Recent Advances in the Development of Flood Forecasting and Warning Services in Australia

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is the lead national agency for flood forecasting and warning services in Australia, working in partnership with agencies at the State and Local Government levels. These services cover river basins with response times ranging from 6-12 hours through to very large basins with flood travel times of the order of weeks. Flash flood warning services are also provided. Technical development work is advancing across many areas and advances are gradually being included into the on-line system used for flood forecasting operations developed as an integral component of a larger meteorological operations and communications system. These include work on improving the rainfall inputs to the system through the quantitative use of weather radar, precipitation forecasts from numerical weather models and improvements to real-time data systems that facilitate regional scale data monitoring supporting local scale flood warning operations. These developments will be discussed as well as advances being made to improve the effectiveness of services, particularly through increased use of the Internet. Finally the paper will include a discussion of the outcomes from a recent review of ways to improve the overall effectiveness of flood warning in Australia, which identified a need for improvement in areas such as a need for closer community engagement and improved risk communication.