Extreme weather events such as hailstorms, cyclones, flood and bushfire are natural or man-made disasters that can cause significant economic loss in an affected region. Changes to landscapes due to expansion of urban areas and predicted climate change provide new challenges for Australia to mitigate the impacts of catastrophes.

The Building Resilience Rating Tool 5.0(BRRT5.0) is designed to help individual’s and community’s improve their ability to withstand impacts from extreme weather events. The BRRT5.0 is a simple model that rates resilience of buildings and houses to hailstorms, strong winds, tropical cyclones, flood and bushfire. Model inputs consist of building materials including roof, ceiling, walls, floors, windows and others. The BRRT provides an overall resilience rating along with the level of exposure to extreme weather events events, the level of material vulnerability, and a list of materials that need replacement or attention.

The tool aims to provide educational information regarding the resilience of buildings to catastrophe events. The BRRT5.0 will be used in the Property Resilience Exposure Program(PREP) which is intended to foster a ‘win-win’ situation for local governments, communities, individuals, and the insurance industry. The PREP will identify areas where homes are at greater risk than others due to issues such as changing hazard profiles, poor design and building controls. This serves to identify homes that may require high priority mitigation and intervention in order to reduce the potential impact of the hazard on that community, and, by lowering the risk profile, put downward pressure on risk premiums.