Since the late 1990's‐2003, there have been a number of severe floods in areas that have not been subject to this level of flooding in earlier times. All these recent floods have resulted in two alarming factors for all property markets. This paper is based on a comprehensive survey of property professionals throughout England and Wales and a study of flood‐affected residential property in Sydney, Australia. It provides details of how exposure to flood events impacts on residential property markets and buyer behaviour associated with flood‐prone property, and will also provide some insight into the implications and possible ramifications of flooding on the construction, finance and insurance of residential property in flood‐affected areas.

Current planning schemes in Australia identify areas that are potentially flood liable. This identification of flood liable land is based on flood height levels over time. Throughout New South Wales this measure of flood affectation is determined by three classifications. These classifications also influence the development of residential property within these flood areas.Prospective purchasers are advised of this flood zoning when a full title search is carried out. However, as these properties are often located on the flood plain, and not within sight of the river, flooding can appear visually remote to the uninformed buyer. This study will analyse residential house sales in flood prone areas and compare price movements of these houses to similar houses in immediate adjoining areas that are not affected by flooding.The analysis will cover the period of 1984 to 2000. This period includes the last major floods in Sydney during 1990. This study period will determine what impact a major flood has on residential housing prices and whether this effect is on-going or decreases the longer the area is flood free.

The past decade has seen an increase in the number of significant natural disasters that have caused considerable loss of life as well as damage to all property markets in the affected areas. In many cases these natural disasters have not only caused significant property damage, but in numerous cases, have resulted in the total destruction of the property in the location.With these disasters attracting considerable media attention, the public are more aware of where these affected property markets are, as well as the overall damage to properties that have been damaged or destroyed.This heightened level of awareness has to have an impact on the participants in the property market, whether, a developer, vendor seller or investor.To assess this issue a residential property market that has been affected by a significant natural disaster over the past two years has been analysed to determine the overall impact of the disaster on buyer, renter and vendor behaviour, as well as prices in these residential markets.This paper is based on data from the Brisbane flood in January 2011. This natural disaster resulted in loss of life and partial and total devastation of considerable residential property sectors. Data for the research has been based on the residential sales and rental listings for each week of the study period to determine the level of activity in the specific property sectors and these are also compared to the median house prices for the various suburbs for the same period based on suburbs being either flood affected or flood free. As there are 48 suburbs included in the study, it has been possible to group these suburbs on a socio-economic basis to determine possible differences dur to location and value. Data was accessed from realestate.com.au, a free real estate site that provides details of current rental and sales listings on a suburb basis, R.P. Data a commercial property sales database and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.The paper found that sales listings fell immediately after the flood in the affected areas but there was no corresponding fall or increase in sale listings in the flood free suburbs. There was a significant decrease in the number of rental listings follow the flood as affected parties sought alternate accommodation. The greatest fall in rental listings were in areas close to the flood affected suburbs indicating the desire to be close to the flooded property during the repair period.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the buyer awareness and acceptance of environmental and energy efficiency measures in the New Zealand residential property markets. This study aims to provide a greater understanding of consumer behaviour in the residential property market in relation to green housing issues Design/methodology/approach -The paper is based on an extensive survey of Christchurch real estate offices and was designed to gather data on the factors that were considered important by buyers in the residential property market. The survey was designed to allow these factors to be analysed on a socio-economic basis and to compare buyer behaviour based on property values. Findings -The results show that regardless of income levels, buyers still consider that the most important factor in the house purchase decision is the location of the property and price. Although the awareness of green housing issues and energy efficiency in housing is growing in the residential property market, it is only a major consideration for young and older buyers in the high income brackets and is only of some importance for all other buyer sectors of the residential property market. Many of the voluntary measures introduced by Governments to improve the energy efficiency of residential housing are still not considered important by buyers, indicating that a more mandatory approach may have to be undertaken to improve energy efficiency in the established housing market, as these measures are not valued by the buyer. Originality/value -The paper confirms the variations in real estate buyer behaviour across the full range of residential property markets and the acceptance and awareness of green housing issues and measures. These results would be applicable to most established and transparent residential property markets.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the Fuzzy Markov development for assessing the structural integrity of buried transportation bridges. In doing so, the appropriateness of Fuzzy Markov will be assessed, leading to the subsequent model. Design/methodology/approach This research will utilize the Fuzzy Markov techniques as the conceptual framework. Such methodology is further supported via the utilization and evaluation of 30 buried transportation bridges using the developed Fuzzy Markov model. Findings Subsequently, through a developed Fuzzy Markov model, this research found that as the basis of structural resilience, specific matrices for age-dependent transition probability can be compiled using conditional survival probabilities in the various structural states; as the basis of structural integrity, specific environmental and economic schemes can also be established based on inspection intervals, intervention systems and failure phases; exact inspection and maintenance intervals can be scheduled to further prolong an asset’s life; and clear and early warning signs can also be formulated for immediate intervention when the structural integrity of the asset are indeed compromised. Originality/value The gap within the literature currently surrounds the limitation of computational analysis for some buried structures such as bridges. Specifically, to streamline such evaluation and regimes, a Fuzzy Markov is developed and reviewed.