360 degrees magazine issue 3

Aurecon response to natural disasters

reducing vulnerAbility 1

the issue Natural disasters

FAce to FAce

reducing vulnerAbility

disAster response

MAnAging the AFterMAth

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issue 3 2011OUR GLOBAL VIEW OF A VIBRANT WORLD

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FACE TO FACE REDUCING

VULNERABILITYBuilding resilience in crucial

New Zealand energy infrastructure

Stormwater master planning

Vulnerability index guides risk reduction funding

Seismic resilience in the developing world

Ensuring dam safety

Disaster risk management for the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup™

Building bushfire resilience

DISASTER RESPONSE

Urban search and rescue in Japan

Urban search and rescue in Christchurch

Simulation improving disaster response

Disaster response planning

Disaster management software in South Africa

MANAGING THE AFTERMATH

Cyclone aftermath mitigating disruption to coal export trade

Managing the aftermath: lessons from New Zealand

Geotechnical expertise secures residential housing

Quantifying the damage

Local governments and disaster: the Queensland experience

Disaster risk assessment for Cape Town

WelcoMe 3

A MessAge FroM our ceo

In January this year, we evacuated over 700 staff from our Brisbane office in Queensland, Australia in anticipation of the most serious flooding the country has seen in decades. In the same month in South Africa many local municipalities were declared disaster areas as flooding wrought widespread loss of property and lives. In February we watched with horror as the devastating impact of an earthquake destroyed much of the Canterbury region in New Zealand, including our office. Then came March with a huge earthquake and tsunami causing the largest humanitarian disaster in Japan since the Second World War.

Amid the terribly sad stories of the last few months, it is the stories of human kindness and heroism in the

face of tragedy that have touched me. Several of our people were first into disaster zones in the aftermath of recent tragedies as part of the urban search and rescue squads, and I want to acknowledge them on behalf of all at Aurecon for their dedication to the communities in which we live and work. Some of their stories are included in this 360° magazine.

As engineers and other specialists, we are motivated by the same spirit, which is why we have decided to dedicate this edition of 360° to the theme of natural disasters.

Our people are already working to reduce the economic and humanitarian vulnerability of their communities and are involved in improving disaster response globally. Crucially, they are also involved in rebuilding community infrastructure in the aftermath of devastation.

This edition provides insight into some of the issues facing our clients and their communities in relation to natural disasters. It showcases a few of the ways that engineers and other professionals can build resilience in their communities through innovative solutions and thoughtful design.

I hope you will find this 360° both interesting and informative but most of all inspiring, as I do.

Regards,

paul hardy

Chief Executive Officer Aurecon

“Our people are working to reduce the economic and humanitarian vulnerability of their communities.”


“I went to visit the flood areas last year in Punjab and the scale of the devastation was mind-boggling.”

peter baxterDirector-General AusAid

FAce to FAce

360°

Pakistani flood victims, desperate for aid, swim towards a building rooftop where the army is dropping aid from a helicopter.

Natural disasters are particularly challenging in the developing world where the humanitarian impact is often devastating.

In this Face to Face interview, Aurecon CEO, Paul Hardy, talks with Peter Baxter, Director-General AusAid, about effective ways to support disaster response as well as reduce community vulnerability in the long-term.

FAce to FAce


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paul What do you see as the priorities in the developing world?

Peter Over the last decade enormous progress has been made in reducing the number of people living in absolute poverty. While progress has been encouraging, there are still 1.4 billion people in the world who live under the USD 1.25 per day (the internationally recognised poverty benchmark) — one in six people in the world go hungry every day. History shows us that the only way you can make a permanent impact on poverty is by promoting sustainable economic growth that is inclusive and broad based. China is the greatest success story of the last 20 years, lifting more people out of poverty over the last two decades (400 to 500 million people) than in the rest of human history. They have done this by fostering economic growth.

Climate change and the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters are presenting new challenges in the developing world. The earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan had a devastating impact on two of the most advanced countries in the world. If you look at the impact of the earthquake in Haiti over a year ago, or the Pakistan floods last year, there was a much more devastating impact both in terms of loss of life (in Haiti well over a quarter of a million people died when the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince). In Pakistan the cost of the floods was put at 5 percentage points of its GDP. Dealing with these humanitarian crises is going to be a

particular challenge for the global community in the years ahead.

paul it is quite startling when you describe loss in terms of a quarter of a million deaths, so is it fair to say that from a developed world media perspective, you don’t get that impact?

Peter No you don’t. In the Pakistan floods last year, a little under 2000 people died, which is a lot, but nothing like the scale of Haiti. However, 20 million people were affected by the floods, which is basically the population of Australia. These were largely people at the poorer end of the economic spectrum — poor farmers. I visited the flood areas last year in Punjab and the scale of the devastation was mind-boggling! Now people have moved on, but there are areas where the flood waters still haven’t left, going back to last July. Of course, in a 24-hour media cycle it is hard to keep the media’s attention on anything. But the reality is that these sorts of natural disasters have long-term impacts and they set back development by years.

paul how do you see AusAid responding to these natural disasters, given that the effects are not only on immediate gdp, but putting behind overall development?

Peter AusAid is the lead agency in Australia’s Federal Government in terms of responding to humanitarian disasters internationally in developing countries so we have a very well practiced machine across the whole

of government that we can call upon when we deploy. We work very closely with a range of government agencies at the federal and state level. Our key partners are, for example, Department of Defence and the Australian Federal Police, but also the state medical service. We have the capacity to deploy people within 24 hours into our region in particular.

We not only work to respond to natural disasters but we recognise that a core element of our work is helping developing countries prepare for natural disasters so that when they occur, loss of property or life is mitigated through these preparations. The phrase we use now is ‘disaster risk reduction’.

We think that the predictions that disasters will be more frequent and more severe, particularly weather related natural disasters, are accurate, so we are likely to be busier in the future. In addition to our own capability, we also harness the broader capabilities within the Australian community. We work closely with non-government organisations (NGOs) and have standing arrangements with the larger NGOs to fund them quickly because they have international networks. These include Oxfam, World Vision, Care Australia etc and they can get aid in at grass roots level through these international networks much quicker than governments do, so they have a comparative advantage. We also work with an organisation called RedR, an Australian organisation

left A family walks down a damaged street in Sumatra, Indonesia following an 8.5 Richter scale earthquake.

rightPaul Hardy, Aurecon CEO (Left) and Peter Baxter, Director-General, AusAid share a passion for delivering positive outcomes through targeted development programmes.

paul you mentioned before a fascinating concept about Africa and a mining development centre. describe that please, as it is relevant to Aurecon and Australia.

