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Image: Getty; Additional design: Tina Tiller
Image: Getty; Additional design: Tina Tiller

PartnersFebruary 17, 2022

Five things you might not (but should) know about floods

Image: Getty; Additional design: Tina Tiller
Image: Getty; Additional design: Tina Tiller

With the rates of flooding in Aotearoa rising, how much do you know about flood-risk? We’ve pulled together five key facts about floods that might just help you stay afloat.

A cursory flick through any volume of national or regional history will tell you that floods – from the catastrophic to the mildly inconvenient – have long been an unavoidable condition of life in Aotearoa. And as anyone with a solid grasp of the numbers and the patterns can tell you, all the science suggests that they’ll have an inevitable impact on our country in the future too.

But for all of the research, all of the predictions and all of the post-event analyses, what do we really know about floods? Looking at modelling and speaking to the experts, we’ve pulled together a handful of facts you may not have realised about flooding in Aotearoa.

Floods are becoming more common

Floods are New Zealand’s most frequent natural disaster. The number of floods that hit the country in a year has been steadily increasing since the mid 1970s. It used to be common to have one or two floods a year. Now, it’s around four to seven, according to the Insurance Council of New Zealand.

New Zealand as a whole is getting more dumps of heavy rain and gnarly storms. The number of floods is set to go up even more in future, thanks to ol’ mate climate change. A warmer atmosphere means it can hold more water, and then dump that water into rivers that then overflow or onto streets where it collects.

Image: Tina Tiller

… and floods are getting more extreme

It’s not just that we’re seeing more floods, but those floods are also worse. Think more extreme rain and storms and bigger, stronger, faster flooding. 

One of the culprits behind intense flooding is atmospheric rivers – long, thin-shaped storms that bucket  two to three times more rain than a regular storm. It was an atmospheric river that hit the West Coast in 2019 and caused a flood that took out the Waiho bridge near Franz Joseph glacier.

Some experts have said that big floods are becoming the new norm not only because of climate change, but also because of changes in the ways that we use land. 

The cost of floods is on the up too

It all adds up. The cost of flood and storm events has gone up at least four-fold from the 1970s, taking into account inflation. 

The New Zealand Insurance Council last year said that 2021 might have been one of the worst and most expensive years on record for flood claims. The May Canterbury flooding cost around $44 million, the September Auckland floods around $57 million and the July West Coast floods a staggering $85 million.

Flood risk is actually super localised

Flood risk is usually calculated across a town, city or region. Different district or regional councils offer flood maps that help people figure out how at-risk they are depending on where they live. 

But as flood modelling gets better, insurers have tools that let people get a sense of flood risk for an individual address. These newer models take into account factors like how close a house is to a river, how elevated the land is, where on the land the actual building sits, what the house is made out of, whether the house is elevated off the ground or how water flows in rivers nearby. 

That means houses right next door to each other can actually have very different flood risk ratings. 

Predicting flood risk takes tonnes of data

To get that level of precision, these models need a lot of data. One model, developed by analytics company Risk Management Solutions, used 5 million data points to simulate around 350,000 flooding events over some 50,000 years.

The RMS model is being used in Aotearoa by Tower, who have combined the RMS data outlining the potential risk and extent of a flood occurring with the estimated rebuild or replacement costs, to accurately inform customers of the cost of their insurance coverage. 

And while we may not ever get weather predictions down to an exact, precise science, the result of all of that work is a model which can, more effectively than ever, predict a property’s flood risk – and help you to prepare for what could happen.

Keep going!
Nikora Ngaropo. (Photo: supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller)
Nikora Ngaropo. (Photo: supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller)

PartnersFebruary 16, 2022

Home Screen: Managing the power and pressure of personal tech

Nikora Ngaropo. (Photo: supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller)
Nikora Ngaropo. (Photo: supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller)

These days former Wētā animator Nikora Ngaropo’s passion is showing young New Zealanders how tech can change their lives. Still, he tells Simon Day, even a tech evangelist like him needs to switch off sometimes.

Over his career at Wētā Workshop, Digital and Productions, Nikora Ngaropo worked on the visual effects for some of the studio’s most high-profile films. But as he contributed to some of the biggest movies in the world, he started to notice there was little diversity in the staff or investment in developing the potential of communities underrepresented in the digital creative industry. 

“I worked at Wētā for 15 years, I came out of there and realised we weren’t seeing a lot of Māori faces through the door. There’s 1500 staff and I could count the Māori on one hand,” Ngaropo says. 

In 2016 he left Wētā and Wellington to move to Hamilton and launch his own motion design business, sharing his passion for animation with the next generation of young New Zealanders, especially rangatahi Māori. Nikora Ngaropo Motion & Design | Young Animators runs workshops with young people around Aotearoa covering the basics of animation, from classical 2D through to 3D visual effects. He wants to help give access to tech – and the potential career paths that come with it – to young people who would never have had the opportunity otherwise. 

“I launched the business to share my skill set and uplift Māori in that space. We’re working with kids all over New Zealand, in 14 different regions across the country, in rural communities with people that didn’t have access to tech or high end skill sets,” he says. 


