Geneva Association Issues Report Entitled 'Flood Risk Management in Australia – Building Flood Resilience in a Changing Climate'
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Contents
1. Executive summary ... 5
2. Introduction ... 22
3. Flood risk in
3.1. Population growth and development patterns ... 26
3.2. Climate change ... 26
4. Evolution of flood risk management in
4.1. Major floods as drivers of flood risk management in
4.2. Institutional roles and responsibilities ... 28
4.3. Legislative actions ... 29
5. Components of flood risk management in
5.1. Flood risk information, communication and awareness ... 32
5.2. Flood alerts and early warnings ... 35
5.3. Emergency preparedness measures ... 36
5.4. Risk reduction measures ... 36
5.5. Property-level protection measures ... 37
5.6. Prevention through development planning and land use ... 38
5.7. Disaster risk financing measures for government ... 39
5.8. Flood insurance and other risk transfer solutions in
5.9. Reconstruction approaches ... 41
6. Towards an all-of-society approach to flood risk management ... 42
6.1. Cross-governmental collaboration ... 42
6.2. Cross-sectoral collaboration ... 42
7. Conclusions: Successes, continued challenges and lessons learned ... 44
References ... 46
Annexes
Annex 1: Overarching questions used for mapping and analysing the evolution of flood risk management ... 50
Annex 2: Framework for assessing flood risk management systems ... 53
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1. Executive Summary
As the world responds to the COVID-19 crisis, the potential compounding effects of weather-related extremes such as floods, tropical cyclones and wildfires could significantly challenge a country's emergency management capacities and slow down the socio-economic recovery. This report is part of a series on
Flooding is one of the most important physical climate risks in many countries, affecting households, communities, businesses and governments on a regular basis. There are several kinds of floods, including fluvial floods (river floods); pluvial floods (surface water flowing towards rivers); coastal floods (storm surge and coastal tidal flooding). Each kind differs in terms of occurrence, potential damage and management measures.
The rising costs associated with floods are due to the combined impacts of increasing concentrations of people and assets in areas of high flood risk, land use, urbanisation and development practices as well as increasing frequency and severity of weather-related events linked to climate change (e.g. changing storm and precipitation patterns and rising sea levels) (
The methodology and overall recommendations of the study are provided in
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Conclusions: Successes, continued challenges and lessons learned
As a wealthy developed country with a relatively small population,
FRM in
Table 3: Strengths and weaknesses of the current FRM system in
Strengths
- Funding devolved to local flood risks and FRM projects
- Strong collaborative national efforts leading to national guidance though the
- FRM guidance provided to local councils and others in the flood industry via national ('Managing the Floodplain Handbook' and Australian Rainfall and Runoff) and jurisdictional guidance documents that support the consideration of the full range of flood risk in decisions
- Broader related guidance such as Emergency Planning for Disaster Resilience and Land Use Planning for Disaster Resilient Communities through collaborative efforts led by the AIDR
- Consideration of future risks in FRM including climate change
- High insurance penetration and private-sector involvement in risk transfer
- Strong flood industry collaboration through the professional body, Floodplain Management Australia
- The Australian Government's Manual 21 provides guidance for the development of Total Flood Warning Systems (currently being updated)
- Internationally-recognised emergency services in each state and territory
-
Weaknesses
- Strong reliance on flood recovery and reconstruction funds and not mitigation
- Disproportionately low government funding allocated to FRM compared to other hazards such as bushfire and structural fire hazards
- Generally low community participation in FRM
- Generally low community flood preparedness levels
- Funding for FRM largely dependent on grant funding to local councils and not necessarily to the highest risk areas
- Some high-risk flood areas of
- 100-year flood zones are often used as benchmarks for much of the local government planning in
- Total flood warning systems not in place in some high-risk communities including those experiencing flash flooding Although there are numerous strengths, as listed in Table 3, the main core weakness in
Furthermore, FRM funding that is made available is grossly disproportionate to the funding provided for flood recovery and reconstruction and for disaster management related to bushfire and structural fire hazards.
FRM in
Another challenge is involving at-risk communities in FRM. Although there have been attempts to do this by local councils and emergency agencies, there is far more work required to engage communities meaningfully in FRM and lift flood preparedness levels. Also, the funding and support for community flood education and engagement in emergency service budgets is very low compared to that for response and recovery activities.
Considerable lessons learned from Australian floods have led to improvements in FRM. For example, the 1955 Maitland Flood instigated the first flood mitigation act in NSW (the Hunter Valley Flood Mitigation Act), the precursor to today's Floodplain Management Program and the starting point for what would become the NSW State Emergency Service. There have been significant improvements in flood warning services as a result of inquiries into the 2010-2011
Flood insurance is now readily available to residents and businesses throughout
Flood warning consultative committees are supporting the continual improvement of flood warning systems for Australian communities.
The professional industry body, Floodplain Management Australia, has been successful in bringing together many of the different stakeholders in FRM including local councils, state and territory government agencies, the Australian government (e.g. Australian
There are few monitoring and review processes in place for assessing/measuring the impact of risk communication, risk reduction, risk prevention, risk financing and risk-transfer decisions and for providing feedback to improve the different components of FRM in the country. Holistic FRM evaluation is generally limited to grant-funded projects, although some organizations such as Catchment Management Authorities in
In conclusion, opportunities for improvement to FRM in
- Further collaborative efforts (flood risk managers, emergency managers and land-use planning) to minimise the growth of flood risk in the future development of floodplains, particularly those at high risk.
- Increases in FRM funding in
- Proactive strategies and resourcing to improve FRM and flood resilience in the highest priority flood risk areas of
- Increased resourcing and effort to improve community participation in FRM and raise community flood preparedness levels across
- Broader consideration of the full spectrum of possible flood events (rather than a single design flood event) in FRM, emergency management and land-use planning.
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The full report can be viewed at: https://www.genevaassociation.org/sites/default/files/research-topics-document-type/pdf_public/frm_australia_web.pdf
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