John Mcaneney

• PhD Madison-Wisc.; MS Madison Wisc.; BSc(Hons.) Univ. of Auckland
• Risk Frontiers

Natural disasters are a significant risk globally (World Economic Forum in The Global Risk Report 2018 . 2018, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GRR18_Report.pdf). The extreme end of possible disasters, so-called catastrophic disaster risks, however, attract limited attention compared with either more frequent smaller and thus manageable events, or...

Compound disasters, defined here as two or more disasters occurring within a three-month window and within a given jurisdiction, pose complex disaster coordination and recovery challenges. Planning for the management of such disasters would benefit from a better understanding of their frequency and their underlying climate influences. Here we utili...

The Insurance Council of New Zealand’s Disaster List documents private sector insurance payouts caused by natural perils since April 1968. We normalise these and, where possible, payments made by the Earthquake Commission, a government natural disaster insurance scheme, as if historical events were to impact current societal conditions, defined her...

The paper updates normalisation of the Insurance Council of Australia’s Disaster List in the light of debate about the contribution of global warming to the rising cost of natural disasters. Normalisation estimates losses from historical events in a common year, here ‘season’ 2017 defined as the 12-month period from 1 July 2017. The number and nomi...

An analysis of published flood fatalities in Australia occurring between 1960 and 2015 revealed that 49% of 229 flood fatalities were vehicle related. After reviewing previous work on vehicle-related flood fatalities, this study examines attributes of roadways that may have influenced driver decisions to enter floodwaters and the survivability of p...

Local sociality, which is local people's everyday lives in and with their community, influences recovery in disaster-affected communities. This paper examines recovery in four disaster-impacted communities. In the two Australian examples rural communities were impacted by the 2011 Queensland floods. The two Japanese communities discussed suffered i...

The economic impact of natural disasters on developing economies can be severe with the recovery diverting scarce funds that might otherwise be targeted at development projects and stimulating the need for international aid. In view of the likely sensitivity of low-lying Pacific Islands to anticipated changes in climate, a 122-year record of major...

In June 2016, an unusual East Coast Low storm affected some 2000 km of the eastern seaboard of Australia bringing heavy rain, strong winds and powerful wave conditions. While wave heights offshore of Sydney were not exceptional, nearshore wave conditions were such that beaches experienced some of the worst erosion in 40 years. Hydrodynamic modellin...

In the light of the rising cost of natural disasters we review the provision of catastrophe insurance by the public sector in the US, France, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and its absence in the Netherlands, where flood risk is viewed as a national security concern. We do this in the context of the Australian home insurance market where i...

This paper provides a review of the international and local literature assessing the impact of flood risk information on residential property values. We extend the findings of a previous review conducted over a decade ago when flood risk disclosure regimes in Australia were quite different. After a brief discussion of methods typically used for ass...

This chapter summarizes salient findings from the NCCARF-funded report entitled 'Market-based mechanisms for climate change adaptation' by McAneney et al. (2013). It first examines the mechanisms responsible for the increasing cost of natural disasters, the implications of this for climate change adaptation, and briefly explores the capacity of ins...

Despite their relative importance in terms of human mortality, extreme heat events have not attracted the same level of study compared with other natural hazards in regards to vulnerability and implications for emergency management and policy change. Definitional confusion and inconsistencies in defining heat related deaths over time have made it d...

A nation-wide survey was conducted in 2010 to investigate the Australian public's attitudes to nuclear power in relation to climate change and in comparison to other energy alternatives. The survey showed a majority of respondents (42%) willing to accept nuclear power if it would help tackle climate change. Following the disaster at the Fukushima D...

As in many other parts of the globe, migration to the coast and rapid regional development in Australia is resulting in large concentrations of population and insured assets. One of the most rapidly growing regions is southeastern Queensland and northern New South Wales, an area prone to flooding. This study reexamines the Great Flood of 1954 and d...

