POSSIBLE NOTABLE? FALSE FLAG EVENT TO HAPPEN IN SYDNEY?
New resilience strategy highlights the disasters that could bring Sydney to a shuddering halt
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news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/new-resilience-strategy-highlights-the-disasters-that-could-bring-sydney-to-a-shuddering-halt/news-story/ca0ee8a5b51f6691aea062ac44444721
>AUSTRALIA’S largest metropolis has simply been “lucky” to avoid a city stopping disaster, a group of resilience experts have said.
But Sydney’s luck could be about to run out, and if the city isn’t felled by extreme heatwaves and terror attacks, more insidious creeping catastrophes such as housing affordability and chronic illness could do it in.
>The “Resilient Sydney” report, launched by City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, details a slew of “acute shocks” and “chronic stresses” that could or are already occurring, and how the city can avoid falling foul of them.
Sydney is the second Australian city to sign up to the global 100 Resilient Cities program, Melbourne has had a head start of two years to get its act together. Backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, the program aims to help cities manage disruption and respond to disasters.
“What we mean by resilience is how we adapt, thrive and survive from shocks and stresses,” Beck Dawson, Sydney’s nattily titled chief resilience officer, told news.com.au.
“A shock can be a short, sharp disruption, like a flood for a terror attack, but a stress is a long, slow burning issue that can turn in to a disaster or magnify those other events because of the underlying vulnerabilities in the city.”
>THE ACUTE SHOCKS THAT COULD SPELL DISASTER
>1. Extreme weather
>“Unsurprisingly the top (disaster risk) in Sydney is extreme weather,” said Ms Dawson citing heatwaves, bushfires and severe storms.
>Of 18 major “shocks” that have affected Sydney over the past 30 years, eight have been weather related, the report states.
>These include the Kurnell storm of 2015 which produced a tornado and winds of 217km/h, the 2016 east coast low which saw parts of Collaroy, on the northern beaches, fall into the sea and several heatwaves.
>“Heatwaves affect 100 per cent of the Sydney population and have a cascading effect on electricity transport and everyday health activities,” said Ms Dawson.
>The report encourages councils to put in place “cooling suburbs” programs to increase the use of reflective materials on asphalt and roads and tree cover to shade streets.
>2. Financial institution failure
>The second biggest risk is one that would affect all of Australia, but Sydney in particular due to it being a global banking centre.
>“A big GFC again would be an example of financial shock, and in Sydney that would send repercussions throughout the economy and community directly because we’re such a big financial economy, so we need those institutions to work well,” said Ms Dawson.
>The report concludes Sydney did well to weather the GFC, But the 2001 collapse of insurer HIH caused debts of $5.3bn including a $600m direct hit to NSW residents. This would be chicken feed compared to a bank going under.
>3. Infrastructure ageing and failure
>Like many global cities, Sydney’s infrastructure is creaking at the seams. But here, the combination of extreme weather and ageing infrastructure could spell disaster if, for example, demand for electricity skyrocketed during a heatwave and the grid gave up.
>Ms Dawson said new piece legislation meant that in just such an emergency, electricity market trading could be suspended.
>“That’s the first piece of really great resilience legislation we’ve seen and in a time of crisis the state government can direct where electricity should go, to communities and businesses which need it most.”
>4. Terror attack
>Despite having fewer and smaller-scale terror attacks compared to other major cities, Sydney is still at risk. Last year Sydney was knocked out of its previous top 10 position in the Economist’s newspaper’s respected global liveability report because of the city’s high profile that led it to have a “heightened perceived threat of terrorism”
>5. Cyber terrorism
>A very modern malady and one Australia has already flirted with due to the 2015 hack of the Bureau of Meteorology and the infamous 2016 census website meltdown.
>“Cybersecurity is one of the biggest shocks facing metropolitan Sydney and Australian businesses are underprepared. The economic impacts of cybercrime are significant and small businesses are particularly vulnerable,” the report said.