The Role of Geospatial Data in Residential Recovery

The 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence and the Kaikoura Earthquake in 2016 necessitated EQC to enhance its geospatial capability to respond to operational recovery needs. The scale of the Canterbury earthquakes was beyond that the Earthquake Commission had ever dealt with. EQC moved from a paper-based system to collecting damage data digitally on iPads for over 182,000 properties. The organisation also had to respond by developing interactive maps to monitor and manage claims.

The wealth of new science and geotechnical data in Canterbury, much of which was funded by EQC, contributed to land zoning decisions for recovery and to the establishment of geospatial tools such as the Canterbury Geotechnical Database. EQC’s ongoing funding of GeoNet, New Zealand’s real-time earthquake hazard monitoring system, also provided a wealth of geospatial information in both of these events.

This session focuses on a case study to demonstrate how a core geospatial tool (the Kaikoura Earthquake Viewer) facilitated better deployment of resources, sharing of information, and overall understanding of the recovery environment than had ever been available in the past events. The future opportunities for new geospatial technology and tools to correlate data sets to better understand natural hazard risk are rapidly evolving - for both recovery and risk reduction. To maximise the use of geospatial information we need to facilitate integration across the natural hazard management system and establish effective collaborative governance frameworks for our national data sets.  We also need to know the right questions to ask from our data. These are some of the key challenges EQC’s Resilience Strategy will be addressing over the next 10 years.

 

Biography:

The Resilience team facilitates the placement of EQC’s reinsurance programme with global reinsurers. The team also guides EQC’s investment in research and education about natural hazards, and its application to improved monitoring, assessment and risk reduction.

Dr Hugh Cowan guides EQC’s investment in research and education to improve natural hazard risk assessment and resilience, and supports the placement of EQC’s global reinsurance programme.

His contributions to the Canterbury Recovery Programme have included the facilitation of engineering advice to Government for guidance on repairs to housing, and to improve the performance of liquefaction-prone land.

Dr Cowan previously led the establishment of New Zealand’s geological hazard monitoring system “GeoNet” at GNS Science.

Hugh is a Fellow of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering and has led fact-finding missions to earthquake and tsunami disaster zones in Asia and South America. Hugh holds an MSc (First Class Hons) in Engineering Geology and a PhD from the University of Canterbury.

The Sendai Framework – how it is promoting research and development, exchange of knowledge and deployment of information systems for crisis management

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 has resulted in a shift away from managing crises to proactively reducing their risks. With the recent synchronous adoption of landmark UN agreements the Sendai Framework with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), COP21’s Paris Climate Conference, World Humanitarian Summit and Habitat III have all created a rare but significant opportunity to build coherence across different but overlapping policy areas. Taken together these frameworks make for a more complete agenda as building resilience requires action spanning climate change, development, health, humanitarian and disaster risk reduction areas. This coherence will serve to strengthen existing risk fragility and resilience frameworks for multi hazard assessments, and aim to develop a dynamic, local, preventive, and adaptive urban governance system at the global, national, and local levels. The Sendai Framework has identified four actions with a focus on information systems and knowledge management in much of the agreement. Two are listed below:

• To guide action at the regional level through agreed regional and subregional strategies and mechanisms for cooperation for disaster risk reduction, as appropriate, in the light of the present Framework, in order to foster more efficient planning, create common information systems and exchange good practices and programmes for cooperation and capacity development, in particular to address common and transboundary disaster risks; (paragraph 28a)
• To promote and improve dialogue and cooperation among scientific and technological communities, other relevant stakeholders and policymakers in order to facilitate a science policy interface for effective decision-making in disaster risk management; (paragraph 27 h)

The agreements represent a major turning point in the global efforts to tackle existing and future challenges in all countries. In order to support UN member states to implement these frameworks, the need to promote research and development, exchange of knowledge and deployment of information systems for crisis management is key and examples of such implementation will be shared.

 

Biography:

Professor Virginia Murray qualified in medicine and has extensive experience in health protection by being actively  involved in chemical and extreme event incident preparedness, response and recovery.

Currently she is the Public Health Consultant in Global Disaster Risk Reduction for Public Health England where she has been actively engaged in providing health, science and technology support for the development and implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, one of the three 2015 UN landmark agreements via international networks addressing implementation science in data related activities such as the Data project of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) and the disaster risk reduction flagship project for the Committee on Data of the International Council for Science (CODATA).