Building Community - Queensland Floods

Building Community Resilience from Lessons in 2010/2011 Queensland Floods 1
BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE FROM LESSONS IN 2010/2011 QUEENSLAND
FLOODS
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Building Community Resilience from Lessons in 2010/2011 Queensland Floods 2
Building Community Resilience from Lessons in 2010/2011 Queensland Floods
Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of different aspects of the 2010/2011 Southeast Queensland
floods with focus on the usefulness of spatial information before, during and in the aftermath of
the flood event. It is evident from this analysis that occurrence of natural disasters is inevitable
but the severity of these disasters can be minimized significantly through proper planning and
utilization of spatial information. The information can be used to examine the suitability and
capacity of existing infrastructure to accommodate predicted floods. The government should
collaborate with other stakeholders to support development and utilization of state-of-the-art
technologies, such as satellites, GPS and drones, in collecting spatial data when it is needed.
Spatial data helps in making informed decisions in predicting flood events, estimating flood
heights, creating flood lines and inundation maps, and making floodplain area maps. This
information is useful in flood prevention, emergency response and recovery operations.
Insurance companies also use spatial information when evaluating insurance claims before
making any payments to the victims. There is also need to educate the public about flood risks,
the individual actions they can take to prevent or mitigate floods and details of their insurance
policies. The impacts of floods can be reduced significantly though joint efforts of the
government, private stakeholders and the public.
Introduction
Floods are natural disasters with devastating social, economic, environmental and health
impact1s. They can cause injuries, fatalities and sudden destruction of property worth billions of
1 Gerry FitzGerald, Ghasem Toloo, Sara Baniahmadi, David Crompton, and Shilu Tong,
“Long-term consequences of flooding: a case study of the 2011 Queensland floods,”
Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 1, no. 1 (2019): 35-40.

Building Community Resilience from Lessons in 2010/2011 Queensland Floods 3
dollars2. Floods are the commonest natural disasters and the topmost cause of fatalities related to
natural disasters worldwide3. The main cause of floods is heavy rainfall. However, this disaster
can also be caused by tsunamis, cyclones, storm surges, large tides, land slips, volcanoes and
earthquakes. Today, every part of the world is vulnerable to floods due to changing weather
patterns caused by climate change4. Australia has experienced numerous flood events of varied
extents in the past few decades. These floods were caused by different factors and had a wide
range of effects. Most importantly is that lessons learned from the previous flood events are
being used to build more flood resilient states in Australia.
Several studies have revealed that occurrence of floods in Southeast Queensland,
Australia, and several other parts of the world is not random5. These floods can be predicted
using historical flood data and relevant spatial information. For instance, Southeast Queensland
2010/2011 floods happened together with La Nina event that is usually associated with heavy
rainfall and occurrence of extensive flooding in eastern Australia6. The flood also occurred in
2010, the wettest year in the history of Queensland, Australia, which was also the wettest year
that Southeast Queensland had ever recorded since 1974, when a worse flood even had occurred.
If this information had been used appropriately then the extent of the flood would have been
2 Weiwei Du, Gerard Fitzgerald, Michele Clark, and Xiang-Yu Hous, “Health impacts of
floods,”
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 25, no. 3 (2010): 265-272.
3 Shannon Doocy, Amy Daniels, Sarah Murray, and Thomas Kirsch D., “The human
impact of floods: a historical review of events 1980-2009 and systematic literature review,”
PLoS Currents 5, no. 1 (2013): 1-10.
4 Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Shinjiro Kanae, Sonia Seneviratne, John Handmer, Neville
Nicholls, and Pascal Peduzzi, “Flood risk and climate change: global and regional
perspectives,”
Hydrological Sciences Journal, 59, no. 1 (2014): 1-28.
5 Greg McMahon, and Anthony Kiem S., “Large floods in South East Queensland,
Australia: Is it valid to assume they occur randomly?”
Australasian Journal of Water
Resources, (2018): 1-11.
6 Robin van den Honert, and John McAneney, “The 2011 Brisbane Floods: Causes,
Impacts and Implications,”
Water, 3, no. 4 (2011): 1149-1173.

Building Community Resilience from Lessons in 2010/2011 Queensland Floods 4
predicted and appropriate measures taken to mitigate its risks. The flood affected over 200,000
people, leaving 35 dead and 14 others missing. More than 6,000 businesses and 30,000 homes
were flooded and a total of 86 regional centres and towns were affected. Approximately 300
roads and several coal railway lines were closed. The damage caused by the flood was estimated
to be more than $1 billion and it resulted to economic loss of over $10 billion. Approximately
70% of Queensland State was affected by the flood7.
This paper investigates various aspects of 2010/2011 Southeast Queensland floods. The
main focus is on the usefulness of spatial information before (prevent phase), during (respond
phase) and after (recover phase) the flood event. Availability of accurate spatial information
plays a key role in making informed decisions when predicting flood events, planning for
emergency response and evacuation activities, processing and payment of insurance claims, and
recovery and reconstruction operations. Subsequent sections of the paper include: analysis and
conclusion and recommendations.
Analysis
2010/2011 Queensland floods began and ended in December 2010 and January 2011
respectively. These floods were resulted from heavy rainfall that was caused by combination of
tropical cyclone “Tasha” and a monsoonal trough. This was during a La Nina occurrence, which
was known to be an uncommon weather formation that brought rainy meteorological conditions
to eastern Australia. As a result of this event, the state recorded heavy rainfall averaging
404.7mm, exceeding the record of 369mm that had been set in 1975 during a similar event.
Several rivers in Queensland flooded, including Fitzroy River, Butrnett River, Balonne River,
7 John Hayes, and Ashantha Goonetilleke,
Building community resilience – learning
from the 2011 floods in Southeast Queensland, Australia, Brisbane: Queensland University of
Technology, 2012.