Australia's country towns 2050: what will a climate adapted settlement pattern look like?

Abstract This report considers the impact of anticipated climate change on Australia’s inland towns and centres to the year 2050. It examines the ways in which non-coastal settlements will be affected by the primary, secondary and tertiary impacts of climate change, including the impact of extreme climate events, a warming and drying climate over much of southern Australia and increased costs associated with both structural economic change and accelerated degradation of infrastructure. The research finds that climate change is likely to have a wide range of impacts on Australia’s system of inland settlement and that not all of these impacts are likely to be adverse. The published literature highlights the fact that some industries – including wool production, grains, viticulture and some grazing – are likely to benefit from climate change. While this is not the case in all instances, the fact that some industries will be enhanced runs contrary to both commonly held expectations and public discourse. In other sectors of the economy and society, technological change and/or investment in infrastructure will overcome many of the climate-change related challenges that have the potential to place the wellbeing of inland centres at risk. This project found that rural and regional centres across Australia will be affected by climate change in different ways, depending upon: Their industry structure; Their geographic location, especially their degree of remoteness; Their climatic conditions now and in the year 2030; and, The resource endowments of communities – and especially their stock of human, social, physical, fiscal and economic capital. The project reviewed the national and international literature on climate change adaptation to consider the vulnerability of individual inland centres. A vulnerability index was developed that was able to distinguish places that are more, and less, vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. This analysis was undertaken as a first step toward better understanding the differential impacts of climate change on the inland settlement system, and with a full awareness of the critiques of such approaches. The modelling highlighted that places that are remote confront some of the greatest risks from climate change, and that many – but not all – Indigenous communities are especially vulnerable. Detailed field work was undertaken in five case studies across Australia – Alice Springs, NT; Junee, NSW; Horsham, Victoria; Waikerie, South Australia; Moura, Queensland – in order to understand the steps taken by inland centres to plan and prepare for climate change. The research found that many persons within rural and regional communities do not accept that human-induced climate change is a reality, and that in consequence preparations for change are patchy. However, in many rural economies contemporary ‘good practice’ in farming or grazing is entirely consistent with the measures needed to plan for climate change. The fieldwork also highlighted the fact that while it is possible to model the potential impact of climate change, such measures overlook the commitment and willingness of groups to address this challenge. Finally, we conclude that climate change will contribute to the shifting nature of Australia’s inland settlement system to the year 2050 but that it will be just one of a number of factors contributing to change. Other factors, including global markets, demographic change, the relative prosperity of individual industries, and the investment decisions of government will be important also. Please cite this report as: Beer, A, Tually, S, Kroehn, M, Martin, J, Gerritsen, R, Taylor, M, Graymore, M, and Law, J, 2013, Australia’s country towns 2050: What will a climate adapted settlement pattern look like? National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, pp.139.Abstract This report considers the impact of anticipated climate change on Australia’s inland towns and centres to the year 2050. It examines the ways in which non-coastal settlements will be affected by the primary, secondary and tertiary impacts of climate change, including the impact of extreme climate events, a warming and drying climate over much of southern Australia and increased costs associated with both structural economic change and accelerated degradation of infrastructure. The research finds that climate change is likely to have a wide range of impacts on Australia’s system of inland settlement and that not all of these impacts are likely to be adverse. The published literature highlights the fact that some industries – including wool production, grains, viticulture and some grazing – are likely to benefit from climate change. While this is not the case in all instances, the fact that some industries will be enhanced runs contrary to both commonly held expectations and public discourse. In other sectors of the economy and society, technological change and/or investment in infrastructure will overcome many of the climate-change related challenges that have the potential to place the wellbeing of inland centres at risk. This project found that rural and regional centres across Australia will be affected by climate change in different ways, depending upon: Their industry structure; Their geographic location, especially their degree of remoteness; Their climatic conditions now and in the year 2030; and, The resource endowments of communities – and especially their stock of human, social, physical, fiscal and economic capital. The project reviewed the national and international literature on climate change adaptation to consider the vulnerability of individual inland centres. A vulnerability index was developed that was able to distinguish places that are more, and less, vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. This analysis was undertaken as a first step toward better understanding the differential impacts of climate change on the inland settlement system, and with a full awareness of the critiques of such approaches. The modelling highlighted that places that are remote confront some of the greatest risks from climate change, and that many – but not all – Indigenous communities are especially vulnerable. Detailed field work was undertaken in five case studies across Australia – Alice Springs, NT; Junee, NSW; Horsham, Victoria; Waikerie, South Australia; Moura, Queensland – in order to understand the steps taken by inland centres to plan and prepare for climate change. The research found that many persons within rural and regional communities do not accept that human-induced climate change is a reality, and that in consequence preparations for change are patchy. However, in many rural economies contemporary ‘good practice’ in farming or grazing is entirely consistent with the measures needed to plan for climate change. The fieldwork also highlighted the fact that while it is possible to model the potential impact of climate change, such measures overlook the commitment and willingness of groups to address this challenge. Finally, we conclude that climate change will contribute to the shifting nature of Australia’s inland settlement system to the year 2050 but that it will be just one of a number of factors contributing to change. Other factors, including global markets, demographic change, the relative prosperity of individual industries, and the investment decisions of government will be important also

