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Planning Minister John Day today announced a new initiative to help prevent and plan for coastal and flooding hazards in Western Australia.

The joint project between the State Government, through the Department of Planning, and the Federal Government, through Geoscience Australia, would create a model to help better understand the potential impact of combined storm surge and sea level rises at Bunbury and Busselton.

“The potential impacts of climate change include both sea level rise and a predicted increase in the frequency and intensity of severe storm events and these may increase the vulnerability of the South-West coastline to flooding,” Mr Day said.

The Minister said the model would build on the existing open-source hydrodynamic modelling capability (ANUGA) developed by Geoscience Australia and the Australian National University, with the long-term view of making the capability available to all levels of government.

“ANUGA is a powerful tool for analysing hydrodynamic and hydrologic information and forecasting potential inundation, or assessing inundation risk. It has already been applied to understanding tsunami impact to the Australian coastline,” he said. 

“When this model is developed, it will enable State and local government to investigate mitigation options for a range of hydrodynamic hazards.

“It will be the first of its kind in Australia and provide an invaluable planning tool for all levels of governments to predict how storm surges and sea level rises will react to potential barriers.  This tool will assist in determining the effectiveness of proposed infrastructure.

“This enables governments to ensure we are prepared to predict and manage these hazards, particularly in areas of high urban development such as Busselton and Bunbury.

“The State Government is committed to a high standard of risk management and this is just one of a number of projects in coastal towns we are initiating to better plan for the future.

“The Department of Planning will provide important historical and environmental data for the project, and Geoscience Australia will equip its model with the necessary capabilities to provide the scenarios.

“This model will be unique as most existing storm surge models are not able to combine the surge arising from atmospheric forcing with the flooding component, although these often occur together in a storm surge event.”