2015 BANKSIA SMART TECHNOLOGY AWARD

Winner

A New Generation Flood Emergency Decision Support System – Integration of Natural Hazards Management in Sustainable Growth
Gold Coast City Council, QLD

Principles of sustainability are embraced in a number of the Gold Coast corporate strategies and plans, most notably, Corporate Plan Gold Coast 2020, City Plan 2015, Sustainable Flood Management Strategy.

Over the past two decades Australia has experienced an upsurge in the level of destruction caused by natural hazards and indications are the situation will only get worse. The escalation of severe disaster events is increasingly threatening our sustainable growth. There exists a critical question: how can we grow sustainably? The presented project in this submission is part of the City’s response to this question.

Indeed, in high-risk areas, sustainable growth is only possible to the degree that related decisions address the destructive potential of natural hazards. The Gold Coast, like many other coastal cities in Australia, is susceptible to flooding and its sustainability as a prosperous city depends on its ability to managing flood risk, both catchment-based and arising from Sea Level Rise.

This submission describes a technologically advanced decision support tool, developed by the City of Gold Coast, which uses an automated real time two-dimensional flood modelling for timely and accurate flood surface forecasting. The development team undertook a literature review and could not find any indication that similar system has been developed or is in operation anywhere in the world.