Dan Ware

The real-time needs of emergency managers for tropical cyclone storm tide forecasting: results of a participatory stakeholder engagement process

Natural hazard forecasting products and associated decision support systems provide emergency managers with key information in real-time situations for making life-critical decisions on evacuation orders, deployment of response resources and public information campaigns. A stakeholder engagement strategy was used to investigate potential improvements to storm tide forecasting and decision support systems during tropical cyclone events for the case study site of Queensland, Australia. The requirements of the end-users of the system were identified through a comprehensive survey of local government disaster management staff. The survey assessed their use of the current system, soliciting suggestions for improvements and identifying ‘lessons learnt’ from recent extreme events. Analysis of the survey responses highlights issues with and opportunities for improvement to storm tide forecasting products, including improving spatial resolution and visualisation of warning information and improving the complexity of communication of uncertainty. In particular, the key dilemma between forecast uncertainty and the long timelines required for effective evacuation was highlighted. The survey responses and analysis present a unique insight into stakeholder requirements and will enable user-driven development of a future warning system rather than a forecast-driven product. Broader recommendations for improvement to the storm tide emergency management process derived from the survey include continuous improvement in the accuracy of tropical cyclone forecasting and improving the capacity of both disaster managers and the community to reduce response times to storm tide threat through education and long-term planning decisions.

Limits to Capital Works Adaptation in the Coastal Zones and Islands: Lessons for the Pacific

From seawalls to levees and desalination plants to dams, capital works projects have become a widely accepted climate adaptation strategy in the coastal zone. With the reality of anthropogenic climate change and associated rising sea levels and an increase in the intensity of extreme weather events, there is a growing need for a range of adaptation interventions. The use of capital works for shoreline stabilisation has a long history and is an established engineering response to the protection of buildings and infrastructure from erosion or long term recession. While capital works often succeed in their primary objective of shoreline stabilisation to protect built assets from damage by erosion or inundation, by interrupting coastal processes they are often responsible for unintended consequences in other locations and at other times. In addition to these unintended consequences, case studies of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and Sendai prefecture during the 2010 Tokoku earthquake illustrate how the engineering design process, and particularly the need for a ‘design storm’, is a critical adaptation limit for capital works projects in the face of ongoing global climatic disruption. A key research problem is to identify the precise circumstances under which use of capital works is an appropriate and cost effective coastal climate change adaptation strategy, those where a soft-engineering approach that makes use of natural processes such as beach nourishment is preferable, and the situations where an ecosystem-based approach, that draws upon the ecosystem services of natural ecosystems to mitigate climate change impacts, is likely to be more cost effective or resilient.

Sustainable resolution of conflicts over coastal values: a case study of the Gold Coast Surf Management Plan

ABSTRACT Integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) has been widely adopted by Australian states as the preferred basis for addressing the negative impacts of development on the social and environmental values of the coast. Given the ongoing failure to arrest the declining condition of social and environmental values of the Australian coast and mounting pressures of growing population and climate change there is growing interest to alternative approaches to ICZM. This paper reports on a case study of Queensland’s Gold Coast where despite an established ICZM policy recreational surfers continued to see their values for the coast threatened and damaged by government sanctioned development. As an alternative to ICZM surfers successfully repositioned their values within the coastal development policy agenda by establishing a partnership with government to develop a surfing institutional structure.