Understanding natural risk

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What is natural risk?

A natural hazard creates risk when it affects the things we love and value, like our property, health, infrastructure, culture and heritage, economy, and natural environment.

The amount of risk depends on:

  • The likelihood, location and size of an event
    • These are characteristics of the natural hazard event, such as a one per cent Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP) flood event occurring in the Waikato River. This means in any year, there is a one per cent chance that size flood will occur.
  • Our exposure
    • Our exposure is determined by the presence of things we love and value within a hazard zone such as buildings and infrastructure in flood plains exposed to river flooding.
  • Our vulnerability
    • Our vulnerability is the likelihood and extent of damage. Some things are more likely to be damaged. For example, if the minimum floor level of a building is below the one per cent AEP flood level, the building would be flooded and damaged. However, if the minimum floor level was built above the flood level, then the building would be exposed to the flood hazard but may not be damaged.

We work to identity, analyse, collate and provide natural hazard information to ensure that natural hazard risk is reduced over time and sound decisions are made about development in hazard prone areas. Our goal is to prevent new risk, reduce existing risk, and manage any residual (remaining) risk.