On the feasibility of collaborative green data center ecosystems

The increasing awareness of the impact of the IT sector on the environment, together with economic factors, have fueled many research efforts to reduce the energy expenditure of data centers. Recent work proposes to achieve additional energy savings by exploiting, in concert with customers, service workloads and to reduce data centers’ carbon footprints by adopting demand-response mechanisms between data centers and their energy providers. In this paper, we debate about the incentives that customers and data centers can have to adopt such measures and propose a new service type and pricing scheme that is economically attractive and technically realizable. Simulation results based on real measurements confirm that our scheme can achieve additional energy savings while preserving service performance and the interests of data centers and customers.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Energy challenges for ICT

The energy consumption from the expanding use of information and communications technology (ICT) is unsustainable with present drivers, and it will impact heavily on the future climate change. However, ICT devices have the potential to contribute signi - cantly to the reduction of CO2 emission and enhance resource e ciency in other sectors, e.g., transportation (through intelligent transportation and advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving vehicles), heating (through smart building control), and manu- facturing (through digital automation based on smart autonomous sensors). To address the energy sustainability of ICT and capture the full potential of ICT in resource e - ciency, a multidisciplinary ICT-energy community needs to be brought together cover- ing devices, microarchitectures, ultra large-scale integration (ULSI), high-performance computing (HPC), energy harvesting, energy storage, system design, embedded sys- tems, e cient electronics, static analysis, and computation. In this chapter, we introduce challenges and opportunities in this emerging eld and a common framework to strive towards energy-sustainable ICT

The role of water markets in climate change adaptation

Abstract Water markets were first introduced in Australia in the 1980s, and water entitlement and allocation trade have been increasingly adopted by both private individuals and government.Irrigators turned to water markets (particularly for allocation water) to manage water scarcity and Governments to acquire water for the environment (particularly water entitlements. It is expected that further adoption of water markets will be essential for coping with future climate change impacts. This report reviews the available literature related to the relationship between southern Murray-Darling Basin (sMDB) water markets and anticipated climate change effects; the economic, social and environmental impacts of water reallocation through markets; and future development requirements to enhance positive outcomes in these areas. The use of water markets by irrigators can involve both transformational (selling all water entitlements and relocating or switching to dryland) and incremental (e.g. buying water allocations/entitlements, using carry-over, changing water management techniques) adaptation to climate change. Barriers to both adaptations include: current and future climate uncertainty; poor (or non-existent) market signals; financial constraints; information barriers; mental processing limits; inherent attitudes toward or beliefs about climate change; institutional barriers and disincentives to adapt. A better understanding of trade behaviour, especially strategic trade issues that can lead to market failures, will improve the economic advantages of water trade. There remains community concerns about the impacts of transfers away from regional areas such as reduced community spending and reinvestment; population losses; loss of jobs; declining taxation base, loss of local services and businesses, regional production changes; and legacy issues for remaining farmers. However, it is hard to disentangle these impacts from those caused by ongoing structural change in agriculture. Rural communities that are most vulnerable to water scarcity under climate change and water trade adjustment include smaller irrigation-dependent towns. Communities less dependent on irrigation are better able to adapt. Further, where environmental managers use water markets to deal with water variability and to ensure ecological benefits, irrigators are concerned about its impact on their traditional use of markets to manage scarcity. Climate change and water scarcity management are intertwined, suggesting that policy, institutional and governance arrangements to deal with such issues should be similarly structured. Water users will adapt, either out of necessity or opportunity. The cost of that adaptation at individual, regional and national levels—particularly to future water supply variability—can be mitigated by the consideration of the existing advantages from future opportunities for water marketing in Australia

Making data centres fit for demand response: introducing GreenSDA and GreenSLA contracts

The power grid has become a critical infrastructure, which modern society cannot do without. It has always been a challenge to keep power supply and demand in balance; the more so with the recent rise of intermittent renewable energy sources. Demand response schemes are one of the counter measures, traditionally employed with large industrial plants. This paper suggests to consider data centres as candidates for demand response as they are large energy consumers and as they are able to adapt their power profile sufficiently well. To unlock this potential, we suggest a system of contracts that regulate collaboration and economic incentives between the data centre and its energy supplier (GreenSDA) as well as between the data centre and its customers (GreenSLA). Several presented use cases serve to validate the suitability of data centers for demand response schemes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Managing systemic risk in emergency management, organizational resilience and climate change adaptation: a science-policy roadmap