Satellite precipitation estimation has become a major source of data for global moisture and regional environmental monitoring. This preliminary study first reviews the current status of such applications especially for tropical cyclone landfalls, and the science behind rainfall estimation based on microwave emission. One of the most popular integr...

Last October, in a landmark case, six scientists and a government official associated with the Italian National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks were found guilty of multiple counts of manslaughter. The trial followed a magnitude 6.3 earthquake near the Italian city of L'Aquila that killed 309 people in April 2009. The alle...

Widespread flooding across eastern Australia between November 2010 and February 2011 has again highlighted the country's susceptibility to natural disasters. The floods have also triggered discussion about flood awareness, risk information, and the role and responsibility of governments, insurance providers and residents. This paper examines the av...

Volcanic ash is one of the farthest-reaching volcanic hazards and ash produced by large magnitude explosive eruptions has the potential to affect communities over thousands of kilometres. Quantifying the hazard from ash fall is problematic, in part because of data limitations that make eruption characteristics uncertain but also because, given an e...

In a companion paper (this volume), the authors propose a methodology for assessing ash fall hazard on a regional scale. In this study, the methodology is applied to the Asia-Pacific region, determining the hazard from 190 volcanoes to over one million square kilometre of urban area. Ash fall hazard is quantified for each square kilometre grid cell...

Flooding on the Tone River, which drains the largest catchment area in Japan and is now home to 12 million people, poses significant risk to the Greater Tokyo Area. In April 2010, an expert panel in Japan, the Central Disaster Prevention Council, examined the potential for large-scale flooding and outlined possible mitigation measures in the Greate...

On 13th January 2011 major flooding occurred throughout most of the Brisbane River catchment, most severely in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Creek catchment (where 23 people drowned), the Bremer River catchment and in Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland. Some 56,200 claims have been received by insurers with payouts totalling $2.55 billion. This...

Australia invests significant resources to address the risk of fire in all its forms. This study asks the question: is the current investment strategy cost‐effective? This question was approached in two ways: first, through a cross‐sectional study of fire statistics from other developed countries and, second, through a structured expert judgment ex...

Recent reviews have concluded that efforts to date have yet to detect or attribute an anthropogenic climate change influence on Atlantic tropical cyclone (of at least tropical storm strength) behaviour and concomitant damage. However, the possibility of identifying such influence in the future cannot be ruled out. Using projections of future tropic...

In much of the developed world, private sector insurance plays an important but often underappreciated role in the management of natural disasters. Insurance works by spreading individual and independent risks across all policyholders. This notion succeeds for uncorrelated risks such as theft and motor accidents, but is problematic where risks are...

This study reevaluates the history of building damage and loss of life due to bushfire (wildfire) in Australia since 1925 in light of the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria in which 173 people lost their lives and 2298 homes were destroyed along with many other structures. Historical records are normalized to estimate building damage and fatalit...

In many jurisdictions, including parts of the US, authorities often dictate mandatory evacuations of communities threatened by bushfire (wildfire). Prior to the 2009 ‘Black Saturday’ fires in Victoria, Australian fire authorities in all States advised residents to decide whether they would prepare to stay and defend homes or leave early. The clear...

This paper examines the circumstances in which a `shelter-in-place' strategy may be a viable alternative to evacuation during flash floods. While evacuation remains the dominant strategy for a range of hazards, a review of the literature suggests growing awareness of the dangers associated with late evacuations and some limited consideration of she...

Here we re-examine the official Atlantic basin tropical cyclone (hurricane) database HURDAT (1851–2008) and quantify differences between wind speed distributions in the early historical (1851–1943) record and more recent observations. Analyses were performed at three different geographical levels: for all six-hourly track segments of all Atlantic b...

This study examines the bushfire (wildland fire) risk to the built environment in Australia. The most salient result is that the annual probability of building destruction has remained almost constant over the last century despite large demographic and social changes as well as improvements in fire fighting technique and resources. Most historical...

