<div>The A1 poster incorporates 4 images of Australia taken from space by Earth observing satellites. The accompanying text briefly introduces sensors and the bands within the electromagnetic spectrum. The images include examples of both true and false colour and the diverse range of applications of satellite images such as tracking visible changes to the Earth’s surface like crop growth, bushfires, coastal changes and floods. Scientists, land and emergency managers use satellite images to analyse vegetation, surface water or human activities as well as evaluate natural&nbsp;hazards.</div>

Widespread flooding and associated damage in south-east Queensland during January and February, 2011 have demonstrated the importance of flood risk assessment. Flood risk assessment requires knowledge of the hazard, nature of properties exposed and their vulnerability to flood damage. Flood risk assessment can addresses different aspects of flood risk, i.e., hydrological, structural, economic and social aspects. This report presents the results of work undertaken by Geoscience Australia during 2011-2012 to further the understanding of the vulnerability of Australian buildings to inundation. The work consists of three parts: 1. Development of vulnerability curves for inundation, without velocity, of residential homes of the types encountered during surveys following the January, 2011 flooding in south-east Queensland. 2. Development of vulnerability curves for inundation, without velocity, of building types typical of the Alexandria Canal area of the inner south of Sydney. 3. Development of vulnerability curves for inundation with velocity (storm surge) of residential homes of the types encountered during surveys following TC Yasi, February, 2011.

ACRES acquired SPOT 2 satellite images over the Namoi River, between the towns of Walgett and Wee Waa in December 1997 and November 2000. The November 2000 image consists of 12 scenes in which floodwaters, peaking at 8 metres, inundating the region are visible as green and light blue. Extensive flooding is evident. The December 1997 image shows the area of the Namoi River without floodwaters. The Namoi River catchment area is more than 350 kilometres long and stretches from Walcha in the east to Walgett in the west. Other river systems in the region include the Gwydir, Castlereagh, Hunter, Macquarie, Macleay, Manning, Culgoa and Condamine. You can find these rivers on Geoscience Australia's interactive Map of Australia.

Geoscience Australia, the Western Australian Department of Planning and the Western Australian Planning Commission have collaborated through this study to develop a regional-scale inundation model capable of simulating combined storm tide and riverine flood scenarios within current and future climate conditions (sea-level rise influences only). Modelling scenarios were applied to the Busselton region of Western Australia.

Indonesia is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. For 10 years the Australian and Indonesian governments, science agencies and universities, have partnered to strengthen disaster management in Indonesia. Working together on science, technology and policy has greatly improved decision making around disaster management in Indonesia. By helping people prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters, more lives can be saved, impacts on the most vulnerable members of society reduced, and infrastructure can be protected. Our partnership has concentrated on strengthening the evidence base for formed disaster management by improving: 1) hazard information for earthquake, tsunami, volcano and flood 2) spatial data for exposure (population, building, roads and infrastructure) 3) decision support tool (InaSAFE) to inform disaster response and management decisions. This document outlines the highlights of the Indonesian-Australian collaboration on the use of science and technology in disaster management.

The aim of this document is to * outline the information management process for inundation modelling projects using ANUGA * outline the general process adopted by Geoscience Australia in modelling inundation using ANUGA * allow a future user to understand (a) how the input and output data has been stored (b) how the input data has been checked and/or manipulated before use (c) how the model has been checked for appropriateness

The response to emergency situations such as floods and fires demand products in short time frames. If you use remote sensing then the response typically involves detailed examination of imagery in order to determine the spectral bands, ratios and associated thresholds that map the desired features such as flood or burn extent. The trial and error process associated with manual threshold selection is often time consuming and can result in significant errors due to confounding factors such as clouds and shadowed areas. By modelling features such as flood waters or fire scars as Gaussian distributions, allowing for fuzzy thresholds with neighbouring features, the required thresholds can be automatically derived from the imagery and emergency events can have extents determined much more rapidly. Automatic threshold selection minimises trial and error, thereby dramatically reducing processing turn-around time.

In this study, a 1 m resolution LiDAR Digital Elevation Model (DEM) has been used for predictive flood modelling and flood-risk assessment that will inform recharge studies. To produce accurate predictions of flood inundation and calculations of flood volume, the DEM was initially levelled to the Darling River floodplain by subtracting interpolated floodplain elevation trend surface from the DEM. This produces a de-trended floodplain surface. Secondly, the levelled DEM surface was adjusted to the water level reading at the Darling River gauging station (Site 425012), upstream of Weir 32, at the time when the LiDAR was acquired. Flood extents were derived by elevation slicing of the adjusted levelled DEM up to any chosen river level. River-level readings from historical and current events were extracted from the NSW Office of Water real time river data website. The flood-depth dataset is an inverted version of the flood extent grid. Predicted flood depth and extent were classified by depth/elevation slice ranges of the adjusted de-trended DEM with 25 and 50 cm increments. Predicted flood extents have been validated by comparisons to satellite images from the 1990 floods, and photographs of inundation from recent flood events. In all cases imagery and photo validation proved that predicted extents are accurate. The flood-risk predictions were then applied to a number of river level scenarios. These included (1) examination of the extent of flooding at the highest historical level; (2) determination of the river level required to completely inundate the Coonambidgal Formation scroll plain in the GWMAR1 study area (probable maximum recharge potential) and (3) an assessment of flood impacts in 0.5 m increments from 5.5 to 7 m of river level rise at the Site 425012 gauging station. In summary, this flood modelling methodology has been used to predict the extent and depth of water coverage across the Darling floodplain under different scenarios.

Natural hazards have an impact on every Australian State and Territory. These hazards include bushfires, cyclones, earthquakes, floods, landslides, severe weather, tsunami and volcanoes. These phenomena threaten lives and damage private and public assets, as well as disrupt water, power, transport and communication services. These hazards and their associated impacts also can seriously affect employment, public administration and incomes to industry, agriculture and commerce.

Floods are Australia's most expensive natural hazard with annual average damages estimated at $377 million. Modelling flood hazard and potential flood impact is therefore an important first step in reducing the cost of floods to the community. The availability of a rigorously tested free software modelling tool for flooding would assist in meeting this objective. ANUGA is a collaborative effort of Geoscience Australia and the Australian National University and has gained increasing interest as an open source two-dimensional flood model. The development of ANUGA for flood modelling purposes has been guided and furthered through close consultation with a number of local government and consulting engineers. This paper highlights case studies where ANUGA has been used for both hydrological and hydraulic modelling. This paper also makes two broad recommendations. The first recommendation is for further model validation against historical flood events. Additional model comparison is also needed, particularly against other two-dimensional models. ANUGA should also be validated against a suite of hydraulic tests to provide confidence in ANUGA's ability to be used as a general purpose hydraulic model. The second broad recommendation is that the ANUGA software is further developed to make it comparable with other two-dimensional flood models. Priorities for this development include the ability to model structures (culverts, pipes and bridges), the addition of a kinematic viscosity term and the inclusion of discharge as an inflow boundary condition. The ability to incorporate variable bed elevation in models, account for water storage in buildings and consider spatially and depth varying Manning's friction 'n' are also important. The development of a graphical (geographical information systems) user interface would make ANUGA more accessible.