Know Your Risk

There are a wide range of climate change impacts, from more frequent flooding, heavier rainfall, prolonged dry periods and droughts, marine heatwaves, new pest and biosecurity issues, and more. Some of these will impact you directly, and others may be more indirect. Taking time to understand the impacts of a changing climate on your home, family and work could help you make better decisions now and in the future. Resources are available to help you understand how climate change might impact you over time and to check your exposure to major impacts.

What Do We Mean by Risk?

By risk we mean:

1. Firstly, identifying which climate change impacts are relevant to you, at home or at work. Natural hazard events may be the most obvious (river or coastal flooding, landslips, high winds), but also consider droughts, wildfires, heat stress or water stress on ecosystems you rely on.
2. Secondly, how exposed you are to these impacts. For example, are you in the impact area of extreme flooding events? Is the road you rely on to get food and services likely to be cut off in an event?
3. Thirdly, how vulnerable you are to the impacts. For example, is there anyone in your household whose health makes them susceptible to heat stress during a heatwave?
4. Finally, how you respond and what effect your responses have. For example, in a drought, if many people do not conserve water and continue normal water consumption others might end up with not enough water and have their health impacted more than if everyone followed water restriction guidelines.

What Risks Apply to Me?

Several of the major natural hazards impacted by climate change have been investigated and mapped. They include:

• coastal flooding from storm events (coastal inundation);
• river flooding from heavy rain events (river flooding); and
• coastal erosion from compounding wave and storm events.

You can use these maps to check how climate change might impact you over time.

For an introduction to the natural hazards and information on how to use the maps, see Introduction to hazards.

There are two ways to view the maps:

• Hazard Property Viewer – Northland Regional Council: Use this tool to look for a property in Te Taitokerau Northland. It will show you all mapped hazards that are expected to impact that property:
• Advanced Hazard Map Viewer – Northland Regional Council: Use this tool to navigate more freely across the map and select different layers of interest:

If you need further help, contact Northland Regional Council.

A full range of further climate change information for Te Taitokerau is shown here: Climate change information for Te Taitokerau