Flood study wins Spatial Award

QUEENSLAND, Australia, Sept. 4, 2007 -- A Project that will help the Gold Coast City Council and emergency services deal with future floods has taken out a significant Award at the Queensland Spatial Excellence Awards.

Leading spatial consultant, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), in association with the Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) received the Award for its submission on The Coomera and Nerang Rivers Hazard and Vulnerability Study. The award was accepted by the Queensland Spatial Manager Mark Goodhew.

The joint submission won the prestigious Research and Development Category.

This Award recognizes SKM's emerging capacity to provide unprecedented levels of information to key stakeholders, whilst at the same time providing better risk management for GCCC's Flood and Vulnerability Study.

The successful Project outcome now offers Council and emergency services guidance to prioritize resources in a real flood event.

The GCCC Waterways and Flood Management Group engaged SKM to undertake a flood hazard and vulnerability assessment for the Nerang and Coomera River Systems.

The Project investigated the consequences that arise from the interaction of flood hazards with vulnerable elements in the community.

Under consideration were different demographics within the community and their respective capabilities to respond to the hazards produced by a flood.

Other issues of importance to the Project were the direct physical hazards presented by floodwaters, as well as indirect hazards such as the impact of utility failure and evacuation route potential.

The methodology for determining flood consequences was developed to be scientifically based and easily repeated as catchment changes are implemented and inputs updated.

The purpose-built consequence algorithm was built into the ESRI ArcGIS Model Builder.

This allowed for the development of a single package capable of taking the full set of inputs performing the consequence analysis over a broad spatial coverage.

The result is a consequence output that allows the user to quickly identify the priority areas using intuitive color and number scaling, consistent with standard risk assessment procedures.

Evacuation routes and the identification of areas likely to become isolated by floodwaters were carried out with the ArcGIS Network analyst.

In total, the Project output provided a methodology and a set of tools for the determination of flood consequences across the floodplain.

This offers a scientific basis for identifying the spatial variation of flood impacts.

SKM's Project Manager for the work, Shannon Dooland, was delighted with the award.

"This is a great reward for a lot of hard work by Gold Coast City Council and our SKM team members," said Dooland.

"With the use of this new approach, Gold Coast City Council is at the cutting edge of spatial flood analysis," he said.

"For SKM, for Council, for emergency services and all residents in flood-prone areas of the Gold Coast, this Project has had a very successful outcome," said Dooland.

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