Book of Abstracts 2013 - Australian and New Zealand Disaster ...

Emergency Response Team with the police and USAR dogs during the earthquake response along with the results of a
health survey conducted during the deployment.
A/Prof Lois Surgenor
Associate Professor in Psychological Medicine, University of Otago at Christchurch
Co Authors - Dr Deborah Snell, Clinical Senior Lecturer, University of Otago at Christchurch. Associate Professor Martin
Dorahy, Associate Professor in Psychology, University of Canterbury.
Police staff well-being following the Canterbury earthquakes: What factors are associated
with anxiety and alcohol problems 12-18 months later?
AIM Canterbury Police were amongst the largest group of first responders to the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake
(EQ) series yet this workforce were also personally affected alongside the population they were assisting. This crosssectional
study reports on the well-being of sworn (n = 528) and non-sworn (n = 159) police staff 12-18 months later,
and investigates work and non-work factors involved in well-being. RESULTS Most participants reported multiple and
significant non-work personal/home repercussions immediately following the EQs. At 12-18 months later, one-in-five
reported anxiety symptoms of at least some clinical concern, and 12% probably met diagnostic threshold for posttraumatic
stress disorder. Eight percent met criteria for hazardous alcohol use. Likelihood of these health problems
was associated with multiple factors including the burden of non-work EQ repercussions, specific first-responder roles
(including ‘backroom’ duties), and selected coping styles. IMPLICATIONS While psychological screening (and public
recognition) following a disaster typically focuses on the welfare of first responders involved in highly traumatic work
roles (victim recovery, victim identification etc.), this approach may miss important risk factors for detecting adverse
health outcomes. These findings may have implications for the type and timing of well-being screens in future disaster
responses.
Mr Andrew Tagg
Group Manager - Floods, HR Wallingford
Co Author - Mr Mark Davison, Senior Scientist, As above. Steven Molino, Principal, Molino Stewart PTY Ltd.
Experiences and advances in the use of the Life Safety Model to assist flood evacuation
planning : case studies from around the world
The Life Safety Model (LSM) is a dynamic, agent-based model that investigates the behaviour of people during flood
events, and can be used to derive or test evacuation plans. The model is sophisticated enough to test a range of
emergency management options, such as location of warning centres and safe havens, characteristics of the warning,
evacuation routes and use of single-direction roads, vertical versus horizontal evacuation, and building collapse.
Although the model was created originally to consider floods from dam failure, it can be used for any flood hazard
which can be modelled with a 2D hydrodynamic model. The model has now been used to investigate both historical
floods, providing a measure of ‘calibration’, plus used in planning for other major hazards, such as tsunami and coastal
sea surge. This paper will provide an overview of the model architecture, and illustrate how the application of the
model to a range of hazards, can provide new insights into the nature of these hazards, and the suitability of different
management options. The examples will include tsunami risk on Vancouver Island, sea surge in England and the
Netherlands, and a new application to fluvial flooding in Windsor, NSW. In one application, the use of the model has
been combined with more traditional traffic modelling, allowing investigation of the strategic and local road network.
In another application, LSM has been combined in a modelling DSS suite, to illustrate where flooding and could occur