Key takeaways from the Floodplain Management Australia 2025 Conference
- Chris Vernali
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Sophia Buchanan, ANZ Regional Product Lead for Flood Products at Jacobs
Introduction
Last week I attended the annual Floodplain Management Australia (FMA) conference in Melbourne, where I had the opportunity to showcase Flood Platform’s model management, collaboration and simulation and analysis capabilities. With just shy of 500 delegates, it was amazing to see over half the audience raise their hand when asked if this was their first FMA conference!
This conference provides great opportunities to meet new people in the industry but also gain perspective from other disciplines outside of our own including: flood risk specialists, town planners and emergency responders. It was a busy week packed full of workshops, presentations and networking events and I’ve summarised my key takeaways below.
The way we manage and communicate flood risk is changing
One key question which was brought up on multiple occasions was how we break the damage/rebuilt cycle, with many Local Government Areas (LGAs) not being able to rebuild before another flood event occurs. A great presentation on this challenge was international presenter Doug Bellomo from AECOM, who spoke about the impact and challenges of Hurricane Helene. He shared some ideas on how we might incentivise communities to rebuilt with stronger resilience.
A keynote presentation by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) also highlighted that there aren’t enough resources or funding to manage the number of disasters happening across the country and that flooding was just one of many that required prioritisation.
Best practices are changing at a rapid pace
Prior to 2016, the data, tools and methods for undertaking flood studies and planning around flood risk were fairly consistent but today we have guidelines being updated, new guidelines being published (such as the new Shelter in place guideline for flash flooding, NSW Government), updated data for rainfall and climate factors and tools that allow more complex analysis (such as the new Monte Carlo Analysis in Storm Injector). Attending these events and having a growing network is a necessity to stay current in the industry.
New tools are on the horizon for Australian hydrology
One key reason for attending the conference was to gather further feedback on traditional hydrology tools in Australia and determine if the industry wants something other than the 1960s tools they’re accustomed to – they do, desperately.
I presented on the outcomes of a survey I ran recently on the methods and tools being used today and some perspectives on the future. There was a common consensus that accuracy came down to an individual’s understanding. A quote from the survey sums it up nicely:
“Modelling is only as accurate as the practitioner's understanding of each package's strengths and weaknesses and how they best fit the data, waterway of interest and understanding of the influence of parametric uncertainty”
Anonymous, Australian Hydrology Survey Respondent
If we know this to be true, we need to redirect our efforts to providing better training and knowledge sharing on the methods and catchments rather than spending time transferring data between tools and building Python scripts just to build a model. The Jacobs Product Team will be investing time into developing a concept design for what a solution could look like, freeing up practitioners to focus on what is important.
Many organisations are still facing ‘big data’ problems
This is the second year that Flood Platform by Jacobs has attended the FMA conference as a trade exhibitor. There were a lot of conversations around the need for improved management of flood models and better access to flood information, with many admitting that access to model data was a significant challenge in their organisation. The level of investment being made into flood models was evident, with the need for storing and managing these models only growing.
“The FMA was a great platform for hearing and sharing on a wide range of topics, such as best practice and examples of real community engagement, details on technical improvements in modelling approaches and issues around dealing with the vast amounts of data generated by and for flood plain management professionals.”
Petra Neve, Project Director, Jacobs
If you want to know more about how Flood Platform can help your organisation manage, share and store flood models in a collaborative environment or you want to see what others are doing to address this challenge, join us for our next webinar with the Australian Water School – Unlocking the full value of a flood model.
Bring on 2026 at the Gold Coast!
I’ve been attending the FMA conferences since 2018, and this was by far my favourite year. Perhaps being a remote worker, it was meeting the Jacobs team in person and all the new faces that made it so or maybe it was the fantastic mix of professions and presentations. Either way, I’m looking forward to 2026 on the Gold Coast and keen to bring a solid new entry to the trade exhibition best pen competition!
Sophia Buchanan
Sophia is the ANZ Product Lead for Flood Products at Jacobs. Growing up surrounded by waterways on Australia’s coastline, Sophia is passionate about supporting peers in ANZ with technology that solves water problems.