Fire, an ever present hazard in Australia, causes approximately 100 fatalities and over 3000 injuries per annum. Significant resources are allocated to mitigate the risk. In this study, we estimate the total cost of fire in Australia for 2005 at AUD$12,000 million or 1.3% of GDP. Comparable studies in the UK, USA, Canada, Denmark and New Zealand ar...

While volcanic events are commonly characterized by multiple eruptive stages, most probabilistic tephra hazard analyses only simulate the major (paroxysmal) stage. In this study, we reconsider this simplified treatment by comparing hazard outcomes from simulated single- and multistage eruption sequences, using the Okataina Volcanic Center (OVC) in...

Since 1967, the Insurance Council of Australia has maintained a database of significant insured losses. Apart from five geological events, all others (156) are the result of meteorological hazards—tropical cyclones, floods, thunderstorms, hailstorms and bushfires. In this study, we normalise the weather-related losses to estimate the insured loss t...

After adjusting the Insurance Council of Australia's Disaster List for 2006 societal conditions, we estimate Australia's average annual insured loss due to natural perils to be around $1 billion. Worldwide, the costs of natural disasters are increasing (Swiss Reinsurance Company, 2006) leading to concerns that human-induced climate change is contri...

We explore the impact of future climate change on the risk of forest and grassland fires over Australia in January using a high resolution regional climate model, driven at the boundaries by data from a transitory coupled climate model. Two future emission scenarios (relatively high and relatively low) are used for 2050 and 2100 and four realizatio...

Correspondence from a long-established sugar mill provided the opportunity to construct the longest flood series for a river in Fiji—the Ba River in northwest Viti Levu—from 1892 to 2002. Flood waters reached the mill floor every four years on average. Contrary to common lore, this study could detect no increase in the frequency of major floods ove...

The coupled climate models used in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are evaluated. The evaluation is focused on 12 regions of Australia for the daily simulation of precipitation, minimum temperature, and maximum temperature. The evaluation is based on probability density functions and a simple quantitati...

Volcanic events comprising multiple eruptive stages are common in the historical and geological record and display activity of variable intensity ranging, in some cases, through to several centuries. To better understand the characteristics of such events globally, this study explores a database of historical events having Volcanic Explosivity Indi...

We evaluate the coupled climate models used in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Our evaluation is focused on twelve regions of Australia for the daily simulation of precipitation, minimum temperature and maximum temperature. We base our evaluation on Probability Density Functions (PDFs). We intro...

Hailstorms are by far the costliest insured natural hazard in Australia. Major metropolitan areas such as Sydney and Brisbane, located in mid-latitude coastal Eastern Australia, are especially vulnerable due to building exposure and geographical location. Results are presented using data from metropolitan Sydney and Brisbane for seven recent severe...

Here we quantify Australian coastal population at a spatial resolution of 1 km and do this as a function of distance to shoreline and elevation above mean sea level. We also report comprehensive validations based on statistical and spatial relationships between very fine-resolution Australian data sets and the recent high-resolution global data set...

VolcaNZ is a probabilistic volcanic loss model developed for the Auckland Region in New Zealand that currently considers tephra fall hazards from the Auckland Volcanic Field (AVF), Tuhua volcano, Okataina volcanic centre, Taupo volcano, Tongariro volcanic centre and Egmont volcano. In this first version of the model, structural and non-structural d...

Hailstorms occur frequently in metropolitan Sydney, in the eastern Australian State of New South Wales, which is especially vulnerable due to its building exposure and geographical location. Hailstorms challenge disaster response agencies and pose a great risk for insurance companies. This study focuses on the Sydney hailstorm of 14 April 1999 – Au...

Auckland, New Zealand’s most populous Region is centred on the Auckland volcanic field (AVF), which contains an estimated 49 small-volume basaltic volcanoes. Although these volcanoes are considered monogenetic, a number of centres may have been active either simultaneously or within a short period of time. After reviewing the characteristics of the...

