Natural hazards researcher Risk Frontiers says the $12 million given by the Government to Geoscience Australia to gather flood risk information is “completely incomprehensible”.

In its submission to the Productivity Commission’s draft report, Barriers to Effective Adaptation to Climate Change, Risk Frontiers says it already has “national databases of natural peril profiles for individual street addresses for the likelihood of hail, earthquake ground-shaking intensity and soil conditions, tropical cyclone peak gust speeds, bushfire exposure and river flood risk”.

“It is not risk information that is lacking,” Risk Frontiers says. “It is the political will to engage in mitigation and encouraging risk-reducing behaviours.”

It says the role of climate change in the growth of insurance and economic losses from disasters is yet to be determined by long-term trend analysis and may not be evident for “more than a century”.

But it says there is evidence “disaster losses are rising in concert with increasing population, wealth and inflation”.

“In short, the reason for the growing cost of weather-related natural disasters is that we now have more people living in dangerous places with more to lose,” its submission adds.

Risk Frontiers believes climate change is affecting weather events and rather than waiting for the impact to become clear, “finding ways to incentivise local councils – which have the ultimate responsibility for land-use planning decisions – to engage in risk-informed planning practices is the key to ensuring the risks do not continue to rise in concert with population”.

The risk modeller says it “broadly concurs with the commission’s recommendations and priorities” and “any measures that reduce risk in respect to weather-related perils – bushfires, storms including hailstorms, tropical cyclones and floods – under the current climate would result in immediate benefits to Australians and put us in good stead for an uncertain future”.