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He’s also worked to advocate for the role of communications technology in empowering communities while pushing back on misinformation about its impacts. In 2020 he partnered with Vodafone to expose the dangerous myths being spread about 5G, and explain the potential of its arrival in New Zealand. 

Ngaropo is a champion of the role of Māori in shaping the future of Aotearoa, and the world. In November he travelled to Dubai for Te Aratini, the festival for indigenous and tribal ideas held as part of the Covid-delayed Expo 2020. The vision of Te Aratini is to elevate Indigenous and tribal peoples’ knowledge and aspirations, and Ngaropo hopes it will show how connections made between communities can increase the power of Indigenous perspectives to help solve global issues.

His ambitions at home are similar – just on a more local scale.

NNMD students in action (Photo: supplied)

The Spinoff: Why is tech such a powerful tool for young people? 

Nikora Ngaropo: They are born in a world that is digitally native, and being able to show them how to not just consume but create and express themselves in different ways is really empowering. Tech can provide a very different pathway and living standard for communities if those doors are opened. I like being able to share that with kids who are coming through. It’s about changing people’s perception of what the opportunities are. 

We use animation as an entry point to higher paying jobs in the tech sector. It’s about opening doors to different types of work that people weren’t aware of. Tech is aligned with higher value and higher paying jobs that can change the way people live.

Hamilton doesn’t feel like the most natural place to launch a tech start up. How would you respond to that?

It’s funny you say that. It’s changing a lot. There’s quite a few tech companies that have sprung up here in the last two years. You’ve got us, Company-X and Straker Translation, for example. And we don’t have the Auckland traffic. The pace of life is really good and it’s really central.

I was worried about being away from creative hubs like Wellington. In hindsight it’s been one of the best moves I’ve made. The Waikato has provided me with lots of opportunities. I feel very fortunate. 

Do you worry about the potential negative impact of tech on young people too? 

It does come with social pressures that didn’t used to exist. Especially for that younger generation. It’s a balancing act. It makes things easier, but even though you can learn things on your phone, the screen is still restrictive. And while it connects you, it disconnects you from lots of things too. You miss out on the art of conversation. Being able to engage people with words, there’s a real art to that. That’s not something that’s as cultivated now because of the time young people spend on their screens. 

How essential is your phone to the way you work?

It’s a fundamental piece of my business infrastructure. I don’t think I could do my job now and work in this business without those things. My phone is an essential core part of my business. I use it to manage my schedule, to hotspot so I can work from anywhere. It allows me to always be available but also manage that availability and ensure I’m prioritising the right things.

What’s your most important app?

The calendar for scheduling. I try to carve out time for different tasks to make sure I actually get stuff done. I have to put my foot down around that or else you just end up spending all the time in meetings and get nothing done. You have to make time to do the work. You’ve really got to lock off those working blocks of time. If my phone is on silent, my team knows that I’m not available during these times. I make sure I create those spaces. 

Nikora Ngaropo at Te Aratini, the festival for indigenous and tribal ideas, as part of Expo 2020 (Photo: supplied).

Do you have a positive relationship with your phone?

I do now. I’ve gotten much better with it. I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. The relationship I have with my phone isn’t just scrolling through the feed, it’s allowing me to be versatile and enjoy my pastimes that I haven’t been able to embrace. Being portable is such a huge thing as it allows me to be flexible and dynamic. Like today being able to do this interview outside basking in the sun. That’s something you couldn’t have done 10 years ago. 

Unless I’ve got something worthwhile to say I won’t post on social media. So now the things I share have a lot more meaning; New initiatives, family or community. I want to be more present in the real world. If someone pops into my head and I haven’t seen them for a while, I’ll send them a quick video. The reason I like doing that is everyone has got 20 seconds. And getting a video that has your face and your voice and your interest and expression is quite different to sending a text. That’s one of the things I try to do now, if someone pops into my head I send them a message. 

Finding balance between work and family – especially during Covid-19 – can be really hard, particularly for entrepreneurs. How do you make sure you’re present when you’re with your family? 

In our household there’s me, my partner, and our three boys. We both run our own businesses as well, so trying to run the family while trying to manage the other things is a challenge. You’re bringing your work life right into your home. We make sure we put times in calendars when we’re not available and we’re committed to the family. 

If you’re not able to do that, what is it all for? The reason we set up our own businesses was so we could spend time with our family in the way we wanted to. It’s a blessing and a curse. When you’re running your own business you’re responsible for everything, but you do have that power to move things around as you need to. 

At the moment family time is looking like bike rides down to the awa. We’ll take an hour and a half out, throw some stones in the water. The other thing is just being in the same space. One of the boys might be on their device and I’ll be on mine, but he’s happy that I’m there. If he’s got something cool that he wants to show me I’m around and available.

What’s your guilty pleasure online? 

Reading light novels online. My genre has usually been fantasy. I love it. It’s a bit of me time too. It allows me to switch off. I just finished Reincarnation of the Strongest Sword God. That was almost 3000 chapters. At the moment I’m reading Seoul Station’s Necromancer.

It’s not for everyone, but it’s great to take my mind off stuff. It also keeps my head in the game for the animation side of the game. Undercover research. I want to read something that takes me out of my everyday life. 

But wait there's more!