used in seven domains of geophysics, including weather, precipitation, air pollution, geography, ecology, surface water, and natural hazard management, are discussed based on a review of 162 papers. This paper also features a review of 93 papers dealing with issues that are common to data acquisition methods in different domains of geophysics, including the management of crowdsourcing projects, data quality, data processing, and data privacy. In each of these areas, the current status is discussed and challenges and future directions are outlined.
Digital elevation models have been evaluated for the Condamine-Balonne catchment in Queensland by Ankun Wang, Dr Stefania Grimaldi, Saif Shaadman, Yuan Li, A/Prof Valentijn Pauwels and Prof Jeffrey Walker. The paper, from the Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium 2018 evaluates the TanDEM-X and DEM-H digital elevation models, finding that TanDEM-X performed better at the point scale and in transects with sparse vegetation resulting in Root Mean Square Deviation values respectively 0.30 m and 0.12 m lower than the DEM-H. However, TanDEM-X was affected by large errors in densely vegetated areas. Moreover, the enforcement of hydrological connectivity is required. This analysis offers useful insight for the application of TanDEM-X and DEM-H data for environmental and flood modelling in the Condamine-Balonne catchment and in similar dryland areas.
Dr Fiona Jennings' PhD thesis is now available.Navigating uncertainty: a qualitative study of resident involvement in the 2013 Forcett Tasmania bushfire disasteris a grounded theory analysis of resident involvement in the Forcett bushfire, which threatened life and left homes, livelihood and landscape destroyed or damaged. Despite this there appeared to be a level of social structure and processes evident during the bushfire. Many residents carried out a range of actions and activities before, during and after the bushfire. It appeared that residents had a way of doing things and these actions were significant. In the post fire phase, many of these local processes appeared to be overlooked by the well-intentioned external help or overwhelmed by the visitor-related goodwill. The analysis presented in Fiona's thesis focuses on the local social processes. The main question opening the inquiry was – what is community-led recovery in the context of a bushfire hazard and disaster? The qualitative research design involved in-depth interviews, to develop an explanatory account of the phenomenon of interest based on the analysis of people's experience and perspectives.
TitledImproving adaptation planning for future sea level rise and coastal flooding, Dr Tim Ramm’s PhD thesis examines the effects of a rising sea level. Sea level rise has the potential to exacerbate coastal flooding around the world, causing more frequent extreme sea levels, nuisance flooding and permanent inundation. This thesis develops an interdisciplinary approach to advance the planning of long-term adaptation pathways in the context of coastal flood risk management. Utilising three case studies in south east Australia, it combines the strengths of robust decision making and dynamic adaptive policy pathways – both prominent tools to support decision-making under conditions of uncertainty – together with solicited values-based information to make three novel advances towards flexible adaptation pathways planning. The scenario discovery process uses an existing cluster finding algorithm to identify future conditions where adaptation policies no longer keep flood risk at tolerable levels. Combining robust decision making and dynamic adaptive policy pathways is a novel approach in coastal flood risk management and scenario discovery provides greater visibility on the physical factors driving adaptation tipping points.
Dr Tetsuya Okada completed his thesis in 2017. Acknowledging local sociality in disaster recovery: a longitudinal, qualitative study looks at the formal recovery, reconstruction and risk reduction efforts put in place in response to major disaster events. The efforts are designed to redevelop infrastructure and services for, and improve the longer-term safety of, the affected populations. However, these efforts often rely on top-down approaches that neglect the impact on and the presence of local people’s everyday lives in and with their communities (local sociality). Dr Okada explores these issues in four case studies: the towns of St George and Grantham, in Queensland, Australia, both of which were severely impacted by flooding events between 2010 and 2012, and the Japanese towns of Koizumi and Namie, which sustained devastating damage from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and in the case of Namie, contamination from the Fukushima nuclear reactor in 2011. His study identifies a critical coherence in the human, social and political issues and challenges across all study areas, despite differences in the country, physical attributes of the hazards, types of damage and responses.
Associate PhD student Andrea Massetti (Monash University) has had a paper published in Remote Sensing of Environment, alongside Christoph Rudiger, Marta Yebra and James Hilton. The Vegetation Structure Perpendicular Index (VSPI): A forest condition index for wildfire predictions introducers a new index that utilises the short-wave infrared reflectance in bands centred at 1.6 and 2.2 μm, essentially representing the amount and structure of the vegetation's woody biomass (as opposed to the photosynthetic activity and moisture content). The VSPI is quantified as the divergence from a linear regression between the two bands in a time series and represents vegetation disturbance and recovery more reliably than indices such as the Normalised Burn Ratio (NBR) and Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The VSPI index generally shows minor inter-annual variability and stronger post-wildfire detection of disturbance over a longer period than NBR and NDVI. The index is developed and applied to major wildfire events within eucalypt forests throughout southern Australia to estimate both burn severity and time to recovery. The VSPI can provide an improved information layer for fire risk evaluation and operational predictions of wildfire behaviour.
Ismail Qeshta, Associate Student at RMIT University has a paper published in Engineering Structures. Review of resilience assessment of coastal bridges to extreme wave-induced loads, written with Javad Hashemi, Rebecca Gravina and Sujeeva Setunge, focuses on coastal bridges and their susceptibility to severe damage due to wave-induced forces from extreme events such as coastal flooding, hurricanes, storm surges and tsunamis.
Written by CRC Associate Researcher Ismail Qeshta from the Strengthening of bridge structures to enhance resilience under exposure to flood loading, Javad Hashemi, Rebecca Gravina and Professor Sujeeva Stunge, their paper titled Review of resilience assessment of coastal bridges to extreme wave-induced loads is available online now. The review comes under the parent project Enhancing resilience of critical road infrastructure, and focuses on coastal bridges and their susceptibility to severe damage due to wave-induced forces from extreme events such as coastal flooding, hurricanes, storm surges and tsunamis. The paper presents a comprehensive review of a four-phase resilience assessment of coastal bridge structures, namely, (i) characterisation of external wave-induced forces, (ii) structural response of bridges, (iii) vulnerability assessment of damaged components, and (iv) post-disaster recovery. The four comprehensive modules are adopted from the classic framework of PEER PBEE and constitute the integrated knowledgeneeded for the prediction of the resilience of infrastructure under extreme wave-induced loads. The study also presents new expressions for resilience restoration that simultaneously account for the time, resources (cost) and environmental impacts of different recovery options with variable importance levels to different stakeholders.
Former PhD student Dr Rachael Quill (University of Adelaide) has a paper published in Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering alongside Jason Sharples, Natalie Wagenbrenner, Lessa Sidhu and Jason Forthofer. Modelling wind direction distributions using a diagnostic model in the context of probabilistic fire spread prediction examines the use of the WindNinja diagnostic wind model that is currently applied within a number of operational fire prediction frameworks across the world. This study first aims to understand the limitations of WindNinja in a probabilistic context by comparing individual deterministic predictions to observed distributions of wind direction. Secondly, a novel application of the deterministic WindNinja model is presented and shown to enable prediction of wind direction distributions that capture some of the variability of complex wind flow. he comparisons detailed in this study indicate the potential for WindNinja to predict multimodal wind direction distributions that represent complex wind behaviours, including recirculation regions on leeward slopes. However, the limitations of using deterministic models within probabilistic frameworks are also highlighted. To enhance fire prediction and better understand uncertainty, it is recommended that statistical approaches also be developed to complement existing physics-based deterministic wind models.