Flood risk management of the future: A warning from a land down under

Abstract

Flooding and flood risk management have a long history in Australia. In 1817, frustrated by recurrent flood disasters and expenditures on disaster relief, the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, wrote to settlers with a General Order recommending relocation of farmsand no compensation otherwise. This threat was precipitated by settlers building and occupying locations that endangered people, property, and public finances. From 2022 onwards, Australia has again experienced a series of disastrous flood events that have stretched the capacity, resilience, and psyche of the population, leading to expressions of frustration from all involved. These floods have highlighted persistent failures of flood risk management that appear to be worsening. In the two centuries since Lachlan's frustration with our inability to reduce flood risk, it appears that little has changed.

As continued claims and different calculations of impact are produced, the 2022 floods are now estimated to have caused US$8.1 billion dollars of losses (Munich, 2023). The scale of these losses made the 2022 East Coast floods the fourth most costly disaster internationally that year—this for a nation with the 33rd ranked population and the 12th largest economy. During 2022, in the neighboring state of Victoria, floods along the Maribyrnong river in Melbourne's North, affected more than 500 homes. More recently, in East Gippsland in the eastern part of Victoria, the same communities experienced disastrous floods and fires within months of each other. The scale, frequency, and combination of disaster events, together, confirm a new, less-predictable environment in which Australians now must govern. Such scenarios are no longer predictions and warnings but have become an Australian reality.

The Australian experience is neither surprising nor unexpected; it should give others reason to reflect on their own predicted futures. The increased variability and resulting disasters are in line with the IPCC Australasia report (Lawrence et al., 2023, p. 1612), which notes that “Extreme rainfall is projected to become more intense (high confidence), but the magnitude of change is uncertain”. The physical systems that produce flooding are changing, all within the context of countless other pressing governance challenges, including: the push for increased housing stock and affordable housing, water security, generational inequity, tax reform, biodiversity loss, geopolitical pressures in the Pacific, and a cost-of-living crisis. Together, there is a growing disenchantment with Governance in general, which includes flood risk management more specifically. Flood risk in Australia is clearly worsening, but there is need for equal appreciation for the also worsening governance context.

In March of 2022, the NSW government launched a Flood Inquiry into the causes and experiences of the February–March flood events. The report's release in July coincided with some flood victims experiencing a second round of flooding before they could even recover. The report, itself, is a standard account in which public submissions, government analyses, and expert testimony are collected and summarized. Similarly, the recommendations are unsurprising, perhaps best summarized as “do better.” By October of 2022, the Maribyrnong flooding and resulting public anger had prompted Melbourne Water and the Parliament of Victoria to initiate flood reviews of their own, each exploring how large scale floods could, seemingly so quickly, overcome existing protective measures, warnings, and emergency procedures. Importantly, these inquiries and analyses appear to have become a reflex, proposed before many of those affected had had time to begin their recoveries.

I have now been an associate editor at the Journal of Flood Risk Management for a little more than a year, reading and engaging with many of the papers recently published. A survey of the articles in this edition shows valuable contributions to knowledge and rigorous analyses of many facets of flood risk. These outputs can, in general, be categorized as efforts to improve understanding of flooding in terms of monitoring, precision, and prediction, with several efforts demonstrating the use of large datasets to improve flood modelling. A smaller number of papers explore flood risk management, emphasizing social networks and civil society's role in future flood management.

These articles make valuable contributions to the journal and to the wider flood risk management community. Moving forward, though, informed by Australia's recent experiences, the socio-governmental context in which flood risk management is conducted appears to be becoming far more contested, resulting in petrification. While analyses and modelling of flooding may improve expert understandings, the Australian experience suggests that flood risk management is presently unable to nimbly and effectively respond to the combination of changing flood risk and changing social expectations. Without improved understanding of the barriers to effective flood risk management, the production of improved knowledge is unlikely to have desired impact. This blockage feels like it is “hardening” in Australia, inhibiting the difficult decisions that are needed. For those of us working of flood risk research, attention to this emerging management challenge is critical if we are to contribute positively.