A forum convened by Engineers Australia supported by the Institute of Public Works Engineering and & Consult Australia held on 15th and 16th March 2011 has reviewed the experience of the January floods in Victoria and developed a seven-point plan to improve future flood planning and management. The Forum noted that the performance of Government agencies, Local Government, community groups, and private bodies during the Floods had been very good, overall, with a low level of injury and only one lost life. This was despite the unprecedented scale of the floods, which meant there were few benchmarks by which to frame the management response. Nevertheless, such a massive event provides many opportunities to learn and prepare for future events. The Forum’s seven-point plan was prepared with this in mind, and comprises:
1. Improvements to risk-based planning for disaster management at State, Catchment and Local Government levels, including planning floodways through communities that minimise damage;
2. A communication strategy during flood events that delivers more relevant, better targeted information to the community by more effective use of technology;
3. A streamlined, upskilled chain-of-command, with clearer team accountabilities and increased training for both professional and volunteer staff;
4. Infrastructure improvements, especially to the network of flood gauges;
5. More flexibility for Councils to respond to the needs of recovery, including in procurement of goods and services during both the disaster and the recovery and options for ‘building back better’ rather than simply replacing assets with like infrastructure that proved inadequate during the flood;
6. Better knowledge resources, including clearer responsibilities for and recordkeeping on water assets and levees and better catchment drainage models for flood planning; and
7. Improving public understanding of disaster risk and factoring potential flood liabilities into any assessment of approvals for land use, especially for urban development and farm settlements.
Read the full draft communique here If you would like to comment on the draft communique please do so by sending your comments by 1st April to vic@ipwea.org.au
Thankyou to David Sutcliffe (IPWEAvic Board member) and David Eltringham (IPWEAvic Regional Group Co-ordinaotr Wimmera- Mallee) for co-ordinating the event.
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