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https://theconversation.com/nz-has-no-dedicated-database-to-track-losses-from-weather-disasters-without-it-were-planning-in-the-dark-251224>
"Following the Trump administration’s abrupt cuts to USAID funding last month,
the online international disaster database EM-DAT (normally funded by USAID)
went dark for a week.
EM-DAT collates data on the occurrence and impacts of thousands of mass
disasters worldwide and records both human and economic losses in a publicly
available dataset. It relies on various sources, including United Nations
agencies and non-governmental organisations, but also news reports.
The vulnerability of this database to the Trump administration’s cuts
highlights the need for New Zealand to take charge of its own data on the
damage caused by extreme events.
Currently, New Zealand has no dedicated disaster loss database. This means we
don’t know how much extreme weather events and other types of disasters are
costing us.
But as such events are becoming more frequent and more intense with worsening
climate change, this lack of data is increasingly detrimental to our long-term
prosperity.
Two events in 2023 – Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods – illustrate
this problem. They were by far the costliest weather disasters in New Zealand’s
modern history and we know they were exceptionally damaging.
But we don’t know the aggregate financial losses they caused, and the different
sources shown in the table below provide conflicting numbers, none of them
comprehensive.
Without understanding the magnitude of the problem, our ability to prevent
damage or recover from extreme weather is diminished. It is indeed difficult to
manage what we don’t measure.
In the face of these unknowns, most other countries, including Australia, are
investing in the collection, collation and analysis of their own data to make
informed decisions about disaster risk management. It is high time New Zealand
did the same."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
