Reduction
Hazards and Risks
New Zealand communities are at risk from a broad range of hazards. Seventeen classes of hazards have been identified and described in the National Hazardscape Report. They are: earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tsunami, coastal hazards, floods, severe winds, snow, droughts, wildfires, animal and plant pests and diseases, infectious human disease pandemics, infrastructure failures, hazardous substance incidents, major transport accidents, terrorism, and food safety.
The Hazardscape Report also provides information on how each class of hazard is generally managed through hazard risk reduction, and emergency readiness, response, and recovery arrangements.
Hazard Risk Reduction
Reduction can involve eliminating or avoiding the risks of a hazard where practicable and desirable to do so. However in many cases this may not be possible. Instead the focus is reducing the likelihood of the risk and/or the magnitude of its impact to an acceptable level.
The 4Rs approach to building resilience
Hazard risk reduction can take many forms ranging from an individual’s personal actions to look after themselves, their family, business and property, through to collective actions undertaken on behalf of communities and society by the public sector, NGOs and private organisations operating across the local, regional and national levels.
Reduction involves many practices and processes that have their mandate within or are regulated by legislation and policies more broadly based than the CDEM Act 2002 and its core planning instruments on their own. The diagram of the New Zealand CDEM framework below sets out this arrangement, and the following sections further outline the key components covering reduction.
Further Information
Further information on hazards, hazards research, hazards monitoring, and hazard and risk management within New Zealand, can be found on websites on our links page.
Information on specific hazards and their management at the local level is available on relevant regional council, civil defence emergency management group, and city and district council websites.