Peter One of the best ways to ensure that you get maximum impact from your aid programme is to work out where we bring a comparative advantage as Australia to the table. As we have expanded our programme in Africa over the last few years, there has been enormous demand to learn from the Australian natural resources experience.

A couple of years ago, responding to repeated requests from African countries, we started the Mining Fellowships Program where we brought officials from Africa working in the natural resources sector to Australia, and introduced them to government agencies and private sector companies in the sector to build the depth of their experience.

We learned that we can probably do this in a much more comprehensive way, so we are now working on development of a concept called the Mining Centre of Excellence. This would be a formalised course of study where officials from developing countries that have a natural resource sector can come to Australia and learn how to draft legislation and regulation to provide fair and equitable development of the natural resources sectors in their countries. If you look globally, the areas where there is most activity in natural resource development is in the developing world and for many of these countries this is their only resource — their one shot to develop their country and their human resources to build their education and health systems and all of the infrastructure that can help them lift large numbers of their populations out of poverty.

paul you raised a number of points around the likely increase in

that has skilled and trained professionals ready to deploy at short notice into UN agencies in particular.

We are now building a capability within AusAid called the Australian Civilian Corp to enable us to deploy at short notice into the early recovery period after the immediate emergency response is over. The Government has asked us to establish a register of 500 qualified and trained Australians, including, for example, people with legal skills, engineering backgrounds, public financial management backgrounds, people with practical skills, for example, to get a town’s water supply up and running quickly after damage by a natural disaster. By 2015 we aim to have 500 people ready to deploy. In a couple of weeks we will advertise nationally for Australians to come forward to be on the register and volunteer. (Editor’s note: AusAid has since advertised for the ACC)


Australian aid and funding. there is a need, and almost a responsibility, to go to the Australian people and say “this is what we do with your money and why we do it”. Am i adequately describing what you’re saying?

Peter Absolutely. We have a responsibility to better inform the Australian public on how we are using tax payer’s funds, what results we are achieving and the challenges we face. I think aid agencies like AusAid need to get much better at explaining to the Australian public, firstly the results that we achieve in developing countries, but also how these results benefit Australia.

All of the polling shows that Australians are overwhelmingly supportive of increased aid programmes, but they want to know that we are achieving results in an efficient and effective manner in terms of the management of the programme — minimising fraud/leakage and how the work that we

are doing in developing countries actually furthers our interests. There is a need to significantly step up our activity in that area.

paul you appear to be a very visionary and strategic type of person, where do you see AusAid in five years time?

Peter We are fortunate that we have government commitment to increase the aid programme over the next five years to 0.5 of a percentage of our gross national income, and if economic growth continues at the current level, we can see it rise from the current $4.3 billion per year to around $8 billion per year, so a big growth over the next five years. One thing we realise is that ‘business as usual’ is not an option for us. We will have to become a different kind of organisation, and increasingly we are becoming an investor in development rather than actually managing contracts ourselves. Over the last five years our business model has

changed quite dramatically. Five years ago 41% of the total program was delivered through managing contractors. This year it is 22%. We are working more with NGOs and multilateral organisations — the UN agencies, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and work more directly with developing countries and their systems.

Certainly we will continue to retain our core focus in Asia Pacific — we have a lot of expertise built up over the years and there are still real development needs in this area. We will have the capacity to do things in the future at a scale we haven’t done before and the Indonesian educational programme is an example of a glimpse of the future where we will end up over ten years having built 4000 schools, trained up 300 000 school principals and done a lot of work with Indonesia on developing its broader national education strategy. That’s the kind of thing we are moving into.

FAce to FAce 9

Diggers clear rubble near a traditional market in Padang as Indonesia begins the clean up following two earthquakes.

reducing VULNERABILITY

Mitigating the impact of natural disasters is key to reducing the vulnerability of communities.

As the frequency and severity of natural disasters increases, it is critical that effective design solutions, planning and preparedness are addressed to protect communities.

Photo courtesy of Transpower New Zealand.



When Transpower New Zealand needed to replace its high voltage, DC power link between the North and South Islands, an essential design criteria was that the new facility have higher earthquake resistance than the existing plant. Aurecon is working as part of a Design and Construct (D&C) team with Siemens as part of a USD 530 million upgrade of the NZ Inter Island HVDC Current Link.

The present maximum capacity of the HVDC link is 900 MW, with an operating limit below 700 MW. This project will increase capacity to 1400 MW. In the design specifications, Transpower required the converter stations buildings, which house sensitive valves, transformers and controls, to operate without disturbance after a 500 year return period earthquake and be capable of being rapidly returned to service after a 2 500 year event.

For Siemens, the project involves replacing the AC to DC converter stations at either end of the existing HVDC link. At the Haywards site just north of Wellington, the presence of the Wellington Fault, only 300m away from the site combined with the complex soil structure interaction issues meant an innovative solution was required. This fault itself could cause a surface rupture with 3m to 4m of lateral displacement and 1m vertical, with peak ground accelerations in excess of one g-force in the horizontal and vertical directions.

The seismic performance of the soils, electrical plant and buildings required complex modelling and analysis to a level of detail and sophistication well beyond usual seismic engineering requirements for building design in New Zealand.

Unlike normal seismic studies for building structures, considerable attention had to be paid to the effects of the vertical seismic excitation on the sensitive components that could not be restrained by normal means.

The seismic modelling and performance of the building is further complicated by the very large transformer loads in one half of the structure and the very fragile electrical equipment in the other. This ‘uneven’ loading results in a vertical ground acceleration producing a secondary horizontal movement at a frequency that is critical to the design parameters of many of the specialist electrical components.

Through complex computer modelling of the building’s seismic performance, Aurecon predicted how the building is expected to perform for a range of earthquakes and to qualify the loads transferred to the equipment.

In April 2010 at the commencement of the project, the then New Zealand Minister of Energy and Resources, Gerry Brownlee described the Inter Island POLE 3 Project, “as the most important piece of infrastructure to be built in New Zealand in the next 10 years”.

“These are the first base isolated DC converter stations in the world and the project has presented a number of unique solutions,” said Guenther Wanninger, Project Director Siemens and Head HVDC Global. “As the world now better appreciates the importance of robust seismic engineering, we look forward to the opportunity to use similar solutions in other seismically active areas throughout the world”.

belowNZ Inter Island High Voltage Direct Current HVDC POLE 3 Converter Station project, Benmore, New Zealand.

building resilience in crucial nZ energy infrastructure

On 24 January 2008, many families in the Limpopo province in South Africa were affected when the LaPhalala River overflowed its banks along a 54km stretch. Aurecon was subsequently appointed to investigate the causes of flooding and to quantify the losses experienced. We were also tasked with compiling the 1:100 year flood lines for this stretch of river. In addition, we made recommendations to the Waterberg District Municipality on implementing timely and accurate flood warnings and response procedures to avoid recurrence of the same tragedy.