A new analysis of bushfire risk to residential properties shows that in 60% of years losses occur somewhere in Australia. The evident corollary to this is that in 40% of years no losses are experienced. This statistic has remained reasonably stable over the last century despite large increases in population and improvements in technology and firefi...

1] The extent and trajectory of bushfire penetration at the bushland-urban interface are quantified using data from major historical fires in Australia. We find that the maximum distance at which homes are destroyed is typically less than 700 m. The probability of home destruction emerges as a simple linear and decreasing function of distance from...

Catastrophe loss estimation for natural hazards combines both hazard and exposure data. While hazard attributes such as intensity distributions are usually represented at a spatially explicit raster (or pixel) level, exposure data such as population, dwellings and insurance portfolios are usually only available at spatially lumped census tracts. In...

Strategic investments in research and development (R&D) possess challenging features for valuation: the relationship between research effort and a marketable product is highly uncertain and there is always the possibility for some exogenous event or competitor behaviour to render the whole effort valueless. The R&D project studied here concerns the...

Aircraft and ground-based measurements made during the1995 Australian OASIS field campaign are compared. The aircraft data were recorded during low-level flightsat 6 m above ground level and grid flights at altitudes of between 15 and 65 m, allin unstable atmospheric conditions. The low-level flights revealed an inadequate temperaturesensor respons...

This study compares two different approaches for estimating the probability of earthquake damage to typical residential structures. The first is an empirical approach using intensity-based hazard and insurance claims data from the 1989 ML 5.6 Newcastle earthquake, the most costly in Australian history. The second is an engineering-based approach th...

The potential of the LAS (large aperture scintillometry) method for measuring sensible heat flux (H) directly integrated over a two-field composite surface is evaluated. We describe a field experiment performed within the Alpilles/ReSeDa project in the south-east of France over a composite surface made up of wheat and bare soil (451 and 216 m long...

Aerodynamic parameters (displacement height d and roughness length for momentum z(o)), as well as friction velocity u. and temperature scaling parameter T-., were estimated from the Alpilles energy balance measurement data. Air temperature and wind speed measurements at two heights and sensible heat flux data were needed in the estimation. Applicat...

Two methods for retrieving sensible heat flux over a bare soil/wheat composite surface are compared. The first one is based on field measurements using large aperture scintillometers. The comparison with reference fluxes obtained from eddy correlation technique shows that scintillometry-derived fluxes are overestimated by 10%. A numerical experimen...

The atmospheric surface layer couples processes in the atmosphere with those at the land surface, but is not fully understood for heterogeneous land surfaces. A small remotely piloted aircraft was flown during the ReScDA experiment to measure profiles of heat and humidity in the surface layer near boundaries between different land cover types to st...

Methods are needed to measure the surface fluxes of sensible (H) and latent heat (E) at large scales. A promising method is scintillometry. Over pasture, a near-infrared scintillometer was most sensitive to temperature fluctuations whilst a microwave scintillometer was unduly affected by both humidity fluctuations and correlated temperature–humidit...

This paper presents the Alpilles-ReSeDA project, which aims at improving methods for interpreting remote sensing data for a better evaluation of soil and vegetation functioning (primary production, crop yield, energy balance and water budget). The proposed approach is based on the assimilation of remote sensing data into soil and vegetation functio...

Path-averaged measurements of sensible heat (H) and momentum fluxes ( ) were made under unstable conditions (|ξ| < 0.1) above pasture using an inner scale meter (ISM), an instrument which employs in tandem both a diverging laser beam-point detector scintillometer and a second instrument using a large-aperture (15 cm) incoherent source and receiver...

Rates of fruit growth, on-vine changes in the soluble and insoluble carbohydrate pools, and subsequent changes during storage were examined on kiwifruit from vines having moderate to very high crop loads (20-50 fruit m-2). In accord with previous studies, vines carrying the highest loads exhibited a 18% decrease in mean fruit weight and a two-fold...

