After the February floods: what about next time?

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The story of February’s storms is described in the latest issue of Natural Hazards Update.

The story of February’s storms is described in the latest issue of Natural Hazards Update. It details the devastation wrought by the severe weather, and gives an outline of the meteorology behind it. In total, 47 severe weather warnings were issued in February, many covering a large part of the country. The Update is produced by the Natural Hazards Centre, which is a joint initiative of NIWA and GNS, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences. The centre’s website also includes several pages of information about the severe weather in February.

Scientists from the two agencies are now beginning work on a multi-million dollar model to predict the risks to New Zealand communities of natural hazards.

NIWA scientist Dr Rob Bell said the new model will offer a wide range of organisations better information to plan and prepare for floods, earthquakes and other natural hazards. The model will simulate rare, high-impact natural events, such as the February floods.

“It will show in a detailed way what sort of damage, disruption and casualties such events could be expected to inflict on a region. We hope to include data on the people, the buildings, the terrain, roads, bridges, power, phone and other infrastructure,” said Dr Bell.

“In future, the model should help local authorities, utilities companies, emergency managers and others to reduce the impact of natural hazards, and improve the response to events such as the floods in February. That’s because they’ll know how much and where the damage and disruption is likely to be.

“It’ll help them prioritise spending, when faced with choices like whether to build higher stop banks to protect land from floods or to earthquake-strengthen a bridge. And they’ll be able to estimate how effective different options might be for reducing the risk posed by a particular hazard.

“The model will be built in stages. We hope to have a prototype working for three regions by June 2006,” said Dr Bell.

The project is being funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology at a cost of two million dollars a year for up to four years.

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