Aurecon’s report to the provincial government outlined the importance of an integrated flood risk management system and the steps required to achieve this, including improved data collection network, risk modelling, real-time communication systems and public awareness programmes.

“Stormwater master planning is essentially a risk management exercise to minimise the possibility of damage and loss of life due to flooding,” explains Professor André Görgens, Competency Leader, Water Resources Management. “Typically, this type of planning involves careful analysis of an area’s surface drainage paths or existing stormwater infrastructure, which are identified from plans, aerial photos, GIS and site inspections. From this data, Aurecon can develop a computer model that identifies which areas would flood as a result of higher than usual stormwater runoff.”

In addition to identifying flood prone zones, that are high risk for human habitation, stormwater master plans are used to develop mitigation measures, should wide-scale flooding occur. This includes creating local temporary storage areas for high water volumes, such as retention dams to attenuate the severity of the flooding.

“This kind of planning should not be a ‘nice to have’,” believes Görgens, “Instead, it is used to ensure new urban developments aren’t prone to flood risk. Stormwater master planning provides an essential roadmap to mitigate potential damage to property and infrastructure, and ensure public safety.”

stormwater master planning

AboveStormwater poses a major risk to surrounding communities along the Lourens River in the Western Cape, South Africa.

This kind of planning should not be a ‘nice to have’. It should lay the foundation for urban planning to ensure developments aren’t prone to risk.



Informal settlements are an integral feature of housing in South Africa. In general, the communities who live in them are impoverished, have limited access to basic services, and are extremely vulnerable to hazards such as fires and floods. Developing a means to quantify these risks is crucial in identifying where preventative measures are most needed.

In 2008, Aurecon was commissioned to develop a vulnerability index for informal settlements in the Western Cape. The vulnerability index was to be determined by combining two previous studies. The first of these was the National Housing Demand Database (NHDD), which contained socio-economic data on each community’s access to water, sanitation and electricity. The second study, the NHDD Disaster Risk Analysis (DRA), assessed each community’s fire and flood risk by considering factors such as dwelling density, wind and proximity to water.

The different approaches used in the two data sets meant that they were challenging to integrate and required Aurecon to design very specific methodologies. Once data integration had been achieved, final risk scores were calculated and then classified as either high, medium or low. This produced an objective indication of the vulnerability to hazards of each informal settlement.

The vulnerability index developed by Aurecon is now being used to guide the allocation of funding for risk reduction measures that will protect these communities from hazards and enhance their ability to proactively respond to these types of events.

vulnerability index guides risk reduction funding

Above and belowAn informal settlement in Hangberg, South Africa.

The vulnerability index developed by Aurecon is now being used to guide the allocation of funding for risk reduction measures.

seismic resilience in the developing world

“Developing nations need to plan how they will recover from large natural disasters and consider how to make their economies more resilient,” comments Sean Gledhill, Aurecon Building Structures Service Leader, and multiple award winner for low damage seismic solutions.

Internationally, structural codes of practice for a normal building nominate a ‘design level’ for earthquakes that requires collapse prevention, but allows seismic damage to help dissipate energy, should bigger earthquakes occur.

To reduce vulnerability in developing nations, governments and local authorities firstly need to adopt strict earthquake zoning rules. These rules should identify and limit development on:

• land prone to high shaking

• ground prone to lateral spread – towards waterways

• areas where liquefaction is an issue – shaking induced ground consolidation usually resulting in building tilting or settling

To reduce vulnerability to damage, developing nations need to adopt internationally accepted codes of practice which are harmonised to best suit locally available materials and building practices. Many developing nations have either undertaken the steps or are conducting research into affordable local solutions.

Low damage technologies suitable for developing countries need to be simple, affordable and reliable. The simplest way of improving new commercial building response is to:

• reduce seismic weight – use lighter materials

• increase structural regularity and improve bracing system’s redundancy

• construct on better ground – a preference for rock sites over soft or reclaimed land sites

• use more naturally ductile materials such as timber or steel

• consider and allow for seismic movement

For new residential housing this may involve reduction in the use of unreinforced concrete, masonry or stone and increases in the use of processed materials such as treated timber and lightweight metal roofs. Ensuring walls and foundations are well connected, will significantly reduce collapses due to instability.

For new bridges, rail, roads and in-ground infrastructure, increasing designer and constructor awareness should allow for flexibility and ground displacement but ensure key items are robust and remain connected after the earthquake, at least making it easier to repair. A simple way to reduce the vulnerability of core public assets is duplication of key assets and careful geographical zoning.



AboveIn the developing world, natural disasters are often more devastating due to buildings being less able to resist the impact of major events.

Affordable isolation building system

New buildings, where budgets allow, should be developed to reduce shaking related damage. The simplest way of achieving this is with the concept of base isolation. This works best on relatively stiff, heavy and low rise structures, where simple steel plate sliders, or lead rubber bearings are introduced.

Base isolation ‘isolates’ the building from the ground during shaking, to alter the foundation connection and hence the response the building feels. Importantly, these need ‘rattle space’ – adequate movement space between adjoining structures.

Aurecon has delivered relatively cost neutral award winning isolation systems, constructed from slides with curved steel plates or simple rocking systems.

All these provide buildings with greater degrees of resilience by ensuring any seismic energy is concentrated in very ductile replaceable parts, or by providing mechanisms of dissipating energy such as rocking structures.

Other more modern systems include rocking steel frames, special friction joints and PRESS systems.

emergency preparedness plans

“Most importantly, a good manual will contain an emergency plan with step-by-step instructions on the actions to take, including explaining when it is necessary to call for higher level assistance. This includes identifying the symptoms of an impending emergency and defining the appropriate responses in that particular dam’s emergency preparedness plan,” explains Blersch. Typically, an emergency preparedness plan contains a set of maps that show what the expected flood levels downstream would be for different severities of floods. The plans are usually staged, with escalating circumstances calling for more drastic actions. These include contacting local authorities, initiating audible and/or radio warning systems and providing the official parties responsible for evacuation with information on potentially affected areas.

integrated operational plans

“Particularly relevant is the interaction between dams along the same water system,” Blersch adds. Critically, spillway gates allow a degree of control of the flood peak downstream. A series of dams along a river requires integrated operating rules, based on careful assessment of rainfall and flood risk. Sophisticated computer modelling is used to simulate and predict inflow hydrographs at each dam in order to develop an integrated operational plan.

