Recent experiences in Australia and New Zealand

Scope Of Events2009 Victorian Bushfires – 9th worst in the world –

183 deaths2010 – 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 floods2011 – Tasmanian Floods2011 – New South Wales Floods2011 – Christchurch earthquake – over 130 deaths -

extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure

Use of Place NamesUsed in the following context

Disaster management Location identification Forecasting impacts Resource deployment Initial relief grants Recovery

Community support

Use of Place NamesPositive 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 suitableCommunity 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 bushfiresRural Addresses

Distance based addressing system provided accurate coordinates of properties as well as an address for other purposes

Marysville, Victoria

Marysville.vic.au – set up immediately after the 2009 bushfires to provide a community focus to assist in the recovery efforts

Use of Place NamesImprovements 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