Heads up from Professor of Disaster Economics, Ilan Noy (Victoria University, Wellington). Recent withdrawl of funding for many US databases has emphasised the lack of NZ investment into, inter alia, disaster loss data collection.
Ilan (we've met, so I'll use his first name although still a bit cheeky of me...) argues in his patient, cogent manner with barely a hint of the obvious frustration he must be feeling that if we do not make this investment into very basic data collection then we are left, if not exactly blind, certainly feeling our way in the gloom in efforts to plan for the future.
"Without understanding the magnitude of the problem, our ability to prevent damage or recover from extreme weather is diminished. It is indeed difficult to manage what we don’t measure."
As Phil Pennington (RNS) reported June last year, the brutal public sector cuts left a half-built emergency coordination system, despite reports on Cyclone Gabrielle reeiterating the Aotearoa desparately needs better data infrastructure as people were let down by the inability to quickly share the same information across multiple hardpressed responders.
Land Information NZ (LINZ) had actually built a platform of maps and risks but had to drop a project that would actually make it easier share access to this in a disaster. The project began in 2021 "but was never properly funded from the start".
So more short-termism from the current NZ government.
Prof Noy (back to formalities) gives this graph to show the range of dollar totals given for damages in the severe weather of early 2023:
I know that NZ scientists have often drawn on overseas data sources, especially from the US (e.g., NASA) to plug the (many) gaps in our own data collection. As NZ also downsizes its commitment to science funding, we can expect even less insight into our rapisly changing world.
Hard rains gonna fall.
No comments:
Post a Comment