Queensland’s New Framework for Flood Risk Management Economic Assessments

Flooding is one of Australia’s more prevalent natural disasters, causing injury to people, damage to property and infrastructure, losses to business earnings, increases to the costs of providing government services, and intangible impacts such as environmental or social damages.

Australia’s National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (2011) and Queensland’s Strategy for Disaster Resilience (2017) provide the overarching framework to build disaster resilient communities in Queensland and Australia. Within this, Government has the role of identifying and implementing strategies to manage the disaster risks. The National Strategy recognises that consistent information on the costs and benefits of risk management options, which considers the full impacts on the social, built, economic and natural environments, is required to support this.

In Australia economic assessments for flood management projects have traditionally focused on the tangible damages of flooding, particularly to property. Other impacts of flooding, such as environmental or social impacts, are typically considered qualitatively or assessed through a multi-criteria assessment. The absence of state and/or national guidance on undertaking such assessments has also led to a wide variety of approaches, methodologies, data and results. This creates an unnecessary layer of complexity when seeking to compare and prioritise projects, within states and across Australia. It can also lead to the underestimation of the return on investment resulting from flood risk management projects, due to the incomplete capture of benefits.

The Brisbane River Strategic Floodplain Management Plan (SFMP) was publicly released in 2019 and includes 52 actions aimed to improve the resilience, safety and prosperity of the community and businesses in the Brisbane River floodplain, and Queensland more widely.  The Queensland Reconstruction Authority (QRA) was allocated the lead to implement Action FM7 ‘Extend the economic framework established in the Strategic Plan and Technical Evidence Report to include community awareness and resilience, disaster management and land use planning.’

The Economic Assessment Framework for Flood Risk Management Projects is due for publication in early 2021. It was developed through a collaborative process with other state governments, universities, private practitioners, and key stakeholders to road test a number of approaches and develop the guideline to support a consistent methodology for economic assessments, which also quantify the impacts from non-structural options such as community awareness and resilience, building and development controls, and emergency management.

The new framework promotes consistent, comparable and complete economic assessments, and forms a key component of Queensland’s toolkit towards greater investment in risk mitigation and fostering disaster resilient communities.