Harold Sternbeck Medal and YFM Outstanding Presenter Award


1st July 2022

FMA Communications Director Sue Ribbons, who coordinated evaluation of the Harold Sternbeck Medal and YFM Outstanding Presenter Award at the 2022 FMA National Conference, is delighted to announce this year’s winners.

The Harold Sternbeck Medal competition for best presentation overall at the FMA Annual Conference has been an FMA Conference tradition for many years. Last year, in addition to the Harold Sternbeck Medal, we introduced the Young Floodplain Manager (YFM) Outstanding Presenter Award.

The winner of the 2022 Harold Sternbeck Medal is:

  • Alex Nero (AECOM) — Mental Health and Extreme Weather Events: Considering the Connections, Impacts and Risks. Alex is also a Young Floodplain Manager.


The winners of the 2022 Harold Sternbeck Highly Commended Awards are:

  • Cath Walker (Water Modelling Solutions) — Getting the most out of flood studies: Connecting consultants, councils and classrooms. Cath is also a Young Floodplain Manager.
  • David Tetley (Catchment Simulation Solutions) — How vegetation changes have altered flood levels in the Hawkesbury-Nepean.
  • Ella Harrison (Queensland Reconstruction Authority) — The Future of Flood Risk Management in Queensland.


Big congratulations to Alex Nero, a Young Floodplain Manager, whose presentation was ranked best overall at the Conference and so qualifies for both awards in 2022. Double congratulations to Alex for such an Outstanding effort!

Also double congratulations to Cath Walker, another Young Floodplain Manager, who won one of the Harold Sternbeck Highly Commended Awards and so also qualifies for YFM Highly Commended Presenter as well.

These two prestigious competitions are held at the FMA Annual Conference to encourage excellence across all aspects of a Conference presentation. Both 10 minute and 20 minute presentations are included. This year there was a total of 63 presentations.

The Harold Sternbeck Medal is awarded in recognition of Harold Sternbeck's contribution to FMA. Harold was a former Chairman of FMA and FMA’s first Life Member. He was a fierce negotiator on all things flood related, especially the politics of funding allocations.

The FMA Young Floodplain Managers (YFM) network exists to represent, engage, and inspire young floodplain management professionals across Australia to share new ideas and engage in industry discussions. 

In addition to the formal awards, we would also like to congratulate the following presenters, who were also ranked very highly by the judges (in alphabetical order by name):
 

  • Mark Babister (WMAwater) — What is an acceptable impact?
  • Philip Conway (IAG) — Quantifying residual risk beyond the 1% AEP event with climate change
  • Ed Henty (Dryside Engineering) — Flood Resilience for Floodplain Towns – The Moree Experience
  • Raymond Laine (NSW Dept of Planning and Environment) — Opening that ICOLL: Are we managing flood risk? Ray is also a Young Floodplain Manager.
  • Dan Rodger (JBPacific) — Development of Northern NSW Flood Mapping Using Lessons From Flood Insurers.
  • Rhys Thomson (Rhelm) — Modern and traditional data capture for flood model validation: Hawkesbury-Nepean insights.
  • Stephen Yeo (Infrastructure NSW) — Overview of the March 2021 Hawkesbury-Nepean flood: characteristics, impacts, learnings.


Once again, congratulations to our winners for the great contributions they have made to the success of the 2022 FMA National Conference.

 

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