This four year project commenced on 1 July and delivered three products; the portal, Water Observations from Space and the Australian Rainfall and Runoff Guidelines. The portal is used by engineers, insurers and planners to find out what flood mapping information exists, and where, so they can better understand risks. Researchers and consultants can learn what work has already occurred in their area of interest and identify what data may be available for use in future studies.
Organisations can refine the scope of planned flood studies by understanding and applying lessons learnt from work undertaken in other regions. Others in the community can also use it to find out what flood information exists for the area that they live in. A flood study is the scientific investigation of flooding in a particular area, usually the catchment of a river system.
It may involve hydrologic and hydraulic investigations and a statistical analysis of the frequency with which floods have occurred. The purpose of a flood study is to predict the depth of water and the extent to which it will inundate the landscape in a modelled flood event. A flood map is the result of hydrologic and hydraulic analysis by scientific subject matter experts, that takes into account many factors when developing models for various scenarios. Such factors might include: terrain, water catchments, flood marks and information from historical floods.
A map can represent the extent of a flood, the probability of that event occurring and sometimes the depth of inundation in the modelled area. While some flood studies don't include separate mapping data, maps relevant to the specific study can be found in many of the attached flood study documents.
The AFSD contains general information for available studies, including the study location, date, commissioning organisation and lead consultant, and metadata on flood studies and information on flood risk. The metadata is created through a purpose-built data entry application, and adheres to the Flood Studies Data Model XML schema which can be used by data custodians to structure and share their flood information with the portal via webservices. Where available, these can be downloaded directly from the Details section in the Australian Flood Risk Information Portal once you have identified a study you are interested in.
If the study you're interested in has no downloads, you will need to contact the commissioning organisation identified in the study record to determine if a copy of the report is available.
Contact your local State Emergency Services if you require assistance in the event of a flood. The portal is maintained by Geoscience Australia. Unless otherwise noted, all information is available for re-use under Creative Commons 4. Users of the database should refer to each specific flood study report to determine any constraints in its usage. Your feedback is input to the continued development of the database and the portal. Please share your feedback via the portal's feedback button.
Some of the flood studies contained in the database may be incomplete or may have been superseded by new material. Issues with the accuracy of the study itself should be referred to the commissioning organisation, typically a local council or state government agency. However, where incorrect information is displayed in the portal about a flood study, please share your feedback via the portal's feedback button.
Registered data custodians can add flood studies and maps to the portal. Please notify Geoscience Australia via the portal's feedback button of any other published flood studies that aren't currently included in the database, but may be suitable for release through the portal. Water Observations from Space WOfS is a web service displaying historical surface water observations derived from satellite imagery for all of Australia from to present day.
WOfS aims is to allow better understanding of where water is usually present; where it is seldom observed; and where inundation of the surface has been occasionally observed by satellite. WOfS displays the detected surface water from the Australia-wide Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellite imagery archive.
The WOfS project began in and included staged releases of information and a trial product. The development of this product is now complete. Data will continue to be updated every three months. WOfS uses the Datacube application at the National Computational Infrastructure for the storage , organisation and analysis of satellite data. Use the Water Observations from Space application to view surface water observed by the Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites for all of Australia from to present.
Find out more about the WOfS product, how it was developed and its role in the broader flood mapping toolkit. For a detailed technical description of the product, see the Water Observations from Space Product Description.
Answer your questions about the WOfS product, how Geoscience Australia is using satellites to observe surface water, and the uses and limitations of the product. They often can manage the water and prevent flooding altogether — but not always. When heavy rains come, and water levels rise, aging dams can fail and unleash torrents of water on unsuspecting households.
This is part of what happened after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in Levees failed and made the flooding far worse than it would have been otherwise. While we have come to depend on 20th-century architecture, and much of it does its job well, there is always a possibility that a structure will fail. Many of our cities are made of mostly concrete and other impermeable material. When you have an urban drainage basin that is made of concrete, there is no ground for water to sink into. So, when those drainage basins fill up, it is going to mean flooding for low-lying areas.
This is mostly the case in large urban areas — think Houston and Los Angeles. When heavy rains strike, the basins used to drain them cannot always handle the load. Rain is not always the culprit when it comes to flooding.
Storm surges related to hurricanes and other storms can lead to significant flooding, as can tsunamis that are sometimes caused by underwater earthquakes. Given modern technology, we often know about storm surges and tsunamis before they arrive, but this is not always the case.
For example, in , an earthquake off the coast of Indonesia created a tsunami that gave little warning before coming ashore. Flooding often occurs when there is fast runoff into lakes, rivers and other reservoirs. This is often the case with rivers and other channels that feature steep sides.
More than U. People walk on a catwalk in a flooded St. Mark's Square during a period of seasonal high water in Venice, Italy, on October 29, In the U. Death tolls have increased in recent decades to more than people a year. In China's Yellow River Valley some of the world's worst floods have killed millions of people. When floodwaters recede, affected areas are often blanketed in silt and mud. The water and landscape can be contaminated with hazardous materials such as sharp debris, pesticides, fuel, and untreated sewage.
Potentially dangerous mold blooms can quickly overwhelm water-soaked structures. Residents of flooded areas can be left without power and clean drinking water, leading to outbreaks of deadly waterborne diseases like typhoid, hepatitis A, and cholera. Learn here about flood preparation and safety tips. Flooding, particularly in river floodplains, is as natural as rain and has been occurring for millions of years.
Famously fertile floodplains such as the Mississippi Valley, the Nile River Valley in Egypt, and the Tigris-Euphrates in the Middle East have supported agriculture for millennia because annual flooding has left tons of nutrient-rich silt deposits behind. Humans have increased the risk of death and damage by increasingly building homes, businesses, and infrastructure in vulnerable floodplains. To try to mitigate the risk, many governments mandate that residents of flood-prone areas purchase flood insurance and set construction requirements aimed at making buildings more flood resistant—with varying degrees of success.
Massive efforts to mitigate and redirect inevitable floods have resulted in some of the most ambitious engineering efforts ever seen, including New Orleans's extensive levee system and massive dikes and dams in the Netherlands. Such efforts continue today as climate change continues to put pressure on vulnerable areas. Some flood-prone cities in the U. All rights reserved. Floods No other kind of natural disaster in America has caused more death and destruction than floods.
Learn about different kinds of floods and what causes them.
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