More than 24,000 cyclone insurance claims for damaged homes in North Queensland will be tested over the next six months as James Cook University's Cyclone Testing Station tries to plan cyclone-resilient homes.
James Cook University Cyclone Testing Station's director David Henderson said researchers would examine householders' insurance claims from cyclones Yasi and Larry to get a better picture of which homes survived the cyclones with less damage and why.
"A lot of this is going to be a hard slog detective work to build a pilot study to drive the directions for future research," Dr Henderson said.
Cyclone Larry lashed through North Queensland in March 2006 as a category 5 tropical cyclone with winds up to 205 km/h causing $1.1 billion in damage.
Cyclone Yasi in February 2011 went through Mission Beach, Tully, Innisfail and Cardwell with winds over 200 km/h causing damage of $3.5 billion.
The research will look at the location and age of the damaged homes – and the barely-damaged homes - and match them with the wind intensity, rainfall intensity and direction, the house construction and the building materials.
"So if you can examine a great big bucket of data and then try to get the statistics of that to try to get patterns of these things, then we can look at the cost benefit ratios of these factors," Dr Henderson said.
Those patterns might identify what is good and bad about particular housing construction, ultimately leading to new building codes for cyclone-resilient housing, he said.
Dr Henderson said researchers would be looking at wind-driven rain damage to homes, as well as the age of homes, the condition of timbers and maintenance around homes.
He said the research to slowly plan more cyclone resilient homes could begin slowly, with small incremental changes to new homes.
"It doesn't have to be massive structural changes," Dr Henderson said.
"You don't have to think of the most complex things to solve it," he said.
"It is looking at small incremental changes to make overall changes."
Dr Henderson said changes to gutters and to the size of window sills was an example of smaller changes, which could be effective.
"It may not be 'replacing your roof' type of thing," he said.
"It could be – for example - doubling the number of clips to hold your gutter to the roof – that really reduces the numbers of gutters lost.
"That is the type of thing."
They have already done some research on commercial properties with the Insurance Council of Australia, Dr Henderson.
He hoped the large amount of information on cyclone-effected homes was an effective "sample size".
"I hope that the data is broad enough so that we can demonstrate that there is enough cost benefit that we can promote change in different building systems," he said.
"A small change or a tweak could lead to a better outcome."
Dr Henderson said any changes to Australia's building codes need to demonstrate a financial benefit.
The long-term aim is to define features of newer "cyclone-resilient" homes.
"You many not notice any difference between a house of today and a house built four or five years down the track," he said.
"But it might be some small tweaks, liked for example doubling the number of clips on your guttering."
"It could be just small little tweaks like that that effect great populations of housing and can reduce the premiums, as an example."
The newer research is being financed by insurance company, Suncorp.
"North and far north Queensland needs this study," Suncorp's personal insurance chief executive Mark Milliner said.
"It could even help government determine whether building standards are suitable in addressing cyclone risk," he said.
All personal information has been removed from the insurance claims and the assessors' reports.
The research should be finished in mid-2015.
