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Download issue (989KB PDF) Cover Page Executive Summary Introduction Data Sources Deaths Due to Natural Hazards A Building Damage Index 20th Century Building Damage Alternative Perspectives on Damage Spatial Variation in Damage A More Refined View Discussion Conclusion Further Reading Acknowledgements

Issues in Risk Science Natural Hazards Risk Assessment: An Australian Perspective - Russell Blong Executive Summary Nearly twenty years ago, researchers at Macquarie University in Australia, in what was later to become the insurance industry-sponsored research centre known as Risk Frontiers, began compiling databases on natural hazards and their impacts in Australia. Information extracted from scientific reports, government papers, existing databases, and newspaper accounts was used to produce integrated databases containing more than 5,000 hazard occurrences and information about human deaths and damage to the built environment resulting from nine natural perils - tropical cyclones, bushfires, floods, wind gusts, tornadoes, hailstorms, earthquakes, landslides and tsunami. Tropical cyclones and floods together account for more than 70% of known natural hazard deaths since the European colonisation of Australia in 1788. Thunderstorms, particularly lightning, and bushfires each account for 11 to 13% of deaths, indicating that the other hazards considered have produced very few human deaths, at least in the last 200 years. Death rates, per 100,000 population, have fallen by three orders of magnitude in the last two centuries. A new building damage index has been compiled allowing easy comparison of total damage to buildings from about 1,200 twentieth century events. Tropical cyclones, floods, thunderstorms and bushfires produced 93.6% of known building damage, suggesting that geological, as opposed to meteorological hazards, have been relatively unimportant - at least in the period since 1900. Just 20 out of the 1,200 events contributed 50% of the total building damage. This short list – six floods, five bushfire days, four tropical cyclones, three thunderstorms and two earthquakes – reinforces the view that natural hazards risk in Australia is not dominated by just one or two natural hazards. Despite the wealth of data, deciding which part of Australia is the most hazardous is not as simple as it sounds. Similarly, determining which hazard will be the most important in the next few decades is equally difficult. «back to top«