22 February 2019

It’s good news that tropical cyclone Oma has weakened and remains offshore.

Here we perform some quick analysis using the web APIs & Apps recently developed, and share results with the public (see Twitter posts below).

1. Overview of Current Exposure

Why are we so concerned about this event? One of the main reasons is that this event could potentially impact southeast Queensland and northeast NSW, the region that has an enormous amount of exposure in low-lying coastal areas. This region is home to ~4.5 million people. The App provides detailed exposure estimates by exposure types and hazard levels used.

2. Historical Cyclones

Overall, the southeast Queensland and northeast NSW region is infrequently visited by tropical cyclones. Over the past 45 years, only three events with wind speed at tropical storm strength (on the Saffir-Simpson TC Scale) have passed through the region:

– 1995 VIOLET
– 1990 NANCY
– 1974 ZOE

This type of summary information is readily provided by tropical cyclones APIs. For each location, an analysis report (~15 pages) on historical tracks and wind speed can be generated with two button clicks as shown here.

3. Broad- and Site-level Views of Vulnerable Low-lying Areas

The southeast Queensland and northeast NSW region has the largest residential exposure in the country located in low-lying coastal areas (both in absolute & relative terms). Using the App, we can quickly show a regional view of low-lying areas (e.g. Gold Coast) and site-level views for particular locations concerned.

Each case of analysis above is supported by cloud-based big data and analytics platforms (on Google cloud infrastructure). We hope users can take advantage of the wide range of web APIs we have built over the past few years. If you are interested in similar analytics with APIs and Apps, please stay in touch.