By Paul Hemsley
Water minister Peter Walsh said the $12.1 million Floodzoom tool will be built to improve communications to communities that are situated in areas that flood.
“It will give emergency services a more accurate prediction of flood behaviour and help individual land holders assess their own flood risk,” the minister said.
Floodzoom will be built to use weather forecast models, satellite observations, river gauges and hydrological modelling to improve warnings and emergency response.
“Emergency services organisations will be able to use the information to plan response activities before a flooding,” Mr Walsh said.
“[It will also] provide the community with information so they can act to reduce their risk”.
According to a DSE spokesperson said the project will involve a web based, computer generated flood intelligence platform that will “simulate and depict flood behaviour in geographical information systems format”.
As part of a greater $19.3 million plan to repair the flood warning networks damaged after the January floods, the rest of the funding will go towards flood plans for rural and urban areas.
Mr Walsh also said funding will go to repairing and replacing damaged stream gauges, collecting and assessing information from the January floods and “addressing gaps” in the flood warning system.
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