End-user areas of interest (more than 14,000) for December 2019 to March 2020.
Understanding which environments are exposed to natural hazards is important in the response to and mitigation of such hazards.
By Bethany Patch from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. This article was first published in Issue Four 2020 of Fire Australia.
As Australian communities recover from one natural hazard and prepare for the next one, there are important questions to ask about the areas most exposed to possible loss of life, landscape and property.
We need to understand which buildings, businesses, public facilities, infrastructure, agricultural areas and natural landscapes, as well as how many people, are exposed to any natural hazard, human-induced disaster or structural failure. A clearer appreciation of this exposure is a highly valuable starting point for any sector that is required to prepare for and respond to hazards, not only in the response and warning phase, but also in mitigation.
The Australian Exposure Information Platform (AEIP) is an online platform that provides an accessible snapshot of all assets within a specified area, in the form of a customised ‘exposure report’.
It was designed through a partnership between the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, Geoscience Australia, the University of Melbourne, the University of Canberra and emergency management organisations.
Chief of Division at Geoscience Australia, Alison Rose, explained the significance of the platform to the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements in early June 2020.
“The AEIP is an all-hazards capability, which provides exposure reports on demand at any scale,” Ms Rose told commissioners.
Lead CRC researcher Mark Dunford from Geoscience Australia says these exposure reports provide a new, quick way of accessing important information that can be used for mitigation and operational decision-making for any hazard at any time within any specified area. This is essential information that helps improve safety, save lives and reduce damage to property and natural landscapes, and can be used not only by emergency management, but also researchers, town planners or anyone else who is interested.
“For the first time, everyone has direct 24/7 access to nationally consistent exposure information anywhere in Australia, through a user-driven, on-demand interface,” Mr Dunford said.
"They can readily utilise exposure information as a key piece of intel for critical pre-planning, or on-the-fly scenario event assessments.”
The reports created by the AEIP draw on a wealth of data sources out of the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) database, including local, state, federal and industry data; ABS demographics; environmental exposure data from the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment; and agriculture, business, building and institutional data.
The AEIP is already being widely used across Australia and has proven to be invaluable in a crisis, including during the devastating 2019—20 bushfire season, where 14,400 reports were generated. There are currently about 60 different entities that use the tool on a regular basis, half of which are emergency management agencies, with local government authorities and electricity providers also using it.
Anyone wanting to access the AEIP and its exposure reports can do so through the free online platform, aeip.ga.gov.au, or can integrate the platform into their own existing applications with an Application Programming Interface. This means users can create regular reports without having to leave their own system, which is the approach the NSW Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) has taken.
Dr Stuart Matthews, Principal Project Officer at NSW RFS, describes the value of being able to integrate the AEIP into their internal fire simulator.
“The ability to integrate AEIP … provides an excellent triage capability to support decision-makers in times of rapidly changing events as experienced in the unprecedented bushfire season of 2019—20,” Dr Matthews said.
Throughout the 2019—20 fire season, AEIP showed how invaluable its information was in a crisis. By speeding up the delivery of vital exposure information, the AEIP’s nationally consistent and easily accessible format ensures that information and decision-making can be calculated and coordinated across Australia.