Analysis of Emerging Technologies for Natural Disasters in Australia

This report examines the impact of natural disasters, particularly in Australia, and explores the role of emerging technologies in mitigation and risk management. The introduction highlights the significance of technological advancements in addressing natural hazards, emphasizing the increasing frequency and severity of events like bushfires, cyclones, and floods. The research employs an inductive approach, analyzing existing literature and data to understand the challenges and potential solutions. The report details the methodology, including data collection from secondary sources and qualitative data analysis using thematic analysis. The findings reveal the devastating effects of natural disasters in Australia, with a focus on bushfires. It discusses the impact of these events on the environment, human lives, and infrastructure. The discussion section emphasizes the importance of government investment in risk management and public awareness. The report concludes by underscoring the necessity of integrating innovative technologies for prediction and mitigation, offering valuable insights into the ongoing efforts to minimize the impact of natural disasters and safeguard communities.

Emerging Technology and
Innovations

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Significance .....................................................................................................................................1
originality in the approach...............................................................................................................1
Literature review..............................................................................................................................2
AIM OF RESEARCH.....................................................................................................................3
MATERIAL & METHODS............................................................................................................3
RESULT..........................................................................................................................................4
DISCUSSION..................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
With the introduction of Globalisation it has been observed that there is great revolution
in the technological scenario which is resulting in the commencement of various new innovative
technology which is providing numerous benefit to human beings by reducing their labour for
performing any task. Life of human being has become much easier and advanced as these
technologies has completely revolutionised the way of performing those obsolete task. Many
innovations has made the world completely shocked as it has brought many trends that were
never seen before; therefore technology and innovation plays a crucial role in today's era. Many
entrepreneur are arising which are coming up with various new innovative discoveries that
provides various kids of services that helps to relax the effort of human being. The life has
become much easier with these inventions as compared to earlier. Technology has made the
quality aspect regarding production sector to an impactful manner. With the technology a
country can save its natives from the natural calamities and provides them safety and makes
them more protected and prepared for these disasters and lead to have less damage as compared
to past years when there were no technologies that can help scientist to predict and protect people
from natural hazards and the possible disasters as said by Wex and et.al. ,2014. Australia is
been one of the most prone country to disasters such as cyclones, storms, bushfire, hurricanes
and earthquakes which creates a loss of billion dollars over past years.
Significance
According to Erdelj ,Król and Natalizio, 2017 ,Earth is considered to be most prone to
several natural hazards such as biohazards, non biodegradability of the substances and many
possible disasters such as earthquake, cyclones, flood etc. These may possess lot of threat to
humans and other living beings on the earth. It creates lots of harm to the human beings in terms
of financial as well as living aspects. These disasters has the potential of altering the
environmental aspects of the area such as weather, biodiversity and most important the ecology
of the particular area. It is very necessary to control these disasters which possess harm to
mankind and flora and fauna.
originality in the approach
The research has been approached through the inductive method in which the study of the
current scenario has been performed and further related observations has been analysed to form
the hypothesis of the research so that the investigator will be able to develop various explanation
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s which is related to the issue and provide inductive reasoning for the researcher. The approach is
completely based on the experience of learning from the topic of the research. The inductive
method was selected as compared to deductive one because there was no information given to
the researcher related to the topic, one has to perform investigation which should be real and
related to facts and figures that has been observed as said by Chung, 2016.
Literature review
According to De Albuquerque and et.al., 2015, Earth has some natural process which
leads to some critical impacts which are known as Natural Disaster. These disasters are
vulnerable in the area where the human population resides. Natural hazards and disasters leads
to loss of life and certain damages to the property .Majorly these calamities are due to
metrological aspects that have great influence on the planet earth. These have various negative
effect on the biotic substances. The relationship between the living substances and the geological
processes is determined by the risk factor. As every process which is geological releases some
energy as well as consumes the same which has some altered consequences to the surroundings.
These hazards can have many types of effect which are primary, secondary and tertiary
where the primary effect includes the result of the process, secondary effects are arises due to the
primary effects and the tertiary effects are those which has created a long term effects which are
determined as the result of the the occurrence of particular primary event.
Assessment of these risk is very important to reduce the ill effects of these events which
is necessary to save the mankind form the loss which can be occurred due to these factors as said
by Brassard, Giles and Howitt, 2016. The frequency of any natural disasters depends upon
various factors such as the size which means when anything increases from the aspected size it
can create harm to life , secondly the location matters many areas are most prone to earthquakes
where there is more pressure on the seismic plates under the earth crust due to heavy
infrastructures in particular areas and thirdly a meteorite can create certain effects such has
affecting the gravitational pull of the planet which leads to some alteration in the normal natural
processes.
Also with the advancement of the technologies and innovation now the scientist are able
to detect the commencement of the particular disaster or the formation of any favourable
circumstances that can lead to this.