When dams are mismanaged and, in the worst case, fail, the sudden release of water into downstream areas often results in loss of life, as well as significant damage to both property and agriculture.

dam operating and maintenance manuals

“For the day to day operation of dams, we need to ensure dam operators are properly trained and are in possession of an operating manual they can understand and which is updated if a dam is modified,” believes Peter Blersch, Aurecon Water Engineer. “If a manual isn’t practical or pitched at the level of education and training of the people carrying out these operations, it will end up on the shelf.”

A good dam operating manual will cover the routine operation of a dam as well as the required routine inspections. It will also set out the action to be taken in the event of failure of technology. “An example of this is gated spillways. Some of these gates are very sophisticated and require a high level of maintenance for successful operation. A good manual would include backup procedures for when one of these fails to operate,” he explains.

The Berg River Dam, a 62m high concrete faced rockfill dam (CFRD), forms part of the Western Cape Water Supply System (WCWSS), a system of dams and bulk water infrastructure that provides water to more than three million people. Aurecon has provided substantial input on the safe operation of this dam.

Aurecon has been exporting best practice principles and our extensive background knowledge for various dam safety projects across the African continent.

ensuring dam safety



disaster risk management for the 2010 FiFA soccer World cup™

leftOperational Risk Management and an Emergency Response Plan was developed by Aurecon for the Cape Town Station during the 2010 FIFA World Cup™

South Africa hosted an immensely successful 2010 FIFA World Cup™ which can be largely attributed to the huge volume of behind-the-scenes planning work. Aurecon made a significant contribution to a safe and secure event by providing effective disaster risk management programmes. These helped to prevent loss of life, damage to critical infrastructure and environmental degradation. Important projects in which we were involved and which contributed to overall successful risk management included:

• Disaster Management Plan for the Peter Mokaba Stadium Precinct, Polokwane, Limpopo Province

• Development of an Emergency Response Plan for Cape Town Railway Station and Transport Interchange

• Host City Disaster Management Plans for City of Tshwane for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, Gauteng

• Disaster Risk Assessment for the Cape Town 2010 FIFA Fan Fest™, Cape Town

• Site procedures and emergency plan for Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality Transport Operations Centre, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape

• National generic multi-agency interdisciplinary / unified command incident management plan

• Operational risk management at Cape Town Station during the 2010 FIFA World Cup™

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Aurecon was specifically chosen for this task due to the strength of our multidisciplinary team, which included botanists, building fire engineers and planners.



building bushfire resilience

National bushfire planning for Department of Defence

Throughout 2009 and 2010, we provided a detailed analysis of national bushfire planning for the Department of Defence. The project involved an audit of Bushfire Management Plans for a selection of Defence sites across Australia, including a detailed audit of compliance against both Defence National Guidelines for Bushfire Management and AS3959 — Building in Bushfire Prone Areas. Aurecon was specifically chosen for this task due to the strength of our multidisciplinary team, which included botanists, building fire engineers and planners.

The project included the first ever national snapshot of Bushfire Management across the Defence Estate, and covered 44 Defence sites in total. In addition to an analysis of bushfire planning against Defence guidelines and best practice, the project included a programme of building inspections to identity deficiencies in preparedness.

Our final report is hardly light reading at over 500 pages, but was very detailed and included a ‘traffic light’ analysis for each site. The report also identified a range of leading practice approaches, as well as areas for improvement.

This was also the first joint project between Aurecon and Ecobiological, a relationship that has now grown into a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between our organisations to provide enhanced fire planning and management services.

left Firefighter Rob Langston stands in part of the burnt out area of the Churchill Jerrelang fire in Victoria’s LaTrobe Valley, flattened by the intense heat caused by strong winds on 9 February 2009 in Churchill Jerrelang, Australia.

Mapping fire risk for schools

Following the Black Saturday fires in February 2009 in Victoria, Australia, Aurecon (with support from specialist environmental and bushfire firm Ecobiological) was engaged by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to develop bushfire management plans for schools identified by the Department as being at risk of bushfires. This project spanned 140 schools across the length and breadth of Victoria.

Aurecon’s project managers and engineers facilitated a series of risk management workshops in partnership with the Department to develop a unique methodology for the project delivery. In particular, the combined expertise of Aurecon and Ecobiological allowed for fine-scale GIS modelling of fire risk across all sites.

These mapping outputs were then analysed and critiqued on site with school principals to develop a tailored bushfire management solution for each school.

The blend of bushfire management, environmental and building fire engineering expertise allowed for significant flexibility and innovation in designing solutions for individual schools. Client and stakeholder feedback has been excellent and, as a result of this project, schools in Victoria will enter this and subsequent fire seasons significantly safer.

DISASTER response

The effectiveness of disaster response directly affects the humanitarian and economic impact of a natural disaster.

Engineers and technical specialists are often at the forefront of disaster response, in supporting Urban Search and Rescue, coordinating response activities and designing effective technical solutions for immediate critical situations.

In Disaster Response we look at some of the roles played by Aurecon’s engineers in responding to natural disasters globally.


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belowAurecon’s Carl Devereux briefs Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard (right) and Australia’s Governor General Quentin Bryce at the Christchurch Cathedral precinct on 18 March 2011 in New Zealand.

“Years of specialist building collapse and building instability training were put to use assisting with immediate live rescue and victim recovery followed by emergency shoring and building stabilisation works.”

carl devereuxChristchurch, New ZealandFebruary 2011

disAster response

townships wiped out and thousands of people missing. Near the township where we were working, the only structure left was a three storey reinforced concrete primary school building that had an offshore oyster farm draped over the top of it. Almost all other houses in the township were either reduced to concrete foundations or were entirely missing.

The vegetable gardens, rice paddies and parks were all stripped to bare bedrock with all topsoil washed to sea. Locating bridges, roads and railway lines was only possible using GPS as these were mostly destroyed.

The working conditions in Japan were very challenging with overnight temperatures down to -17ºC and day time barely over freezing, with frequent heavy snowfalls. The camp site, a baseball field near a community centre, turned into an ice rink overnight and a mud bath during the day.

In addition to my normal USAR engineering tasks, I monitored the environmental conditions, plotted background radiation data, and

assessed information on how the radioactive dust plume was spreading from the damaged power plants and how it could affect us on the ground.

This has been one of the more challenging years of my life to date. I do, however, feel honoured to be part of a group of dedicated professionals who helped our communities to pull through some of their darkest days.

Upon hearing this terrible news, I readily accepted the chance to go to Japan as I did get to know the Japanese USAR team assisting in Christchurch earlier the same week, and I have numerous friends and colleagues living in Japan.

