Disaster

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NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that a new agency, called Resilience NSW, has been founded with a charter to focus on on preparedness and disaster recovery for NSW. 
Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons will head the new agency after retiring as Commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service. 
“It is the right time to establish a new agency as we all work together to tackle the issues arising from COVID-19, while still supporting the hundreds of communities that have felt the impact of bushfires, hailstorms, floods and storms during the 2019-2020 season of natural disasters," said ICA Head of Risk and Operations Karl Sullivan.
“Commissioner Fitzsimmons, an expert in natural disaster preparation, prevention and management, is the ideal person to head Resilience NSW."
Resilience NSW will oversee and coordinate emergency management policy, service delivery and all aspects of disaster recovery at a state, national and international level.
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New agency Resilience NSW created for disaster recovery

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All hands on deck called for as the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) opened an online register yesterday to help local tradespeople and builders play a significant role in rebuilding their regional communities. 
Qualified and reputable builders and tradespeople who have the capacity to work on property repairs and rebuilds are encouraged to register their details at <a href="http://www.disasters.org.au" target="_blank">www.disasters.org.au</a>. 
The register will collect key information including the town or region in which the builder or tradesperson operates, available skills and qualifications, and their key contact details. 
The above information collected will then be publicly available for use by insurance companies to source additional tradespeople for property rebuilding and repairs. This information might also be used by residents, businesses and government agencies that are seeking reputable tradespeople for privately funded construction. 
"Insurers are committed to using local trades and builders where feasible." ICA Head of Risk and Operations, Karl Sullivan says, "This register helps qualified and reputable building industry professionals nominate for work in their local area.
"Employing and contracting local professionals and suppliers during the rebuilding phase of bushfire recovery is an essential component in ensuring the economic viability of communities, including the preservation of jobs and supporting local businesses and service providers. Building professionals will still need to provide competitive quotes when contracting for work.
"Experience from recent natural disaster shows insurers predominantly use local trades for most rebuilding and repair works. For example, insurers employed more than 2000 local trades and builders and supported dozens of suppliers and service providers following last year's catastrophic floods in Townsville."
Main Photo © <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.geograph.ie/profile/2282" target="_blank" title="View profile">Kenneth Allen</a> (<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/" target="_blank">cc-by-sa/2.0</a>) 
 
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Local trades register to aid bushfire recovery launches, the Insurance Council of Australia

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The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) forecasts a sharp increase in catastrophe-related claims this week as household property assessments are undertaken and large commercial claims are lodged. 
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2020/1/15/2_NEWS_Total%20claims%20lodged.jpeg" alt="" width="245" height="223">
Source: <a href="https://disasters.org.au/current-catastrophes/2019/11/13/november-bushfires" target="_blank">Total claims lodged, ICA</a><a href="https://disasters.org.au/current-catastrophes/2019/11/13/november-bushfires" target="_blank">.</a>
Insurers have received 13,750 bushfire catastrophe-related claims since November 8, 2019 with an estimated loss of $1.34 billion. 
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2020/1/15/2_NEWS_Est%20insured%20value.jpeg" alt="" width="241" height="213">
Source: <a href="https://disasters.org.au/current-catastrophes/2019/11/13/november-bushfires" target="_blank">Estimated Insured Value, ICA.</a>
New South Wales has by far recorded the most claims since November making up 87 per cent of all catastrophe-related claims. Meanwhile, South Australia records 6 per cent, Victoria records 4 per cent and Queensland records 3 per cent. 
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2020/1/15/2_NEWS_Claims%20lodged%20by%20state.png" alt="" width="238" height="229">
Source: <a href="https://disasters.org.au/current-catastrophes/2019/11/13/november-bushfires" target="_blank">Claims Lodged by State, ICA.</a>
The ICA calls for all hands on deck as it launches a local trades register to aid bushfire recovery. ICA Head of Risk and Operations, Karl Sullivan encourages traders and builders to register and urged residents to heed last week's warning from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to be aware of unscrupulous tradespeople and repairers, or firms offering to assist them with insurance claims.
The Consumer Action Law Centre has also called for a crackdown on exploitative claims management services. 
The ICA is hosting insurance hubs to assist customers in southern New South Wales. Disaster recovery specialists from the Insurance Council and insurance companies will assist policyholders with insurance questions and help with the insurance claim process. 
<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/c_scale,w_580,q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/po.images/2020/1/15/2_NEWS_events.jpg" alt="" width="485" height="192">
Venues are subject to change depending on capacity and availability.Hubs will also be established in bushfire zones in South Australia and Victoria in the next week.
 
