FMA August Quarterly Meeting Roundup

50 Members and visitors attended the 18 August Quarterly Meeting and Workshop at the Bureau of Meteorology’s office in Sydney, where attendees were welcomed by Acting New South Wales Regional Director Stephen Lellyett.
 

Speakers included FMA Ambassador Allan Gear who provided a fascinating snapshot of his experiences at the US Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan in June. Mr Gear attended the conference at his own expense, and participated in a range of technical sessions including delivering his own presentation, “Of Doubts and Flooded Drains – The Artistry in Defining an Urban Overland Flowpath”

Mr Gear is also winner of the prestigious 2016 Harold Sternbeck Medal for the outstanding presentation at the FMA Conference. His conference presentation formed the basis for his presentation to the US ASFPM Conference. FMA President Ian Dinham presented Allan with his medal at the meeting.

Highly Commended Certificates were presented to Andrew Gissing, with co-authors Katharine Haynes and Lucinda Coates, from Risk Frontiers, for the paper entitled ‘An Analysis of Human Fatalities from Flood Hazards in Australia 1900-2014’, and Stephen Yeo, Flood Focus Consulting, with Thelma Marr and Ailsa Schofield  from Shoalhaven City Council, and  for the paper entitled ‘Plans Schmans? How Caravan Parks Responded to the August 2015 Sussex Inlet and Conjola Lake Floods’.
 

The Insurance Council of Australia’s General Manager Risk Karl Sullivan provided a potted history of flood insurance in Australia, from its beginnings in 2006-2007 when there was no residential flood insurance available to 2016 when 94.5% of residential policies have full flood cover.

Mr Sullivan said most Councils are providing flood information for ICA’s National Flood Information Database. In those areas where Councils have not provided the information ICA is using an alternative product, but generally it won’t be as accurate.

At the NSW level State Emergency Service’s Geospatial Intelligence Program Coordinator Stephanie Plattner delivered an update on the NSW Government’s Flood Data Web Portal Project which will proceed to user acceptance testing shortly. All Councils will have access to the Portal.

FMA’s next meetings are:

Brisbane - Queensland Chapter Meeting on Wednesday 16 November
Sydney - NSW Chapter (Quarterly) Meeting on Thursday 24 November.
 

A highlight of the Quarterly Meeting was the workshop led by Grantley Smith, Principal Engineer and Manager of the Water Research Laboratory (WRL) of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UNSW Australia. A team at WRL has recently tested how cars behave when they encounter flood waters.

The tests are a world first: previous experiments to understand the stability of cars in floodwaters have relied on using vehicle miniatures, rather than actual cars. The presentation provided an overview of the experiments and an interpretation of WRL’s preliminary findings. 

The work was made possible through the support of the NSW SES, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and IAG.