Prior to going to Japan, I had to remove our few remaining possessions from our damaged rental house that was affected by land slippage and rock fall after the February earthquake; our own house was destroyed in September 2010 by the precursor earthquake in Christchurch.

The deployment was mentally and physically very challenging as we were working in some of the worst hit areas. My personal observation was that the damage from the large magnitude earthquake was not as bad as I initially feared due to the resilience of much Japanese housing and infrastructure.

However, where the tsunami hit the coastal communities, the damage was catastrophic, with entire

“After working for three weeks in Christchurch following the February 2011 earthquake, I received the grim news that Japan was hit by a devastating combination of an earthquake and tsunami.”

dr Jan KupecLeader, Ground EngineeringAurecon

urban search and rescue in Japan by Dr Jan Kupec

Former Nagasuka school hall steel structure destroyed by the massive force of the tsunami.

below Steel structure shows deformation from wave impact.


disAster response 23

Many years of training never quite prepare you for the real event. We saw the first images on the TV while waiting at the air force base for an airlift into the city. We knew then it was going to be a major rescue exercise.

My first deployment was to the Canterbury Television (CTV) building and this was quickly established as one of two priority sites for the USAR team. With potential high occupancy, full collapse of the building structure, and the onset of a fire immediately following the earthquake, the rescue window was small. Upon arrival at the site, our USAR team squads were briefed on progress made by the local rescue teams and each squad allocated a search area on the site.

As a USAR engineer, my role is to support the rescue squads in all rescue activities. On the CTV site, we started by quickly mapping out the original structural system to establish the final resting position of columns, beams and walls within the collapsed slabs. We were then able to advise on potential void spaces below the slabs and direct the search team to specific locations for searching. Core holes were drilled and search cameras inserted to check the spaces. At several locations where trapped people were located, we provided advice on how to safely penetrate the damaged floor slabs and install shoring to provide temporary stability.

A major concern on the CTV site were the fall hazards (in the form of debris) hanging from the intact lift tower. Our team of USAR engineers completed regular inspections of the lift tower and organised for surveyors to monitor the tower for movement. As cranes arrived, we completed high level inspections of the tower and directed the removal of fall hazards, including one “widow maker” slab section weighing approximately five tonnes.

This site was a major operation for 10 days until fully deconstructed. In total, 18 people were rescued from this building by the NZ USAR team.

urban search and rescue in christchurch by Carl Devereux

The CTV site in Christchurch was a major focus of rescue efforts by the USAR team.

Having the appropriate plan, vehicles and equipment and trained personnel in place does not guarantee the most appropriate response to emergency and disaster incidents. The most accomplished personnel may become confused, disoriented or frustrated in a real-life disaster situation, making the simulation of these incidents all the more valuable. Aurecon recommends extensive practice and simulation of emergency procedures in order to improve disaster preparedness.

The South African National Disaster Management Framework of 2005 requires that simulations of risks related to different scenarios must be provided for in order to ensure continuous situational awareness and the effective allocation of resources. In order to meet this requirement, the Cape Winelands District Municipality,

South Africa, appointed Aurecon’s disaster risk management team to develop a Comprehensive Simulation Exercise Programme (CSEP) in early 2011.

Previous risk assessments within the Cape Winelands District Municipality as well as existing Disaster Management Plans are being considered in the development of the CSEP, which will include supporting documentation in the form of a step-by-step guidebook for the implementation of the Programme. Once completed, the CSEP will total 49 exercises designed to replicate prevalent risks in the area. It will include table-top, walk-through and simulation variations that can be conducted by our client and other role-players over a period of approximately 18 months, starting in July 2011.

Above An example of a simulation exercise: an aircraft accident simulation exercise performed at the Polokwane International Airport, South Africa.

simulation improving disaster response

Aurecon was part of the exercise as an independent observer, contracted to evaluate initial response, resource activation, allocation and utilisation, communication, security, medical services and clean-up operations.


Disaster Risk Management (DRM) plans help to coordinate activities should disaster strike. These plans aim to reduce the risk of communities, or even entire countries, either through ensuring they are prepared to respond in the case of an event, or by reducing risks through planning measures. The challenges addressed by the plans involve detailing the required responses from all role players, as risk reduction requires inter-sectoral activities.

Rwanda is a country prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding, fire, industrial and transport incidents, as well as human and animal diseases. In 2009, Aurecon was appointed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Rwanda to prepare a National Disaster Management Contingency Plan for the country. The project, which had to be completed in only three months, included field work and consultation in various parts of Rwanda, as well as research and documentation production in South Africa. The final report included:

• complete production of national drM plan

• development of plans at district levels The report describes Rwanda’s approach to disaster response at all levels, including National, Provincial, District and Sector, as well as the functioning and integration of actions via respective disaster management centres.

• development of an integrated plan for responders The plan caters for all response activities to be integrated into a coordinated disaster management structure, embracing the response of hospitals, police, fire, military, civil aviation etc.

• development of complete plans for integration with un agencies, red cross and international responders

• An assessment of the adequacy of the existing emergency plans and resources, as well as ways of enhancing capacity

• elaborate technical and legal regulatory norms and standards to comply with disaster management Relevant principles contained in existing Rwandan legislation were applied in the development of the plan. Other international legislation and international best practice legal principles were also considered.

disaster response planning


right Aurecon’s team work on disaster management mapping for Rwanda’s National DRM plan.

disaster management software in south Africa Whether natural or man-made, disasters require a coordinated effort by government and non-government agencies to provide relief from the impact of these events. Information technology and information systems play an increasingly important role in the field of disaster management.

Aurecon’s proprietary software product, called the Aurecon General Emergency Management Command and Control Centre (GEMC3) Emergency Readiness System, provides an integrated and coordinated response to disaster situations. A GIS-based, multi-agency, computer-aided dispatching system, GEMC3 assists role players in the disaster management field to conduct effective and efficient planning for and response to emergencies. It also assists role players with reporting requirements. The GEMC3 system includes capabilities such as:

• Disaster communication, command and control systems

• Disaster reporting

• Disaster planning

Above national disaster Management centre solution for the department of cooperative governance and traditional Affairs. South Africa’s National Disaster Management Centre at the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs is entrusted with ensuring that relevant role players in the disaster management field have the necessary measures and plans in place to deal with incidents (emergencies, disasters etc.) and planned events (e.g. concerts and sporting events). Aurecon has been tasked with installing a control and command system that will form the first phase of the development of a countrywide Disaster, Risk and Emergency Management Information System (DREMIS).

right Aurecon was tasked with the design, implementation, training, staffing, operation and maintenance of the nelson Mandela bay (nMb) transport operations centre (toc). this is a comprehensive solution which enabled the nMb host city to quickly and effectively resolve public service requests during one of the largest events on the international sporting calendar, the 2010 FiFA World cup™. The solution included a 24 hour, seven-day-a-week call centre, CCTV feeds and manned information kiosks, enabling the municipality to:- Monitor public transport

operations (Collect data)- Disseminate

transportation information (Process data)

- Provide transportation operations information to stakeholders and the public

- Maintain a register of notifications/complaints, intakes/logs, and activations “What was done register”

- Assist with managing the transport environment in proximity to transport facilities; and

- Provide a primary source of information relating to public transport services leading up to and throughout the event.