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Literature Review De Albuquerque and et.al.,
2015
Brassard, Giles and Howitt,
2016
In the findings it have been
concluded that the natural
disasters are the reasons of
human made and even the
meteorite's influence
Respondents have provide the
answers that the natural
disasters has lead to many
damages of their livestocks
and even their property leading
to huge financial loss
Research gap
There has been a huge gap in the research as earlier one has discussed the reasons for the
occurrence of natural threats and their related impact on various biotic and abiotic components
which has been just used for the knowledge purpose. But this research covers those aspects such
as the forecasting and prediction of these disasters through various innovative technologies and
also some discoveries which facilitates in the process of lessening the vulnerability of these
disasters to minimise the loss done to the mankind as said by Alexander, 2017.
AIM OF RESEARCH
The aim of this research is to analyse proneness of the earth to natural hazards and
possible disasters.
MATERIAL & METHODS
Data Collection
According to Krüger and et.al., 2015, Data collection is the method in which the
activities of gathering data from various sources are done. There are two types of data which the
scholar can gather from various sources such as primary and secondary data. In this research the
scholar has gathered secondary data from various sources such as from internet , various books
and Journals and also the main advantage of the secondary data collection is that it is less time
consuming and provides instant information and data from the sources. The main reason for
selection of the secondary data over the primary one is that primary data takes lots of time to
gather which in today's scenario is preferably avoided.
Data Analysis
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Data analysis is define as the process which includes several aspects such as cleansing,
transforming and data modelling in order to drench out information which is useful, relatable and
precise. Data analysis has various approaches such as quantitative and qualitative analysis where
the scholar will use the qualitative analysis in which he will adopt the thematic analysis which
includes the formation of various themes based on several information. It provides more
emphasise on examining, pinpointing and recording various patterns or themes in the collected
data. These themes are considered as the patterns which are developed across the set of data
which is crucial fro the description of phenomenon which are associated with the specific kind of
questions related to research as defined by Birkholz and et.al., 2014.
RESULT
There has been many disasters in Australia such as tropical cyclone, flood, severe storm ,
bushfire , landslide , earth quake , Tsunami. Bushfire is the most prone disaster which affects
Australia lot. According to the study which was published in the Nature's Scientific Reports
where it has been found that about 207 disasters have affected the state in the past years.
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Illustration 1: Graph showing impact of Bushfire
Source:Statistics show the real cause of bush fires across NSW.2018

Bushfire is the common one, which has resulted in the declaration of the 108 disaster which were
followed by various storms and floods. This disaster have cost US$71 Billion and has claimed
about 6000 lives. Using the data provided by the local government (LGAs) that particularly New
South Wales are involved in the declaration of disaster on several separate occasions . Also the
bushfire along with the storm has been observed the most common in the year of 2014-
2015.With the analysis of data it has been found that the there is a huge lo of cluster for this
disaster in the north east area of the country as mentioned by Glendon, Clarke and McKenna,
2016. There were lots of controversies in Victoria with the threatening to various reduction of
hazards which were completely out of control. The figure which was obtained is about 780 fires
around the country which is almost 7 percent of the total natural disasters. These are the non
structural fires which gets burn in grass reasons can be human originated or getting sucked by the
lightning. This is a serious disaster which leads to burn the whole areas mostly hilly or the alpine
locations. Some of the causes of the bushfire includes the lightning, arcing from the power lines
which are situated at the overhead, many arsons, or the ignition caused by the accidental aspects
and other sources such as agricultural grinding, cleaning , campfires, welding activities which
lead to spr4ead fire across the whole land of bushy areas creating loss to human and their
livestocks along with damage of property. The fire model such as the spread of Phoenix which is
mostly used for the intensity, size and the fire speed. According to Wex and et.al. ,2014; There
has been a wide usage of different types of methodologies fro the assessment of the threat
exposure due to the bushfire attack . Over ninety percent of all the loss created due to household
occurred due to this. it cost about $77 million and has extended since 1850 along with 700
fatalities which have been recorded since that particular time The quantitative analysis which is
done on the information related to bushfire is not at all feasible as it creates difficulty. Analysis
of risk create by this disaster is not so easy as it is very regressive in nature which can rise
through even with a minute amount of fire. It has created about many threats to the wild life of
the Australia and major impact on the flora and fauna.
DISCUSSION
The impact which is created by the bushfire is entirely different as compared to the
effects created by other kinds of disasters such as tropical cyclones, severe storms earthquakes
which are also equal life threatening. These bush fires are very volatile in nature and can be
created due t negligence of humans with respect to fires. It mostly occurs in the areas which are
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mountainous and have more bushes and spines which can spread fire very easily at the
tremendous rate by Yuan and et. al.,2016. The north-east and south-east area most prone to this
calamity which has generated a great loss since many years which has also lead to the threat to
the livestocks and various species of animals who lives in that particular area. Government has
also announced the areas where there is more chance of getting caught by bush fire which has
resulted in the prevention in an effective manner as mentioned by Erdelj ,Król and Natalizio,
2017. They have invested a lot in the risk management related to it so that no harm could be
generated for the residents of Australia and also provided various helplines in the case of
emergency. Government should make people aware related to the proper use of fire in these
prone areas and should ban on activities such as campfire and should make deduct the numbers
heavy power lines from these areas which can create a great affect. There should be proper
arrangements of the fire brigades and extinguishers can be used in the scenario of heavy bushfire.
