“We are […] sandbagging the state”, New South Wales Emergency Services Minister Steph Cooke declared on Saturday. And so we endure the third La Niña season with this waiting-for-the-next-disaster attitude.
After heavy rain and repeated floods across Australia’s eastern states over the past three years, it’s worth considering what we have and haven’t learned.
A good way to improve flood readiness is to understand how floods work, and then to examine adaptive solutions developed by communities facing similar situations in other countries. Every river behaves differently and responses should site-specific. However, the following approaches may be relevant to local conditions and are likely to improve flood protection.