The Penman-Monteith equation (PM) provides a direct and logical route to explaining rates of crop water consumption without the need of resorting to the artificiality of a reference crop and ill-defined crop factors. However as an operational irrigation tool, the PM is often impractical because of uncertainties about stomatal behaviour and turbulen...

L'étude, conduite par deux équipes du département de bioclimatologie de l'Inra (Unité de Bioclimatologie de Grignon - Centre de Grignon-Massy - Paris et Unité de Bioclimatologie de Bordeaux), s'inscrit dans le cadre de l'expérience Efeda, organisée en Espagne en 1991 par différentes équipes de recherches atmosphériques et de science du sol des pays...

Physical principles and design criteria for a large-aperture scintillometer conceived at the NOAA Wave Propagation Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado are presented. This instrument measures intensity fluctuations of a collimated beam of incoherent light at spatial wavelengths within the inertial subrange. Together with measurements of mean windspeed a...

Under the climatic conditions of Northern New Zealand, low temperatures limit fruit maturation of early-season satsuma mandarins. Yet within the Kerikeri district, consistent differences in juice quality can be found between similarly managed orchards subject to the same synoptic weather patterns and inputs of photosynthetic radiation. This study e...

It has been suggested in Part I of this paper that, after a dryland-to-irrigated transition, the surface sensible and latent heat fluxes may exhibit little change with downstream distance from the leading edge. It was argued that such step changes in surface fluxes could be caused by a feedback mechanism between surface resistance and changing satu...

Various models have been proposed to predict changes in scalar concentrations and surface fluxes following an abrupt change in surface conditions. In most cases the boundary conditions used to describe the surface represent limiting cases such as a step change in either concentration, flux or surface resistance. Three main conclusions emerge from a...

Previous measurements of water loss from small-dish evaporimeters mounted at the height of irrigated crops grown under conditions of extreme local advection in the Sudan are reexamined. From these evaporimeter measurements, it is possible to calculate fractional changes in the saturation deficit. Relationships between canopy conductance and saturat...

Previous experimental and theoretical studies have examined the possible use of thermal-infrared measurements of surface temperature to estimate sensible heat flux from homogeneous surfaces. In extending the methodology to larger scales, it is necessary to consider the effect of spatial variability. Over a heterogeneous mixture of surfaces, statist...

Line-averaged measurements of the structure parameter of refractive index (C n 2 ) were made using a semiconductor laser diode scintillometer above two markedly different surfaces during hours of positive net radiation. The underlying vegetation comprised in the first instance a horizontally homogeneous, pasture sward well-supplied with water, an...

An eddy correlation system for carbon dioxide and latent heat flux measurement comprising a twin-channel, closed-path infra-red gas analyzer and sonic anemometer is described. Its performance was examined by comparing latent heat fluxes measured concurrently with an open-path sensor over windbreak-sheltered kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosia var. deli...

A 35-yr time series of dryland wheat yields and corresponding monthly rainfall data from the Los Monegros/La Ribera del Ebro-Zaragoza area in Central Aragon have been examined with a view to determining the efficacy of the wheat-fallow rotation. Grain yields are low (average of 1 050 kg/ha) and highly dependent on seasonal (October-May) rainfall. I...

Eddy correlation measurements of sensible heat and evaporation fluxes from a kiwifruit orchard confirm earlier, less comprehensive measurements that the spatially-averaged evaporation rate from well-watered and well-sheltered orchard blocks in the northern part of New Zealand occurs at the equilibrium rate (Eq. In this humid coastal climate the rap...

Surface energy budget investigations of a range of agricultural surfaces in France and the African Sahel demonstrate consistent linear relationships between daily totals of sensible heat flux (H d) and the difference between a once-a-day radiative measurement of surface temperature and the maximum air temperature at a height of 2 m. Surface tempera...

