18-05-2021
New Zealand:Earthquake agency sets research funding direction
Insurance AlertssNew Zealand:Earthquake agency sets research funding direction
The state-run Earthquake Commission (EQC) has said that it wants to ensure that its research funding is focused on studies that give the agency the best results for its mission and for its resilience goal of seeing New Zealanders have stronger homes on better land, connected by resilient infrastructure - and access to home insurance.
EQC has published its latest Research Priorities Investment Statement (RIPS) for the round of research funding that opens in June.
Future research investment
The areas that will guide the EQC investment in research are targeted at improving the understanding of:
- How people perceive and manage risk (empowering people)
- Building and infrastructure performance (resilient buildings) •
- Land-use management (smarter land-use)
- The governance and economics of disaster risk and disaster risk management
- Quantifying the size and frequency/likelihood of hazards and their impacts. In addition to these areas of interest, we have identified three lenses that we encourage researchers to apply to their projects:
- Matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge)
- Climate change
- Social science.
The EQC says that it is not its priority to fund core climate change research, such as modelling or forecasting, but it is interested in how climate change may influence the frequency and severity of natural hazards covered by EQC, and any subsequent impacts on EQC achieving its resilience goals.
Funding
EQC funds around NZ$20m ($14.5m) of research and data each year, with around NZ$14m of that going to GeoNet, a collaboration between the Earthquake Commission and GNS Science which is a New Zealand Crown research institute focussing on geology, geophysics, and nuclear science. The remaining NZ$6m is used to fund specific science and data projects, partnerships and awards.
“But deciding which of the many possible projects to fund is never easy,” said EQC research manager Dr Natalie Balfour.
She said that the RIPS “gives researchers a really clear idea on what EQC will, and won’t consider”. She added, “For instance, even though we know that climate change will make some of the hazards we cover – like floods or landslides from storms – more likely, we won’t be funding core climate change research, such as modelling and forecasting.”
The EQC is a New Zealand Crown entity investing in natural disaster research, education and providing insurance to residential property owners.
Source: Asia Insurance Review
