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Place names and Disaster Management. Recent experiences in Australia and New Zealand. Scope Of Events. 2009 Victorian Bushfires – 9 th worst in the world – 183 deaths
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Place names and Disaster Management Recent experiences in Australia and New Zealand
Scope Of Events • 2009 Victorian Bushfires – 9th worst in the world – 183 deaths • 2010 – 2011 – Queensland Floods & Cyclone – over 45 deaths, 200 000 people affected – 75% of State affected – extensive damage to infrastructure, homes and businesses • 2011 – Victorian Floods – 2 deaths – 3000 people evacuated – 33% of State flooded – extensive damage to homes and farms • 2011 – Western Australian bushfires and floods • 2011 – Tasmanian Floods • 2011 – New South Wales Floods • 2011 – Christchurch earthquake – over 130 deaths - extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure
Use of Place Names Used in the following context • Disaster management • Location identification • Forecasting impacts • Resource deployment • Initial relief grants • Recovery • Community support
Use of Place Names • Positive Outcomes • Data availability and contents • The New Zealand gazetteer and each jurisdictional data in Australia is available to and widely used by emergency services. • For major toponyms, this data was more than suitable • Community Geographic Domain Names • Established for many communities immediately after the disaster, or were in existence. • 19 sites used in the Queensland floods • 4 established specifically for the Victorian floods, other previously established after 2009 Victorian bushfires • Rural Addresses • Distance based addressing system provided accurate coordinates of properties as well as an address for other purposes
Marysville.vic.au – set up immediately after the 2009 bushfires to provide a community focus to assist in the recovery efforts
Use of Place Names • Improvements needed • Database Integrity and Integration • Official Gazetteers vs. mapping datasets • Western Australia – fully integrated into spatial data systems compared with other States where this has not occurred to the same level • Micro toponyms not well represented • Not enough of the locally used names were in the databases. • A recent study for a linguistic thesis in very small portion of South Australia found of the 230 place names studies, only 12 were listed in the State Gazetteer • Address creation / education • Christchurch does not have defined suburb boundaries – address confusion • Lack of use of the official addresses by residents in Victorian and Queensland delayed the grants program – need to establish education processes