Update of Risk Analysis Program

Summary

Katestone Environmental was commissioned by EA Systems in 2004 to develop a Heat Stress Risk Analysis Program (RAP) on behalf of the Meat & Livestock Australia Limited (MLA). The RAP was developed to assist feedlot operators to determine whether potential feedlot sites are suitable.
The program was developed initially to quantify the heat stress at potential feedlot sites using the meteorological data collected from various Bureau of Meteorology monitoring stations in Australia. The 2004 version of the RAP included meteorological data from 56 selected sites and the meteorological data was screened to remove obvious erroneous data from the files.
Since 2004, the feedlot operators have found the RAP to be useful and have requested that the RAP include more locations. The latest version of the RAP has a total of 48 sites. MLA also requested that further analysis of the data be undertaken to consider the following:Investigate the effects of climate change in selecting a suitable dataset to adequately represent the potential future risk;
Suitability of data in terms of accurately representing the climate at the location;
Investigation of possible methods for extending the data sets at sites with limited years of data;
Scrutiny of heat stress events and comparison of sites to ensure accuracy of risk calculated.

Along with these changes required for the RAP, further studies have been conducted by MLA to refine the susceptibility of various breeds of cattle to high heat load.
This report covers the above issues and also the following:Investigation of dataset length required to ensure risk generated for a site is representative of possible future impacts due to climate change.
Sites included in the RAP and methods used to analyse and calculate the risk.
Comparison of old and new RAP.
Updated HLI thresholds included in the RAP.
New delivery mechanism for RAP on the web.
New HLI and AHLU calculators on the web.