The wild animals who resides in these alpines and mountain region should be protected and
shifted to various life sanctuaries. The communities which lives there should be provided home
in the safe zone areas which will lead to impactful decrease in the human ignition which is also
considered as the main cause for the bushfire in Australia. According to Alexander, 2017 ; The
agricultural activities which are performed by the farmers of the country should be made better
so that one can avoid the risk of getting caught by fire in some cases. Also the weather
conditions facilitate the bushfire which supports the fire impact by maximising the rate of it
whereas the direction f the wind changes rapidly that leads to spread the fire frond very
frequently. Also the humidity which is the indication of the presence of water vapour will lead
to the reduction of the content from the fine fuel such as grasses, leaves and twigs by Wang and
et.al., 2016. The areas where the temperature s high lead to the increase in the curing level of
several fuels and also making it more prone to the hazard. The greatest loss has been occurred in
the southern states in the areas of cities where every property is closely proximity to these
forest , heath lands and scrubs. The cost which s associated with the bush fire depends upon the
cost of property which has been damaged due to it but the cost which is real is associated with
the social and environmental aspects and the losses which occurred economically. Till now the
total economic cost which is associated with the bushfire for the time span of about 30 years has
been $2.5 billion. The cost of bushfire has been completely varied over the series of consecutive
year. Government should use the latest technologies and innovative inventions for the control of
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this risk factor that is leading to create so much harm across the country. With the latest
discoveries for the avoiding and controlling of bush fire can help the natives to get spared from
the losses which they bear in this disaster which not only keeps their life endangered but also
provide a chance to safeguard their property from this harm and make them more prepared for it
in the future aspects as mentioned by Krüger and et.al., 2015.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded that the earth has certain geological procedures which affects
others living being in an impactful way. These processes consumes a lot of energy from the
environment and releases the same which creates harm to the mankind. There are many natural
disasters such as tropical cyclones, bush fires, severe Storms and earthquakes that has created a
loss of billion dollars in various countries and made the natives homeless and has created
damage to their livestock. The loss which has been created is beard by the whole nation which
leads to social, environmental and specially economic losses. It is very important to find ways to
control and predict these disasters which can lead to save the life of human beings and their flora
and fauna. In the past few years 696 lives has been lost in the bushfire of Australia mainly in the
south east region which has lead to the great loss . These bush fires are very volatile and mainly
created due to human ignition and also sometimes by the lightning struck on the areas which are
full of bushes and scrubs that can catch fire at the most vulnerable rate. The bushfire spread at a
very fast rate basically hard to control when starts spreading. Government had lead to many steps
for stopping the spread of bush fire by making ban on some human activities such as campfires
in the forest areas to avoid the chance of getting caught in the act of bush fire.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Wex, F. and et.al. ,2014. Emergency response in natural disaster management: Allocation and
scheduling of rescue units. European Journal of Operational Research, 235(3), pp.697-708.
Erdelj, M., Król, M. and Natalizio, E., 2017. Wireless sensor networks and multi-UAV systems
for natural disaster management. Computer Networks.124.pp.72-86.
Chung, J., 2016. Conflicts and natural disaster management: a comparative study of flood
control in the Republic of Korea and the United States. Disasters.40(3).pp.554-572.
De Albuquerque, J. P. and et.al., 2015. A geographic approach for combining social media and
authoritative data towards identifying useful information for disaster management.
International Journal of Geographical Information Science.29(4).pp.667-689.
Brassard, C., Giles, D. W. and Howitt, A. M., 2016. Natural Disaster Management in the Asia-
Pacific. Springer Verlag, Japan.Pirasteh, S. and Li, J. eds., 2017. Global Changes and
Natural Disaster Management: Geo-information Technologies. Berlin: Springer.
Alexander, D. C., 2017. Natural disasters. Routledge.
Krüger, F.and et.al., 2015. Cultures and disasters: understanding cultural framings in disaster
risk reduction. Routledge.
Birkholz, S. and et.al., 2014. Rethinking the relationship between flood risk perception and flood
management. Science of the Total Environment.478.pp.12-20.
Glendon, A. I., Clarke, S. and McKenna, E., 2016. Human safety and risk management. Crc
Press.
Wang, Y., and et.al., 2016. Research on resilience of power systems under natural disasters—A
review. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems.31(2).pp.1604-1613.
Yuan, W. and et. al.,2016. Robust optimization-based resilient distribution network planning
against natural disasters. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.7(6).pp.2817-2826.
Online
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Statistics show the real cause of bush fires across NSW.2018.[online].Available Through
<https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/statistics-showing-the-real-cause-of-bush-fires-
across-nsw-20151016-gkb37x.html>
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