Aurecon’s General Emergency Management Command and Control Centre (GEMC3) Emergency Readiness System provides an integrated and coordinated response to disaster situations.

MANAGING THE AFterMAth

Complex challenges face a community in rebuilding in the aftermath of a devastating natural disaster. Critical immediate needs must be met together with long term infrastructure and community support.

In this section, we look at some of the ways engineers have supported communities in managing the aftermath of natural disasters.


MAnAging the AFterMAth 29

Two week turnaround mitigated major disruption to coal terminal operations in Queensland.

From 20-21 March 2010, Cyclone Ului crossed the Queensland coast just north of Mackay. Triggered by these winds, the BMA Hay Point Services Coal Terminal suffered damage to its offshore coal export facilities as a result of cyclonic waves hitting the terminal.

BMA established an integrated owner’s team to manage and implement recovery works. Aurecon in joint venture with Hatch, was tasked with the provision of structural/mechanical/electrical engineering for the offshore out-loading system recovery.

The team’s tireless work contributed to a safe accident-free project and restoration of ship loading to Berth 2 by 2 April and Berth 1 on 7 April, two weeks after the cyclone. These times were significantly earlier than our client had forecast and mitigated potentially major disruption to the coal terminal operations and export trade for Queensland and Australia.

cyclone aftermath: mitigating disruption to coal export trade

left Waves stirred up by Cyclone Ului batter former Sydney to Hobart race yacht ‘Anaconda II’ against the seawall at Airlie Beach along the Queensland state coast on 21 March 2010 in Queensland, Australia.

Kourosh At this early stage, what do you feel are the key aspects we have learnt from the February 2011 earthquake in christchurch?

Sean The Christchurch earthquake saw a huge amount of energy centred straight at the CBD. A lot of that energy was vertical acceleration, basically off the charts in terms of impact. Post the event, we know that the only thing that saved much of the infrastructure and buildings was the short duration of that event.

Kourosh how great an impact do you think the disaster will have on planning and building design codes of the future?

Carl A number of modern buildings performed very poorly, so over the next six months, there’s going to be a lot of research into what caused such catastrophic failures – particularly stair collapses. The New Zealand Government is pushing for answers to those questions to be found very quickly. We have older buildings, unreinforced masonry buildings, early concrete buildings, early steel buildings, that as a group of engineers, we’ve been saying have potentially been an issue for a long time.

Jan We have seen foundation design for residential housing prove to be relatively inadequate when liquefaction induced lateral spreading comes into play. Where the foundation

Managing the aftermath: lessons from new ZealandAurecon’s Head of Innovation, Dr Kourosh Kayvani sat down with four New Zealand-based colleagues to discuss the recent earthquakes in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” region and the implications for the built environment.

Joining Kourosh were Carl Devereux, Buildings Group Executive, Dr Jan Kupec, Leader, Ground Engineering in Christchurch, Sean Gledhill, Building Structures Service Leader, Asia Pacific and Stephen Hogg, Senior Structural Engineer.



has been literally ripped apart, this adversely affected the superstructure and where this is compromised, houses are being deemed uninhabitable. Basically, these houses will either require full foundation repairs or a complete rebuild – so code requirements are a big issue.

Sean From a building structures perspective, a key aspect will be new building design. But we don’t yet know where the seismic coefficient is going to rest. Effectively, the underlying earthquake model has been challenged by the authority’s suggestions that seismic coefficients are going to change by a factor of 1.4. That is an increase and will be pro rata up and down the East coast of the South Island. So that’s one view.

The other view is that any new building consents that are currently in play may be pushed back to the consultants with a request to redesign those buildings as though they were in Wellington – a factor of about 1.8. So the bar is going to be raised on the level at which we need to design and detail our new buildings. The challenge is we don’t quite know where that bar is going to be.

Kourosh let’s turn to insights from what we have seen recently in Japan. Jan, you were there as part of the nZ urban search and rescue (usAr) team, what were your observations?

Jan The Japanese knew that this earthquake was coming. They had anticipated the “Tokai Earthquake”

for some decades. Japanese authorities, scientists and engineers knew they were heading for an 8.5 to 9.2 earthquake at some point over the next 10 years, so there was actually full preparedness.

The areas where we were deployed had a community centre equipped with water filtration systems, with a back up generator, heating and everything. I believe that without the tsunami, it wouldn’t have been a major problem for the Japanese to have endured the magnitude 9 earthquake. The issue was the massive tsunami. In the areas where we were deployed, the tsunami was between 10 to 20 metres high and travelled into inland valleys.

The entire infrastructure, in terms of power and water, where we were located, was running again within a week. On the highway systems, there were a couple of structural failures, but generally the bridges and other structures all performed very well.

Carl Yes, they’ve done extremely well and the stories I’ve heard from Jan and many of the other USAR teams that went is that the building damage was minimal for such a large event. The earthquake was offshore and it was a long way from the major towns and centres, but even so, the Japanese were very well prepared.

I would say that’s definitely the way Christchurch is going to develop in terms of its new building design and its infrastructure. But that’s going to take anything up to 10 years to get to that level of preparedness. It will be interesting to see how the other centres develop. Wellington has been in a state of getting ready for a long time, so it’s probably a long way ahead of other New Zealand centres. I think you’ll start to notice our smaller centres around New Zealand going down the same route. I’ll be interested to see what happens in other centres around the world too.

leftMany modern buildings in Christchurch suffered catastrophic structural failures as a result of the February earthquake.

rightIn the aftermath of a major earthquake, local codes and design parameters are typically reviewed and strengthened.

require only minor, cosmetic repairs. There is also a grey area with some buildings where we are saying, “Should we demolish or should we try and save the building, can it be repaired, what are the options?” All these questions are being asked of engineers.

Jan We are seeing a lot of short pile buildings experiencing failure of foundations. These buildings now have a permanent lean of anywhere between 200mm to 400mm. The buildings might be structurally intact and have limited structural damage but, because of the foundation rotation, are compromised and there needs to be a lot of effort in the soil structure interaction.

