世界自然遗产事业发展潜势分析

世界遗产(以下简称遗产)的申报和保护在策略、重点与工作方式上出现许多新的趋向。《凯恩斯决议》的修订突出对生态、地质演进及生物多样性价值的重视,并提高人们对自然遗产的认识水平,有助于完善自然遗产地的覆盖范围和世界遗产名录平衡性问题。这将加快自然类遗产的申报,尤其是涉及水圈的自然遗产,如海洋、淡水、山地及与此有关的生物多样性的自然遗产地的保护成为热点。国际协作使得跨国自然遗产的联合申报成为必然趋势。随着遗产保护地由点向线、面的扩展,绿色廊道遗产的建设将促进自然遗产事业的发展。     

Beyond Modelling: Linking Models with GIS for Flood Risk Management

Spatially explicit hydrodynamic flood models can play animportant role in natural hazard risk reduction. A key element of these models that make them suitable for riskreduction is the ability to provide time-series inundation information about the onset, duration and passingof a hazard event. Such information can be critical for landuse planning, for mapping evacuation egress routes,and for locating suitable emergency shelters to name only a few risk treatments. This research contends that abarrier to effective risk reduction is providing disaster managers with access to model results in a structured andflexible framework that allows consequences of different hazard scenarios to be assessed and mapped. Toaddress these limitations, a framework has been developed that links a commercial relational databasemanagement system with a GIS-based decision support system. The framework utilises industry standard dataexchange protocols and results in efficient time-series hazard data management. A case study based in Cairns,in far-north coastal Australia is presented to illustrate how the system has been developed. Results show that theframework reduces data volumes significantly, while making pre-run modelled inundation results rapidly accessibleto disaster managers. Of note is the ability of the framework to present results in terms of risk to buildings,roads and other spatial features in urban regions, and to provide answers to relatively complex risk questions.     

Regional landslide risk to the Cairns community

A GIS-based regional reconnaissance-level assessment of landslide risk to the Cairns community has been carried out to provide information to the Cairns City Council for planning and emergency management purposes. Magnitude recurrence relations were tentatively established for the two main slope processes: landslides on the hill slopes; and large debris flows extending out from the gully systems on to the plains. From the recurrence relations, landslide hazard (H) was estimated as the annual probability of a point being impacted by a landslide. The nature, number (E) and geographic distribution of the elements at risk were obtained by interrogating the GIS, and their vulnerabilities (V) to destruction by the two main landslide slope processes were assessed. From this information, specific risk (= H × V) and total risk (= H × V× E) maps were produced.Although total landslide risk is relatively low at present, it will increase as development extends further into the hill slopes, unless adequate mitigation measures are taken. Large debris flows, while considerably less frequent than landslides on cut slopes, could impact on subdivisions at the base of the slopes. Blockage by landslides of roads and railways providing access to Cairns can cause isolation of the community. Flash flooding in Freshwater Creek, or debris flows, have the potential to disrupt the Cairns water supply by blocking the intake or destroying sections of the pipeline.     

Creative industries in the tropics: Reflections on creativity and northeastern Australia as place

This paper explores the concept of creativity and place as relevant to Cairns and Townsville in northeastern Australia. These two provincial cities are key to the economic and population growth of northern Australia and as such are the focus of renewed interest from all levels of government. While the creative industries sector in each location is significant, to date there has been no research specifically exploring the views of industry participants in terms of the creative strengths, impediments and opportunities across the region. Interviews with 38 creative industries participants were completed, revealing the significant benefits and challenges associated with being located in a remote tropical environment where the concept of place is strong. The interviews also reveal a number of potential growth strategies for the sector in each location that have the potential to inform policy and urban development approaches not only in the tropical north of Australia but also more broadly across the country. That is, the findings provide further evidence in support of the need for ongoing research into the particular contributions of regional and rural cities to the global creative economy.     

Editorial

The Far North Queensland city of Cairns has a significant history of exposureto the impact of a wide range of natural hazards, most notably tropical cyclones.A program of publicly funded research, using Cairns as its `living laboratory'and aimed at understanding the risks posed by these hazards was a central partof Australia's involvement in the International Decade for Natural DisasterReduction. This program involved input from all three levels of governmentin Australia – national, state and local – as well as academe, industry and the Cairns community.This paper outlines the background to this program of research and an overview ofthe Cairns community that provides context for the other papers in this issue. Whilemuch of the scientific effort has been focused on developing a better understandingof the hazard phenomena involved, an important outcome of the Cairns research hasbeen the evolution of techniques by which to develop a better understanding of thecommunity at risk and strategies by which to reduce their risk.