Brown Bag Resilience Series presentations

Property insurance and climate change risk in New Zealand - 27 July 2021

Jacob Pastor Paz, Natural Hazards Risk Modeller, GNS Science
Jacob is an economist and a cartographer/geomatician by training. He recently successfully defended his Victoria University PhD research on property insurance and climate change risk in New Zealand, focusing on extreme precipitation-induced floods and landslides. This research topic will be the subject of this Brown Bag Resilience Series (BBRS) webinar.

Before starting his PhD, Jacob worked as a research analyst of seismic risk, remote sensing and cartography at the National Institute of Geography of Ecuador. Other professional experiences include research analyst positions at QuakeCore NZ Centre for Earthquake Resilience, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the National Institute of Statistics of Ecuador and stints at the National Institutes of Statistics of Uruguay and Peru as a consultant for the Organisation for the Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

RiskScape – risk modelling tool for NZ - 16 February 2021

RiskScape is risk modelling software that lets users assess risks to buildings, infrastructure and people from natural hazards.

Richard Woods, Senior Natural Hazard Risk Management Specialist, RiskScape and Loss Modelling Portfolio Lead GNS Science Te Pū Ao.

The modelled outputs from RiskScape, such as direct damage, reinstatement cost, fatalities and injuries, can be used to inform risk-based decision-making for emergency management, land-use planning policy, insurance, infrastructure and asset management investment options.

The software has been used to assess the impacts of events such as the Kaikoura 2016 earthquakes and will be used by the Earthquake Commission (EQC) for New Zealand’s residential building portfolio reinsurance negotiations. The next generation RiskScape 2.0 software has been in development since May 2018 with the first public release, as an open source product, expected in mid-2021.

 

LINZ Resilience and Climate Change Work Programme - 8 December 2020

Presented by Rob Deakin, Manager Resilience at Land Information NZ

Three years ago LINZ established a Resilience Team to help guide its work to better support those working across New Zealand. The key elements of the team’s work programme are:

• To drive priority improvements in the most valuable geospatial datasets for resilience
• To enable LINZ to provide better support to other agencies during emergency response and recovery
• To support LINZ’s cross-system role in helping improved our communities’ resilience and climate adaptation planning

 

Assessing and enhancing resilience in New Zealand’s wine industry - 12 February 2020

Presented by Nick Cradock-Henry, Landscape Policy & Governance from Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research

Wine is one of New Zealand’s fastest growing primary economic activities, but is exposed and sensitive to a range of geophysical, climatic and socio-economic hazards. Recent research has been exploring the impacts and implications of earthquakes on the industry and together with industry, local government and emergency management partners, the decisions and actions needed to prepare for future shocks. This talk will outline strategies for enhancing resilience in the industry, and the potential for scaling lessons and extending innovations to other at-risk sectors and activities

The Economic Costs of Extreme Weather Events Caused by Climate Change: A Research Agenda - 22 November 2019

Presented by Ilan Noy, Victoria University of Wellington

In this presentation Ilan Noy uses a probabilistic event attribution framework to estimate the costs associated with extreme weather events that are attributable to anthropogenic influence on the climate system. Using examples from the US (Hurricane Harvey) and New Zealand (flood events), Ilan argued that the climate-change ‘footprint’ of extreme weather events is already economically very significant. The results were extrapolated more broadly, and showed that these ‘bottom-up’ estimates of losses and damages associated with climate change are significantly larger than those obtained with ‘top-down’ estimates, such as those obtained from the Integrated Assessment Models.

Project AF8 (Alpine Fault Magnitude 8) - 8 October 2019

Presented Dr Caroline Orchiston, Deputy Director & Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainability, Kā Rakahau o te Ao Tūroa, University of Otago, Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo and Mat Darling, PhD Candidate - Disaster Risk and Resilience, University of Canterbury, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha

Project AF8 (Alpine Fault Magnitude 8) is a collaborative effort between science and emergency managers to develop a coordinated South Island response framework for the first seven days following a magnitude 8 earthquake on the Alpine Fault. This talk considers the science of the Alpine Fault, from hazard to impact, including the cascading consequences of secondary hazards, such as landslides, on critical infrastructure. The talk concludes by discussing recent efforts to improve dynamic measures of population exposure, and described some of the opportunities to improve disaster risk decisions related to transient populations in the South Island.

 

Insurance, Government and Disasters - 12 September 2019

Presented by David Middleton from Kestrel Group

Insurance is in the spotlight as rarely before after featuring largely in the Canterbury and Kaikoura earthquakes. Insurance companies are reassessing their risk from further earthquake claims and insurance is becoming very expensive for home and business owners in the centre of the country. Some are wondering whether to go uninsured.

This talk will look at the nature of insurance, why it struggles to provide affordable cover for disaster events and what a government can do to maintain New Zealand’s exceptionally high dependence on insurance for financial recovery from disasters. At the centre of this debate is our national scheme, administered by the Earthquake Commission, but it needs to be updated if it is to remain an effective tool for providing affordable insurance for homeowners.

