Spatially Enabling Risk for Management of Land and Property

Recent natural disasters such as earthquakes, flood, and fire, and other issues such as asbestos, pests, and fraud all highlight the spatial nature of risk and the relationship between place and risk. These examples show that location is a major factor in determining what or where is at risk and how to manage that risk. In this paper the term risk refers to hazards and threats that exist that have the potential to damage or destroy land and property. Using this definition some examples of risks include bushfire, earthquake, sea level rise, flood, fraud, pests, asbestos, drought, tsunami, and cyclone. These risks affect different scales: some hit locally, some hit entire states, and others cross state borders to affect people on a national scale. In order to reduce the uncertainty that risks bring they need to be managed. In order to manage these risks however, accurate and timely land, property, or spatial information is required. Land administration systems currently hold this valuable land and property information but are not arranged in a way to allow for coordination and sharing across jurisdictions. This paper is based on ongoing research and uses empirical research and a case study approach to discuss the spatial nature of risk, the relationship between place and risk, and proposes a spatially enabled approach to managing risks for citizens, government, and wider society.