Sean To me the key question is are there any structural techniques or designs that will need to be incorporated to take account of larger magnitude earthquakes? Because regardless of the liquefaction, providing we have foundations then it becomes a question of the structure, not a question of the foundation?

Jan Exactly, because what you have right now is a lot of sick buildings which actually have failed due to the foundation issues and not necessarily the structural systems.

Kourosh Are there any structural techniques or designs that will need to be incorporated to take account of larger magnitude earthquakes?

Jan Kourosh, as a structural engineer, what do you generally design to minimise damage or catastrophic failure?

Kourosh Structural engineers design for what we call design basis events. So whether it’s wind, earthquake, dead or live load, we have a definition of a target. So for an office floor, we say we design for a 4 kPa live load. For wind loading on a building we say our design basis event is a 50 metre per second gust for example, or for an earthquake, we say we design for a 500 year return event earthquake often characterised by a target peak ground acceleration.

Our codes and standards bodies, and structural engineers, are aware of this and that’s why we have the whole notion of ductility, redundancy or reserve strength as an extra layer that can actually allow us to go beyond what is the design basis and withstand potentially higher earthquakes.

Christchurch showed us that events could be so much larger than your targeted design basis level, and this can happen anywhere in the world, so we may not be able to rely on the reserve capacities to the same extent any more.

It’s a legitimate question to ask that if you have designed for a 500 year return period event, what will happen if you get a 2000 year return period earthquake?

Carl Because major earthquakes don’t happen all that regularly, people don’t really understand our design approach. The issue of older buildings and their safety and potential earthquake risk, is something that will need to be addressed.

The problem we’ve got with Christchurch now is we’re looking through all our demolition plans. There’s a whole list of buildings that are going to be demolished. Then there’s the buildings that are sound, having suffered very little damage and

leftIn earthquake prone areas, it is critical that new infrastructure is designed and constructed to withstand the impact of major seismic events.



Sean I think it’s fair to say we can design structures now that can limit the effect of the earthquake that the system has to deal with. So the structure will respond in such a way that the damage will be low and focused and in certain areas, regardless of the size of the maximum credible event that might be going on around it.

Stephen When you go and look at how you are going to recover from earthquakes, in a country like Haiti, the reconstruction will happen using local labour and the same bricks and mortar that fell down. People will collect them up and they’ll rebuild their houses exactly the same way as they were before the earthquake.

In a developed country, we typically find the opposite. We have good skills in terms of designing modern buildings, so the challenge for us is do we design buildings that are robust and have a great deal of redundancy in them for larger earthquakes or do we design them to just cope with a code earthquake?

Carl To add another factor, you’ve got the insurance market here. You know they are talking about Christchurch being the most expensive earthquake of all time, and that’s just because the city is so well insured. So the money is there, as well as the will, to rebuild the city.

Kourosh As engineers, are we finding that insurance will play a bigger role in terms of the demands on our design from building owners? Will the

insurance companies start to be a major influence?

Sean Yes, the insurance companies are very interested in our thoughts on how low damage solutions can help protect society. We’re not talking about a damage-free design, we’re talking about low damage which is focused on certain areas and repairable items, or systems that cope with damage by being able to displace and cope with the demands that the earthquake puts

on them by hinging of some form or through base isolation.

What it will mean for them long term, if this event happens again, is that insurance companies are not faced with such a large recovery bill. So hopefully, this will filter through to the insured, that if you do develop this kind of building you know the risks are less to the insurer, so your premium should be lower. Now that’s starting to get some traction.

rightOlder buildings often suffer greater damage due to designs being less resistant to seismic impacts.

belowConcrete structures were unable to withstand the seismic forces generated by the proximity of the quake source to the surface.

and southeast of the city, the Prestons Road project to the north-east of Christchurch may be able to accommodate a large portion of displaced residents from this part of Christchurch.

Aurecon undertook extensive geotechnical and civil engineering investigations over the past four years. Those investigations indicated that the local geology makes the land much less susceptible to seismically induced liquefaction and lateral spreading. Therefore, the ground offers a much higher resilience and better seismic performance than geotechnically unimproved land that is present under much of Christchurch.

Building on land with good geotechnical properties and low susceptibility to seismically induced liquefaction and lateral spreading, enables rehabilitation progress to be made at a much faster rate, as land improvement or land remediation is not required. This allows faster relocation and return to normal life.

The Canterbury region of New Zealand was hit by two very large earthquakes in the last eight months, which were followed by several thousand aftershocks. If all seismic shaking is summed up, there was more than four hours of sustained shaking in Christchurch. In addition to seismic shaking, seismically induced liquefaction of alluvial soils and subsequent lateral spreading near river edges severely damaged the residential housing stock. Several thousand houses are destroyed and uninhabitable, while many thousands more will require extensive repairs.

The September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes created the need for additional and affordable housing in the Canterbury area. Aurecon is currently working with several large land developers to create permanent residential housing for displaced residents, especially those from the worst hit eastern suburbs.

Among other potential land development projects to the west

AboveIt is critical to protect residential housing from the impact of earthquakes.

geotechnical expertise secures residential housing by Dr Jan Kupec



Disaster Impact Assessments are conducted to determine the magnitude and severity of disaster events. This data is then translated into a cost for the damages, making these studies a crucial precursor to the rehabilitation phase of disaster where reconstruction and rebuilding of lives and infrastructure begins.

In South Africa, the National Treasury requires accurate disaster damages information and estimated rehabilitation and reconstruction costs from the National Disaster Management Centre before they will release funding for rehabilitation.

During June 2008 and November 2009, heavy rains caused disastrous flooding in the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Damage to both rural and urban infrastructure and service disruption arising from these floods caused serious concern.

Aurecon was appointed to conduct a Rapid Impact Assessment in the area. The methodology we used included an initial damage cost estimate, the identification of critical assets and the compilation of a risk management plan. This was followed by a detailed impact assessment which included comprehensive cost estimate and possible insurance implications, as well as repair programme coordination encompassing repair prioritisations, asset owner coordination and programme management. Finally, we developed a repair programme which integrated implementation design, construction and contract management, including a GIS database of damage. All of these efforts combined to make a significant contribution to the rebuilding of the province.

Above and belowFlood damage in KwaZula-Natal.

In KwaZulu-Natal province, disruption arising from floods caused serious concerns.

Quantifying the damage

Aerial photograph of the Rocklea suburb of Brisbane, Australia on 13 January 2011.

The devastating floods that hit Brisbane in January 2011 presented a new set of challenges in the way government and communities respond and rebuild. Mark Girard, CEO of Local Government Infrastructure Services (LGIS), which is part of the Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC), and Chris Lawson, Aurecon’s Region Leader South Queensland discussed methods of responding and what the future holds.



