Suchergebnisse

Abstract
As in many other parts of the globe, migration to the coast and rapid regional development in Australia is resulting in large concentrations of population and insured assets. One of the most rapidly growing regions is southeastern Queensland and northern New South Wales, an area prone to flooding. This study reexamines the Great Flood of 1954 and develops a deterministic methodology to estimate the likely cost if a similar event had occurred in 2011. This cost is estimated using council flood maps, census information, historical observations, and Risk Frontiers' proprietary flood vulnerability functions. The 1954 flood arose from heavy rainfall caused by the passage of a tropical cyclone that made landfall on 20 February near the Queensland–New South Wales border, before heading south. Responsible for some of the largest floods on record for many northern New South Wales' river catchments, it occurred prior to the availability of reliable insurance statistics and the recent escalation in property values. The lower-bound estimate of the insurance loss using current exposure and assuming 100% insurance penetration for residential buildings and contents is AU$3.5 billion, a cost that would make it the third-highest ranked insured loss due to an extreme weather event since 1967. The corresponding normalized economic loss is AU$7.6 billion but the uncertainty about this figure is high. The magnitude of these losses reflects the accumulation of exposure on the floodplains. Risk-informed land-use planning practices and improved building regulations hold the key to reducing future losses.

Abstract
This study reevaluates the history of building damage and loss of life due to bushfire (wildfire) in Australia since 1925 in light of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria in which 173 people lost their lives and 2298 homes were destroyed along with many other structures. Historical records are normalized to estimate building damage and fatalities had events occurred under the societal conditions of 2008/09. There are relationships between normalized building damage and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean dipole phenomena, but there is no discernable evidence that the normalized data are being influenced by climatic change due to the emission of greenhouse gases. The 2009 Black Saturday fires rank second in terms of normalized fatalities and fourth in terms of normalized building damage. The public safety concern is that, of the 10 years with the highest normalized building damage, the 2008/09 bushfire season ranks third, behind the 1925/26 and 1938/39 seasons, in terms of the ratio of normalized fatalities to building damage. A feature of the building damage in the 2009 Black Saturday fires in some of the most affected towns—Marysville and Kinglake—is the large proportion of buildings destroyed either within bushland or at very small distances from it (<10 m). Land use planning policies in bushfire-prone parts of this country that allow such development increase the risk that bushfires pose to the public and the built environment.