 

Resilience National Science Challenge – the next five years - 14 August 2019

Presented by Dr Richard Smith from GNS Science Te Pū Ao (Director - Resilience to Nature’s Challenges)

The Resilience Challenge – Kia Manawaroa - Ngā Ākina o Te Au Tūroa - is one of eleven National Science Challenges, established in 2014 with the aim of tackling the biggest science-based issues and opportunities facing New Zealand. The Challenges bring together the country’s top scientists to work collaboratively across disciplines, institutions and borders to achieve their objectives.

The objective of the Resilience Challenge is to develop and apply new scientific solutions to support the transformation of New Zealand’s approach to disaster risk management and resilience

The Resilience Challenge is embarking on its the second five-year phase, with an expanded programme of research focused on creating new tools for quantifying multi-hazard risk and the social and economic impacts of natural hazards, and its application for decision making and action.

This presentation provided a brief overview of research highlights from the first phase, outline the research programme for phase 2, and explore opportunities for partnership

 

Investing in community resilience in the Wellington region - 4 July 2019

Presented by Ainslie Ryder, Wellingtion Region Emergency Management Office

 

Engaging with communities for climate change adaptation - 7 June 2019

Presented by Associate Professor Janet Stephenson (Director, Centre for Sustainability) and Dr Sophie Bond, University of Otago, and Dr Gradon Diprose (Researcher Environmental Social Science) at Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research

To ensure successful adaptation in the face of climate change, local authorities need new tools and ways of engaging with affected communities, and to support adaptation initiatives by iwi and communities. We discuss challenges expressed by councils as they start to engage with communities exposed to sea level rise and flooding, and ways forward suggested by our research. We draw from our case studies in Hutt Valley and Dunedin which suggest that communities and iwi are already developing their own collective responses. We also share findings from research with community members who are more susceptible to harm, to ensure they are not further marginalised by adaptation processes.

 

Climate Change, Flood Risk and Policy Setting: Tales from the UK - 15 May 2019

Presented by Rob Deakin (Resilience Manager at Land Information New Zealand) and Andrew Jackson (Consulting Jackson)

The UK has been assessing flood risk at a national scale since the mid-1990’s, and accounting for the impacts of climate change within these since 2001. Quantification of risk, and the incorporation of this within benefit / cost analysis at a national level, led to significant increased funding from HM Treasury for greater investment in flood risk management.

The evidence provided by a strong science-based approach to evaluating the impacts of climate change on flood risk formed the basis for the development of new UK Government policies tackling adaptation and mitigation. As New Zealand moves towards its first National Climate Change Risk Assessment and to implement its National Disaster Resilience Strategy there are some lessons that can be learned from the UK’s approach.

This presentation demonstrated what’s possible when a nation takes a consistent approach to risk assessment, and how powerful a national view of risk can be in driving policy and high-level investment decisions. It also highlighted the role of consistent national geographic datasets, and how incremental improvements in data quality and data availability supports improved approaches to modelling and mapping risk.

Download the presentation slides:

Exploring approaches to natural hazard readiness - 11 April 2019

Presented by David Johnston, QuakeCoRE Deputy Director, Joint Centre for Disaster Research, Massey University.

Countries around the world are facing an ever-increasing risk from hazards posed by natural processes such as earthquakes, wildfire, floods and cyclones. This has prompted a substantial body of research into several aspects of disaster risk reduction (DRR). This talk outlines various approaches being undertaken in New Zealand and other countries to prepare for future disasters and examine the effectiveness of such measures.

View this presentation on YouTube

The Kaikōura Earthquake and Transport Resilience – 14 March 2019

Resilience of Transportation Systems to Natural and Anthropogenic Hazards

Presented by Doug Mason (WSP-Opus)

Main North Line Resilience – Experience from the Kaikōura Earthquake

Presented by Daniel Headifen (KiwiRail)

Presentation slides will be online when available 

Smart Cities, Data Analysis and the Digital Agenda for Cities - 12 March 2019

Presented by Dr Adam Dennett, Head of Department at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London.

Presented at a meeting of the Social Services Sector Geospatial Group hosted by the NZ Ministry of Health.

 

LINZ Resilience and Climate Change Work Programme

Presented by Rob Deakin, Manager Resilience at Land Information NZ

Three years ago LINZ established a Resilience Team to help guide its work to better support those working across New Zealand. The key elements of the team’s work programme are:

• To drive priority improvements in the most valuable geospatial datasets for resilience
• To enable LINZ to provide better support to other agencies during emergency response and recovery
• To support LINZ’s cross-system role in helping improved our communities’ resilience and climate adaptation planning

Resilience and Iwi/Hapū Management Plans - 13 Feb 2019

Hosted by Land Information New Zealand and the Ministry of Transport. Presented by Wendy Saunders (Senior Natural Hazards Planner) and Lucy Kaiser (Māori Social Scientist) from GNS Science Te Pū Ao.

• Iwi/Hapū Management Plans (IHMPs) have a role in natural hazard management.
• Legislative documents under the Resource Management Act 1991 are highly valued by iwi/hapū and are a key resource for policy makers, scientists, researchers.
• This presentation provided an overview of IHMPs; key findings from a Bay of Plenty pilot study of their development and implementation.

View this presentation on YouTube