Decision-making in land use planning: the consideration of natural hazard risks when identifying land for urban settlement

Disasters caused by natural hazards impact on people, the environment, buildings and infrastructure and are becoming more frequent and threatening worldwide. The disasters caused by hazards, inter alia, floods, earthquakes and bushfires, bring about significant human suffering and substantial physical and economic loss. Internationally, many strategies consider land use planning (LUP) as a key approach in ameliorating risk of natural hazards and creating resilient communities. Therefore, LUP affords an opportunity to identify land for urban settlement and consider density or new urban locations to reduce exposure of a community to the risk of natural hazards. However, even with LUP controls, disasters from natural hazards continue to negatively impact upon local communities. Consideration of decision-making within the context of LUP and risk of natural hazards can be used to explore the disparity between strategy and adoption. Developing an understanding of the context of LUP decision-making considering risk of natural hazards is yet to be realised: particularly within the scope of the different tiers of the government hierarchy and integration with the private sector. The conceptual framework was underpinned by considering the two concepts: Community Impact Evaluation (developed by Lichfield) and Multi Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM). A phenomenological qualitative research approach was employed to explore the conceptual framework; a multiple case study strategy was adopted. Three regional areas with differing geographical contexts. Document analysis involved evaluation of regional plans for criteria specifically related to consideration of risk of natural hazards within LUP decision-making. In addition, interviews were conducted with government and private sector stakeholders to fully understand and describe the phenomenon of LUP decision-making. Results identified differing perspectives across tiers of government, policy focus leading decision-making, a dearth of evidence and consultation directing decision-making and political influences that direct targets and enforce pressure upon decision-makers. Ultimately, there is a lack of consistent decision-making technique coupled with a range of additional variables that significantly influence practice: political influence, numerical targets and ongoing growth of centres that all contribute to an amorphous decision-making environment. The research makes two key contributions. First, it developed a framework to explore consideration of natural hazards in LUP decision-making through an extension of multi-criteria decision-making with the Community Impact Evaluation. Second, the findings identified a number of themes that need to be considered in LUP decision-making to reduce hazard risk and the devastating impacts of disasters, including location of urban settlement, construction standards, risk, density and demographics of the population.