The Australian Government's role in reducing community risk: the National Flood Risk Information Project

In the summer of 2010-11, south-eastern Australian experienced a significant number of major flood events, culminating in the flooding of Brisbane in January 2011. The losses experienced by these events initiated the National Disaster Insurance Review to assess whether appropriate national measures were in place to foster more complete sharing of risk. The review highlighted the need for consumers to be more aware of the risk they may face to enable informed decisions to be made on where to live. In response to the recommendations of the review, the Australia Government determined that a 4 year programme to improve the quality, availability and accessibility of flood information across Australia should be undertaken. In July 2012, Geoscience Australia initiated the National Risk Information Project (NFRIP) to meet this objective. NFRIP was comprised of three core activities; - Australian Rainfall and Runoff: improving the quality of future flood information by completing the revision of the Australian Rainfall and Runoff guidelines. - Australian Flood Risk Information Portal: working towards making legacy flood information and associated mapping freely available from a central location through an online portal. - Water Observations from Space: analysis of the Geoscience Australia's historic archive of satellite imagery to derive water observations to help understand where flooding may have occurred in the past in areas of Australia. The presentation will outline the NFRIP outputs, discuss some of the challenges encountered in making hazard and risk information available to the community, and use of the Creative Common Attribution 4.0 license in overcoming them. Presented at the 37th Australian Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium 2016