Mark Local Government Infrastructure Services (LGIS) became involved in disaster recovery work because of our long standing relationship with key shareholders such as Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC) and the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ).

We also had a strong history of working with state and local government in natural disasters and we were asked to help put together a recovery strategy. We didn’t have weeks or months to plan — we had hours — literally hours — to prepare a response.

chris how did you scope up the skills that you might need? Would you do it the same way if you had to go it again?

Mark Yes, we would do it exactly the same way. We looked at the market to identify and determine the best players with the requisite skills and expertise and we looked for people who we valued and trusted. It was a comprehensive review process which led us to Aurecon and we could not have asked for a better experience.

chris i think that the key issues are relationships and trust.

Mark Yes, we need to have strong people who know the issues and geography as well as strong relationships with key people. This counts for a great deal in situations like this.

chris Were there any broad lessons learned that you can share with us?

Mark The first stage is the planning. Remember, many of us were pre-planning for something that we didn’t know about. What we planned for happened but the scope of the disaster was overwhelming.

chris how about disaster management plans? i think Queensland differs in that local government does have counter-disaster plans and they do engage all key staff in these. there is a vertical and horizontal planning in terms of communities – emergency centres, community groups, infrastructure (telephones, radios, it, etc) which is all planned and practiced at least once a year.

Mark It is also about doing things strategically.

chris yes. Aurecon used a gis system which allowed us to geo-code data and tag photos with key descriptors so that we could make a better use of the available time and resources.

Mark In those councils where you did this alongside a local government council officer, I am sure that some of the councils learnt from this experience

and I think they will be better prepared next time.

chris i think it is about enhanced business systems such as data collection in the field, the use of gis and enhanced databases with drop down menus so that decision making is done in the field.

Mark The key learning is that local government will now focus on flood preparation and they still need to prepare for multiple disasters – floods, fires, drought, Telco being wiped out, etc. There is a need for comprehensive planning and councils just don’t have the time or resources to focus on this. There is also a need to become comfortable and competent in different scenarios to ensure that your key systems are robust.

Telecommunications are key as we needed to send a physical presence to many areas to find out what was going on as we couldn’t reach

The Brisbane floods covered vast areas of the city and caused huge damage to the community.

local governments and disaster: the Queensland experience

put this towards betterment programmes. Perhaps it is about leveraging scale and joining together to approach the market as one conglomeration, which will allow us to access quality work.

chris how do you address the community response then?

Mark I think we need to be honest about what is possible and can be achieved with our resources. We also need to decide what will be best value for money for our community because, if we want to, we can do this work quickly but it may not be the best outcome for these communities. It is all about honest conversations as to how we prioritise the reconstruction effort in communities to work out what is absolutely critical and must be done straight way, and what can be deferred, which may result in a better solution.

We only have one chance and we have to get it right.

anyone by phone, fax or email and we didn’t know what the status was in regard to water, electricity and housing. We had to physically go there to determine what resources were needed.

chris When 100 000 people have to leave their homes and need category rated cyclone proof buildings, there is no way government can plan for this. it is all about the journey and we are much better placed than we were before.

Mark It is also about practical thinking on the ground — almost like the medical version of triage — and using bush engineering to obtain access to key areas and roads. Our main priority was all about getting access back to isolated communities so we could switch off the emergency drops to these places and clear paths so that they could manage by themselves. In preparation for next time, we need to think about the infrastructure that is available and whether other facilities can be used during the next cyclone season. There is every chance this will happen again each year.

One other issue is fatigue and this is really important because in a disaster situations, many people have been working for months and are utterly exhausted. You can keep up the pace for a while but not forever and we need to be ready to give these workers a hand.

Rather than paying a premium to contractors, we should be encouraging communities and stakeholders to reflect and take the savings and put these savings towards betterment, which will give the market more certainty. The last thing we want in a construction market in Queensland, is another boom that will be all over in three years. We have just been through this and we need to give the market five years worth of certainty.

chris communities want work done now though.

Mark I know but I think that this period of reflection is key. The oil and gas (and coal) are expanding massively and there is a massive capital works spend and councils are competing with this market. The damage bill is still a fraction of the resources market so we need to think about how we can extend this to take the savings and

Above The challenge for cities such as Brisbane is to prepare for flooding yet allow for future growth.



Cape Town is the commercial and industrial hub of South Africa’s Western Cape, and a highly rated tourism and business destination. However, as with any urban area, it faces various disaster risks which if neglected, have the potential to cause damage to property, the environment and livelihoods.

Aurecon, in consultation with DMS Consulting, was recently appointed to conduct a Comprehensive Disaster Risk Assessment for the City of Cape Town’s metropolitan area. The Municipality wanted its planning to reflect accurate knowledge of all forms of disaster risk and, to achieve this, two parallel methodologies were used to conduct the initial assessments.

This approach, a first of its kind for South Africa, involved City-wide scientific-assessment of conventional, ‘textbook’ risks, as well as community-based assessments which focused on determining ‘perceived’ risks.

When compared and contrasted, these parallel streams of findings confirmed that disaster risk assessment is a continuous process of building our understanding of risk reduction. The outcomes of Aurecon’s assessment will ensure that the Municipality’s developmental initiatives and contingency planning is based on accurate information enabling all stakeholders to contribute, minimising disaster risk within the City. Above and below

Cape Town faces various disaster risks, including the risk of fires.

…disaster risk assessment is a continuous process of building our understanding of risk reduction.

disaster risk Assessment for cape town

Registered office, singapore 152 Beach Road, #22-02 Gateway East Singapore 189721 Phone: +65 6256 [email protected]

Registered office, Asia Pacific Australia — MelbourneLevel 12, 60 Albert RoadSouth MelbourneVictoria, Australia 3205Phone: +61 3 8683 [email protected]

Registered office, Africa Middle east South Africa — TshwaneAurecon CentreLynnwood Bridge4 Daventry Street Lynnwood GlenSouth Africa 0081Phone: +27 12 427 [email protected]

Aurecon provides engineering, management and specialist technical services for public and private sector clients globally. We have provided world-class technical expertise and innovative solutions on projects in over 70 countries across Africa, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Formed through the merger of three leading engineering consultancies, Africon, Connell Wagner and Ninham Shand, Aurecon has over 6 000 professionals offering in-depth local market knowledge combined with international expertise. We seek to foster human achievement in all aspects of our work.

Aurecon offices are located in:

Angola, Australia, Botswana, China, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam.

For more information please visit www.aurecongroup.com or join us on www.facebook.com/Aurecon

©2011 Aurecon

The Aurecon Group is made up of a number of separate legal entities operating across diverse jurisdictions. Not all those entities provide services to clients.

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