In urban systems, major risks need to be managed by bringing together emergency management, organisational resilience and climate change adaptation. In this endeavour, policy making must make use of disaster science. This chapter applies the theory of cascading, interconnected and compound risk to the practice of preparing for, managing and responding to threats and hazards. This methodology is illustrated with an example from the United Kingdom, namely the work of the Greater London Authority and its partner organisations. London has long been a champion of resilience strategies for dealing with systemic risk. The chapter investigates the potential and limitations of this approach. There remains a need to identify common points of failure, especially where they relate to interconnected domains and where they are driven by climate change. Radical new thinking is required in order to ensure operational continuity in the face of growing systemic risk

Modelling the impact of extreme weather events on healthcare infrastructure using rich picture diagrams

Healthcare infrastructure for a community comprises not only its hospital but also many other related facilities such as primary care clinics, community health centres, rural nursing posts, aged care centres, etc. These facilities form a complex set of relationships which need to work collectively for an effective response to climatechange related extreme weather events such as floods and storms. The aim of this research is to develop a conceptual understanding of the dynamic relationships of hospital facilities before, during and after an extreme weather event. This is an essential step in framing a systems model that will assist facility managers to maintain critical healthcare infrastructure during an emergency. Rich Picture Diagrams (RPDs) were used to map relationships between critical healthcare infrastructure components such as the base hospital; access roads; aged care facilities and remotely located supplies. The rich information on the inter-organisational, system and governance complexities associated with responding to extreme weather events was obtained from three hospital case studies (two in Australia and one in New Zealand). The main finding of this research is that RPDs have considerable potential in the development of soft systems models which will assist decision takers involved in the design and management of healthcare infrastructure particularly in the context of extreme weather events. The soft systems methodology which underpins this research challenges the conventional view of what constitutes a ‘facility’ and consequently has important implications for those constructing and managing facilities

Rapid evaluation of service innovations in health and social care: key considerations

Background: The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer programme is funding the creation of new mental health support teams to work in schools and further education colleges. Mental health support teams directly support children and young people with ‘mild to moderate’ mental health problems and work with school and college staff to promote well-being for all. A new workforce of education mental health practitioners is being trained for the teams. / Objective(s): The National Institute for Health and Care Research Birmingham, RAND and Cambridge Evaluation Rapid Evaluation Centre and Policy Innovation and Evaluation Research Unit undertook an early evaluation of the Trailblazer programme to examine the development, implementation and early progress of mental health support teams in the programme’s first 25 ‘Trailblazer’ sites. / Design: A mixed-methods evaluation, comprising three work packages: 1. Establishing the baseline and understanding the development and early impacts of the Trailblazer sites, including two rounds of surveys with key informants and participating education settings in all 25 sites. 2. More detailed research in five purposively selected Trailblazer sites, including interviews with a range of stakeholders and focus groups with children and young people. 3. Scoping and developing options for a longer-term assessment of the programme’s outcomes and impacts. Fieldwork was undertaken between November 2020 and February 2022. The University of Birmingham Institute for Mental Health Youth Advisory Group was involved throughout the study, including co-producing the focus groups with children and young people. / Results: Substantial progress had been made implementing the programme, in challenging circumstances, and there was optimism about what it had the potential to achieve. The education mental health practitioner role had proven popular, but sites reported challenges in retaining education mental health practitioners, and turnover left mental health support teams short-staffed and needing to re-recruit. Education settings welcomed additional mental health support and reported positive early outcomes, including staff feeling more confident and having faster access to advice about mental health issues. At the same time, there were concerns about children who had mental health problems that were more serious than ‘mild to moderate’ but not serious enough to be accepted for specialist help, and that the interventions offered were not working well for some young people. Mental health support teams were generally spending more time supporting children with mental health problems than working with education settings to develop ‘whole school’ approaches to mental health and well-being, and service models in some sites appeared to be more clinically oriented, with a strong focus on mental health support teams’ therapeutic functions. / Limitations: Despite efforts to maximise participation, survey response rates were relatively low and some groups were less well represented than others. We were not able to gather sufficiently detailed data to develop a typology of Trailblazer sites, as was planned. / Conclusions: Key lessons for future programme implementation include: – Whether mental health support teams should expand support to children and young people with more complex and serious mental health problems. – How to keep the twin aims of prevention and early intervention in balance. – How to retain education mental health practitioners once trained. / Future work: The findings have important implications for the design of a longer-term impact evaluation of the programme, which is due to commence in summer 2023. / Study registration: Ethical approval from the University of Birmingham (ERN_19-1400 – RG_19-190) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (Ref: 18040) and Health Research Authority approval (IRAS 270760). / Funding: The Birmingham, RAND and Cambridge Evaluation Rapid Evaluation Centre is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme (HSDR 16/138/31). The Policy Innovation and Evaluation Research Unit is funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme (PR-PRU-1217-20602)