Event Summary

Organization: GNS Science

Session Leads

  • Richard Woods, Natural Hazards Risk Specialist, GNS Science
  • Finn Scheele, Risk Specialist, GNS Science

Description

Date: Monday, May 14, 9:00am – 11:30am

Room: C4

The cumulative impacts from natural hazards on our social and economic environments are unsustainable.   As risk is dynamic and continues to change we require strong risk tools to provide credible loss and impact assessments both before and crucially during emergencies.  It is essential these tools need to be simple and functional so they may be practically applied by a range of users.  With over ten years’ research development and having been applied in a range of national emergencies in recent years, the RiskScape programme delivers a portfolio of risk based knowledge, guidance, data, software and communication.

While New Zealand has a well-documented history of earthquakes and natural events, the complexity and associated impacts of the M7.8 Kaikoura earthquake in November 2016 were largely unanticipated so soon after the 2010 Canterbury earthquake sequence which devastated the city of Christchurch.  New Zealand’s RiskScape research programme has served the country well over the last decade providing immediate loss estimates to support central and local government response activities and planning for a range of natural hazard events, including these earthquakes.  Furthermore, significant advances in modelling infrastructure impacts and economic losses has provided stakeholders with detailed loss estimates to understand their susceptibility from these and future events.  This programme contributes significantly to delivering the Sendai Framework at a national and Pacific region level.

This session will workshop the lessons researchers and practitioners together have learnt from recent hazard events and discuss how these have shaped how risk modelling is informing recovery and increasing resilience.

While the benefits of risk and impact modelling tools have been proven in the New Zealand context, these tools and expertise are now been applied internationally in Samoa, Vanuatu and Indonesia.  Our vision is to not only increase the use of risk tools globally but ensure that our global economic and social environments are more sustainable as a result of risk-informed decision-making.  This session will address elements that are critical to using risk tools now and in the future, with a focus on:

  • Real time impact and loss forecasting requirements.
  • Using risk information to communicate uncertainty
  • The challenges of underlying risk data and some solutions!
  • A demonstration of current risk tools being used in New Zealand and the Pacific Island Countries.