Main Photo: <a href="https://disasters.org.au/news/2020/1/3/the-insurance-process-key-steps" target="_blank">ICA </a>
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Insurance customer hubs open amid skyrocketing catastrophe-related claims, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA)

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GEUST OBSERVER
The hot weather over the October long weekend brings a reminder that Australia’s “disaster season” is fast approaching.
The summer brings bushfires, cyclones and floods to the forefront of our minds – never more so than in an El Niño year with temperatures predicted to soar.
The increase in the frequency and the impacts of natural disasters over recent years has been well documented and is at least partly attributable to changes in our climate.
Climate change is not going away, so it is highly likely that this rising tide of natural disasters will continue.
<h2>Communicating risk</h2>
This increasing prevalence presents a challenge for risk communication. How should the public be informed about the potential risk of disasters?
A common response is to assume that more information is better, and that providing summaries of risk levels will lead people to reduce their exposure to relevant risks.
Data from field studies on non-climate-related disasters, however, point to the opposite effect.
Media-released information summaries concerning catastrophic events can have the paradoxical effect of decreasing people’s overall estimates of risk.
For example, following the Loma Prieta earthquake in northern California, an analysis of house sales suggested that new buyers reduced their assessment of risk as information concerning the location and rate of earthquakes was publicised.
A similar pattern was found following the Tohoku tsunami of 2011, with unaffected residents exhibiting lowered risk perception about the heights of waves warranting evacuation.
<h2>Testing risky choices in the lab</h2>
In a paper published in Nature Climate Change today, my colleagues and I attempt to shed light on this paradoxical effect of summaries of risk.
We created a microworld with three villages, each associated with different levels of disaster risk.
On each trial of the 400-trial experiment, people (mostly university students) had to choose where to live. They earned points on each trial, but lost lots of points when a disaster struck.
One village was safe – a disaster never occurred – but people didn’t get many points for choosing to live there. A second village offered more points if no disaster occurred but rare catastrophes occurred (10 in 100 rounds), which affected a small proportion of the dwellings in the village.
A third village had even rarer catastrophes (one in 100) but the damage was more widespread, thus making the overall risk of a disaster equal to the second village.
These risks were all known to participants before they made their choices. What differed was how participants learned about a disaster occurring.
One group only found out if their own dwelling was hit, a second group found out if any of the dwellings in their village was hit, and a third group found out if any dwellings in either risky village were affected.
These three groups were designed to mimic information people could get in real life from personal experience, local sources, or from afar via media or authorities.
The key result was that the third group - people given the most information about recently experienced or avoided disasters – took more risks and were more likely to choose regions prone to disasters.
Getting full information about all the villages, as is possible in real life through media and authorities, appeared to reinforce for people that “most of the time nothing bad happens in the risky areas”.
The increased tolerance for risk is akin to a person who is willing to trade daily access to the ocean with the rare risk of flooding from an abnormally high tide.
<h2>Implications for risk communication</h2>
Our results suggest that supplementing personal experience with information about the rare occurrence of disasters (storms, floods) in different regions may paradoxically reduce people’s perception of risk and increase the appeal of disaster-prone regions.
This result implies that disaster risk communication needs to emphasise the increasing prevalence of disasters.
Statements often seen in the media such as a “one-in-50 or one-in-100-year” event could lead people to assume, incorrectly, that there won’t be another event for 49 or 99 years. This perception is compounded by their typical daily experience of nothing bad happening.
Risk messages need instead to focus on the accumulation of events and the increase in their associated risks across time. For example, people should be reminded how many major floods or severe fire days occurred between specific points in time – such as “four events between 1900 and 1949”, or “ten events between 1950 and 2000”.
Of course, this conclusion is based on the specific conditions in our modelled microworld, so we need to be cautious in generalising too far. Nonetheless, the research points towards ways to understand the sometimes paradoxical reaction to disaster risk.
Ben Newell is professor of cognitive psychology, UNSW Australia and an author for The Conversation. He can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ben-newell-46" target="_blank">here</a>.
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