- Title
- Defining a research agenda for slow-onset disaster research in the Hunter Region, NSW
- Creator
- Von Meding, J.; Le Goff, R.; Brewer, G.; MacKee, J.; Gajendran, T.; Crick, S.
- Relation
- AUBEA 2013: The 38th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference. Proceedings of the 38th AUBEA Conference (Auckland, New Zealand 20-22 November, 2013)
- Relation
- http://www.aubea2013.org.nz/
- Publisher
- University of Auckland
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- The city of Newcastle and the Hunter region within which it resides has been no stranger to disaster events over the last century, with the Maitland floods of 1955 and the Newcastle earthquake of 1989 being of particular note. The intervening periods have been punctuated by less severe, but no less disruptive extreme weather events – particularly floods and bushfires – that have focused the attention of governments and the public alike. Considerably less attention has been paid to the long-term impacts of both climate change and human activities such as mining, intensive irrigation and associated agriculture, and coal seam gas extraction. Indeed these impacts are often very slow to appear, stretching over a period of decades or even spanning generations, with the result that they are often not associated with the term disaster at all, but rather seen as aggravating factors or additional challenges to be overcome through environmental policy or industry regulation. This paper contends that issues of speed to onset mask a fundamental principle, namely that the appearance of hazards to humans and the capacity of those humans to deal with their consequences define disasters and their impact upon society: socio-economic preparedness to overcome hazards define the resilience of society, irrespective of the speed to disaster onset. This paper concludes that the biggest single risk to society in the Hunter region would be the failure to recognise slow-onset hazard and therefore to neglect socio-economic preparedness, outlining a research agenda aimed at overcoming this risk.
- Subject
- climate change; environment; mining; slow-onset disaster; vulnerability; Hunter; New South Wales
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1048992
- Identifier
- uon:14979
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780908689873
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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