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    Older adult's experiences during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand: Diversity and change in long term disaster situations
    (Elsevier B.V., 2024-01-01) Stephens C; Uekusa S; Breheny M
    The COVID-19 global pandemic has highlighted the morbidity and mortality risks of older adults as well as their heterogeneity and resilience. The immediate need to address psychosocial and health issues among this age group is driven by global concerns about the growing number of disaster occurrences, the growing ageing population, and widening inequalities. Using an inductive analysis of written comments about their experiences by 1,400 older people in the second year of the pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand, we found that responses to the pandemic and government actions had fractured as different groups of older adults felt neglected or wronged by the centralised response. Negative themes of anxiety and fear describe aspects of vulnerability in older adult's lives and point to issues for repair and protection in pandemic situations. Positive themes describe the resources that people drew on to maintain their wellbeing in a lengthy disaster. Drawing on theorising around conservation of resources and disaster communitas, our analysis shows that across a long-term disaster situation, resilience may be best sustained by drawing on local support systems and enabling community volunteers. Institutional responses and planning must include and empower grass roots groups who are better placed to recognise and respond to the resource needs of their own communities.
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    Nurturing partnerships to support data access for impact forecasts and warnings: Theoretical integration and synthesis
    (Elsevier B.V., 2024-04-15) Harrison SE; Potter SH; Prasanna R; Doyle EEH; Johnston D
    This paper presents a synthesis and theoretical integration of findings from a research project that explored the data needs and sources for implementing impact forecasts and warnings for hydrometeorological hazards. Impact forecasts and warnings (IFW) have received global attention in recent years as they offer a novel way of improving the communication of hazards and risks. The fundamental idea behind IFWs is to enable warning services to meaningfully communicate the anticipated outcomes, consequences, or impacts of the hazard interacting with society or the environment by incorporating knowledge about the underlying and dynamic exposure and vulnerability of people and assets. One key question for IFW implementation is about data needs and sources to inform IFWs.Using the Grounded Theory Methodology, we address the question “How can partnerships and collaboration better facilitate the collection, creation, and access to hazard, impact, vulnerability, and exposure data for IFWs?” Our findings point to partnerships and collaboration as a necessary strategy for implementing IFWs. Implementation requires accessing various types and sources of hazard, impact, vulnerability, and exposure data to assess and communicate the potential impacts of hydrometeorological hazards. Partnerships and collaboration facilitate the sharing of and access to required data and knowledge. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations to increase interagency communication and partnerships for IFWs and disaster risk reduction, such as making cohabitation arrangements between agencies, running joint training scenarios, and encouraging meteorological services and emergency responders to co-define tailored warning thresholds.
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    ‘Where oh where is the data?‘: Identifying data sources for hydrometeorological impact forecasts and warnings in Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Elsevier B.V, 2021-12) Harrison SE; Potter SH; Prasanna R; Doyle EEH; Johnston D
    Early Warning Systems are a key component to building preparedness and response capacities to hydrometeorological hazards that continue to affect people worldwide. Notable historic events have revealed gaps in current hazard-based warning systems. Impact Forecasts and Warnings (IFWs) have been proposed to fill these communication gaps by re-centring the warning thresholds and language around the consequences, or impacts, of the hazard(s), rather than just the physical characteristics. However, research has shown that implementing IFWs requires not just hazard data, but also data on impacts, vulnerability, and exposure to understand the risk of impacts. Using Grounded Theory Methodology, we conducted a series of interviews with users and creators of hazard, impact, vulnerability, and exposure (HIVE) data to identify data sources and understand how these data are collected and created to support the implementation of IFWs. We focus the study on the New Zealand context to support the country's efforts towards implementing IFWs. Our findings indicate that many sources for HIVE data exist that are collected for other uses (such as for disaster/emergency response efforts, and for research) and have relevant applications for IFWs. Our findings further suggest that priorities, motivation, and interest within organisations influence how well data is collected. Moreover, agencies tend to prefer official data, but official data has limitations that unofficial data may address, such as timeliness. To that end, a tension exists between the timeliness and trustworthiness of data needed for emergency response and warnings.
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    Agriculture and forestry impact assessment for tephra fall hazard: fragility function development and New Zealand scenario application
    (Volcanica, 2021-12-31) Craig HM; Wilson TM; Magill C; Stewart C; Wild AJ
    Developing approaches to assess the impact of tephra fall on agricultural and forestry systems is essential for informing effective disaster risk management strategies. Fragility functions are commonly used as the vulnerability model within a loss assessment framework and represent the relationship between a given hazard intensity measure (HIM; e.g. tephra thickness) and the probability of impacts occurring. Impacts are represented using an impact state (IS), which categorises qualitative and quantitative statements into a numeric scale. This study presents IS schemes for pastoral, horticultural, and forestry systems, and a suite of fragility functions estimating the probability of each IS occurring for 13 sub-sectors. Temporal vulnerability is accounted for by a ‘temporality/seasonality coefficient,’ and a ‘fluoride toxicity coefficient’ is included to incorporate the increased vulnerability of pastoral farms when tephra is high in leachable fluoride. The fragility functions are then used to demonstrate a deterministic impact assessment with current New Zealand exposure.
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    The role of land-use planning in reducing the vulnerability of the Bay of Plenty region to natural hazards : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2013) Morris, Stephen Kaye
    This thesis analyses policies and plans used by local authorities in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty region to determine how well they address vulnerability to natural hazards. Interviews were conducted with planners, decision-makers and community leaders to find improvements necessary to reduce vulnerability. The Bay of Plenty was chosen as a case study due to the wide range and close proximity of natural hazards the region is exposed to. Following a literature review, policies, plans and interview data was coded, arranged into themes and findings written up. This research found that New Zealand has robust legislation that provide planners, decision-makers and individuals with the foundation and tools to avoid or mitigate hazard risk. However, the lack of use of the term vulnerability needs to be addressed. The ‘existing use’ rights conundrum presented by the Resource Management Act (1991) presents a challenge to meaningful locational decisions to reduce exposure. The absence of specifically addressing vulnerability in legislation filters down to Bay of Plenty policies and plans; it is difficult to plan for vulnerability reduction if there is no focus on it. The interviews found that access to financial resources and strong social ties are key determinants of vulnerability. However there were also a number of seemingly contradictory sources of vulnerability such as a greater vulnerability of wealthy and urban communities relative to poor or rural communities. This underlines how difficult it is to plan for complex social problems. The obvious implication of this research is that vulnerability is a complex and diverse problem that is not mitigated by placing people into broad categories divorced from the sum of their circumstances. Key words Land-use planning, vulnerability, resilience, risk, advocacy planning, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand