Sign In / Register
Auckland Council’s civil defence and emergency management committee was given an update on council’s tsunami works programme at its meeting on September 10.
The current stage of the programme focuses on ensuring the region has an effective tsunami warning and alerting network, raising tsunami risk understanding and resilience, and delivering the associated capital and operational works and programming. The programme has looked at issues such new tsunami siren technology, revised tsunami inundation modelling and revised evacuation zones.
Council’s principal science advisor, Angela Doherty, said a vulnerability assessment of coastal communities found that the north-eastern coastline and Aotea Great Barrier were some of the most vulnerable areas.
“In the past, council has looked at exposure and population, but this recent assessment went further,” Doherty said.
“We know that there’s more to a community than just the number of people who live there so we tried to be deliberate and understand both the direct exposure on people and the indirect exposure including things like infrastructure.”
Houkura member Glenn Wilcox questioned how the measure of risk was calculated.
“There are two tsunami events that happened on the West Coast – how was this factored into the West Coast likelihood of tsunami?” Wilcox asked.
Doherty said the modelling was based on the current understanding of what could be generated by a large earthquake in the Pacific. Engagement with local boards and communities is planned and feedback will be combined with information on tsunami exposure and vulnerability.
Staff will report findings to the committee for decision-making on future investment into tsunami warning, alerting and resilience building programmes around the middle of next year.
