Natural Hazards
A natural hazard is a threat of a naturally occurring event that will have a negative effect on people, their assets or the environment.
Natural hazards, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, liquefaction, landslides, coastal erosion, floods, droughts, cyclones and tsunami can often result in disaster to communities. Climate change can also exacerbate natural hazards, so their effects can vary with time.
Preparedness, protection, emergency response and recovery are the four pillars of our disaster resilience response offering. With more than 40 years’ experience in natural hazard and natural hazard risk management, Tonkin + Taylor has a proven capability at supporting clients through all stages of disaster resilience for events of almost every size.
Services
We provide a comprehensive suite of natural hazard engineering services that support virtually all market sectors and client requirements, including:
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Earthquake, liquefaction, flooding, climate change, preparedness, protection, emergency response, recovery;
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Coastal erosion, coastal inundation, sea level rise, hazard assessment, risk;
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Tsunami, preparedness, protection
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Coastal Inundation, sea level rise, preparedness, protection, Project Orbit;
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Landslide hazard assessment, mitigation;
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Drought resilience, climate change
Coastal Engineer, Richard Reinen-Hamill
Richard Reinen-Hamill one of NZ's leading coastal engineers and the business leader of Tonkin + Taylor's Natural Hazard Team.
Richard has been the lead coastal engineer on major foreshore and iconic coastal developments around NZ over the last two decades including the regeneration of Wellington's Oriental Bay, Auckland's Torpedo Bay and Pt Chevalier beaches, the creation of a new foreshore for Onehunga and the development of New Plymouth's World famous Boardwalk.
Richard has won multiple awards for his work and was invited to become a Fellow of NZ's Institute of Professional Engineers in 2012
Hydrologist, Bapon Fakhruddin
Bapon Shm Fakhruddin is an international disaster risk reduction and hazard modeling expert who is a regular adviser to the United Nations on Natural Hazards and Climate Change.
Bapon joined Tonkin + Taylor in 2015 and continues to work with the UNDP Samoa as Chief Technical Adviser.
His most high profile work has been developing multi-hazard warning systems including a Tsunami Warning System for Indian Ocean countries following the deadliest one in history - the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami - that took more than 230,000 lives in 14 countries.
To date, Bapon has developed multi hazard warning systems for 25 countries including: Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Samoa.
Bapon is currently overseeing the implementation of a major disaster risk reduction series of systems for Samoa and New Zealand.