Near-neutral measurements of the turbulent wind field within and above a sequence of 15 parallel windbreaks on a flat pastoral site are presented. The windbreak fences each had a porosity of 60% and were equally-spaced at 6 times their height (h = 2 m). The following conclusions seem justified for wind directions within 10 of the normal to the arra...

A rapid response drag anemometer for measuring streamwise and lateral components of horizontal windspeed is described. Theory of operation, design and calibration are discussed with emphasis on the electronic preconditioning of signals and problems associated with using a mechanically resonant system as a sensor. Field comparisons showed half-hourl...

The tree and understorey components of latent heat flux density (LE) in two young Pinus radiata D. Don stands at different stages of commercial management were measured on two consecutive fine autumn days in each stand when there was no soil water deficit. LE was determined from the difference between available energy (A) and sensible heat flux den...

An instrument designed for easy field measurements of kiwifruit volume or weight is described. Volume (or weight) calculated from a single length measurement has a resolution of ± 1 cm (g) permitting individual fruit growth to be monitored on a weekly basis. The assumption that the density of kiwifruit is 1 gm/cm is shown to be a very good approxim...

Climatological differences accompanying changing land use from traditional pastoral farming to fruit orchards were measured over a 6-year period. During this time evergreen shelter belts, which subdivide orchards into 0.5-ha blocks, grew from establishment to an average final height of nearly 10 m. The main result was a progressive reduction in the...

An irrigation experiment was conducted on young kiwifruit vines over two seasons to examine effects of water stress on fruit development. Vines were grown outdoors in a sandy, rooting medium enclosed within a polythene-lined trench with removable surface covers to enable strict control of the water supply. Measurements of fruit growth, leaf water p...

The distribution of fruit weight at harvest from 0.5 ha blocks of kiwifruit in the Kerikeri district is shown to closely approximate a Normal distribution with a constant standard deviation of 20.5 g. The standard deviation changed less than 2 g between seasons despite wide variations in the mean fruit weight with crop loading and vine age. This No...

Fluctuations in the vertical wind velocity and air temperature were measured with a 1-dimensional sonic anemometer and fine thermocouple over a flat agricultural site in the Rhone Valley, France. Strong Mistral winds with speeds up to 20 m s–1 kept atmospheric conditions very close to neutral and ensured stationarity. Friction velocities estimated...

The behaviour of 4-year-old kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa (A. Chev.) C. F. Liang & A. R. Ferguson) vines growing in a Springbank soil within the Kerikeri Irrigation Scheme was monitored over the 1982–83 season. Water stress was induced in two vines by withholding irrigation and preventing rainfall recharge. Fruit volume expansion appeared strongly...

The literature on multiple windbreaks is reviewed in an attempt to explain observed differences in wind protection achieved by two different orchard management systems. The level of wind-rub blemishes on kiwifruit is used as an indication of the accumulated mechanical stress on the vine. Within a traditionally sheltered and trellised orchard, wind...

The transpiration of 2 kiwifruit vines grown within sheltered orchards in the Nelson locality was estimated in late summer by measuring their water uptake for 2 days following excision. Total daily transpiration by vines with vertically projected canopy areas of 16–17 m varied between 80 and 100 liters of water per day (4.8–6.1 mm/day) and ranged f...

The transpiration of Tamarillos (Cyphomandra betacea (Cav.), Sendt.) grown in a sheltered orchard was measured periodically through a season. A series of excision experiments provided daily water uptake data which agreed closely with rates calculated on the basis of equilibrium transpiration and projected canopy area. Comparative porometer and leaf...

Losses of export-quality kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis Planch.) attributable to wind damage increased with distance downwind of both natural and artificial windbreaks. These effects occurred on standard ‘T-bar’ trellised vines during a particularly windy season, within shelter spacings which the literature suggest should achieve adequate reduction...