“New Zealand has all this amazing knowledge about our natural hazards, but we need to get much better at integrating this into planning for future urban growth,” says Professor Iain White, whose project is funded through the EQC Toka Tū Ake University Research Programme, which invested $4.5 million into natural hazard research over the next three years across five New Zealand universities.

According to White, the new model will enable planners and modellers to look decades ahead to see how policy changes could impact urban growth patterns, benefitting planners and policymakers in improving current decisions about zoning, natural hazards or climate change. EQC supports the project as part of its goal to reduce the impact of natural events on homeowners.

Dr Wendy Saunders, the Principal Advisor for Risk Reduction and Resilience believes that White’s project could be a game-changer for developers to stop building in areas that are likely to be affected by natural hazards. “The severe weather events in the past year have shown us how much trauma and financial stress could have been avoided with better planning and making the avoidance of natural hazards, or reducing their impacts, a bigger priority,” Saunders says.

White will be supported by a wider team at the University of Waikato, including Dr Xinyu Fu, Dr Sandi Ringham, Dr Silvia Serrao-Neumann and Dr Rob Bell. There are also two Masters’ students, Joel Bishop and Marcus Fletcher, and a PhD student who will collect the data and construct the modelling of how each stakeholder, or agent, will behave in the future.

About the Earthquake Commission (EQC)
EQC is a Crown entity that operates under the Earthquake Commission Act 1993. It invests in natural hazard research and education to help communities reduce their risks, and it provides natural hazard insurance cover for damage to residential properties caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hydrothermal activity, tsunamis, as well as damage to land from storms and floods. www.eqc.govt.nz