Accepted: 29 February 2024
DOI: 10.1111/jfr3.12985
EDITORIAL
Flood risk management of the future: A warning from a
land down under
Flooding and flood risk management have a long history
in Australia. In 1817, frustrated by recurrent flood disas-
ters and expenditures on disaster relief, the Governor of
New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, wrote to settlers
with a General Order recommending relocation of farms
and no compensation otherwise. This threat was precipi-
tated by settlers building and occupying locations that
endangered people, property, and public finances. From
2022 onwards, Australia has again experienced a series of
disastrous flood events that have stretched the capacity,
resilience, and psyche of the population, leading to
expressions of frustration from all involved. These floods
have highlighted persistent failures of flood risk manage-
ment that appear to be worsening. In the two centuries
since Lachlan's frustration with our inability to reduce
flood risk, it appears that little has changed.
1 | AN EVOLVING ENVIRONMENT
Australia's recent flood experience is suggestive of a new
period in which environmental change combines with an
inability to respond nimbly and appropriately. The result
is that while flood risk increases and expands geographi-
cally, our ability to respond effectively appears to be
diminishing. Surprisingly, even massive economic incen-
tives associated with effective flood risk reduction
(Binskin et al., 2020) appear unable to generate sufficient
motivation to address the ongoing, increasing, and
persistent production of flood risk. The figures are stag-
gering. Flooding in Australia costs AU$38 billion annu-
ally, with models predicting that those costs will rise to
between AU$73 and AU$94 billion annually by 2060
(Deloitte, 2021). As summarized by the Climate Council
of Australia at the time:
“The storms and floods that affected southeast
Queensland and coastal New South Wales in
February and March were equal to Australia's
costliest ever extreme weather event at $5.56
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly cited.
© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Flood Risk Management published by Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
J Flood Risk Management. 2024;17:e12985.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12985
billion in insured losses from more than 236,000
claims” (Climate Council, 2022, p. 2).
As continued claims and different calculations of
impact are produced, the 2022 floods are now estimated
to have caused US$8.1 billion dollars of losses
(Munich, 2023). The scale of these losses made the 2022
East Coast floods the fourth most costly disaster interna-
tionally that year—this for a nation with the
33rd ranked population and the 12th largest economy.
During 2022, in the neighboring state of Victoria, floods
along the Maribyrnong river in Melbourne's North,
affected more than 500 homes. More recently, in East
Gippsland in the eastern part of Victoria, the same com-
munities experienced disastrous floods and fires
within months of each other. The scale, frequency, and
combination of disaster events, together, confirm a new,
less-predictable environment in which Australians now
must govern. Such scenarios are no longer predictions
and warnings but have become an Australian reality.
2 | NO T JU ST C LI M ATE CH A NG E
The Australian experience is neither surprising nor unex-
pected; it should give others reason to reflect on their
own predicted futures. The increased variability and
resulting disasters are in line with the IPCC Australasia
report (Lawrence et al., 2023, p. 1612), which notes that
“Extreme rainfall is projected to become more intense
(high confidence), but the magnitude of change is uncer-
tain”. The physical systems that produce flooding are
changing, all within the context of countless other press-
ing governance challenges, including: the push for
increased housing stock and affordable housing, water
security, generational inequity, tax reform, biodiversity
loss, geopolitical pressures in the Pacific, and a cost-
of-living crisis. Together, there is a growing disenchant-
ment with Governance in general, which includes flood
risk management more specifically. Flood risk in
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Australia is clearly worsening, but there is need for equal
appreciation for the also worsening governance context.
In March of 2022, the NSW government launched a
Flood Inquiry into the causes and experiences of the
February–March flood events. The report's release in July
coincided with some flood victims experiencing a second
round of flooding before they could even recover. The
report, itself, is a standard account in which public sub-
missions, government analyses, and expert testimony are
collected and summarized. Similarly, the recommenda-
tions are unsurprising, perhaps best summarized as “do
better.” By October of 2022, the Maribyrnong flooding
and resulting public anger had prompted Melbourne
Water and the Parliament of Victoria to initiate flood
reviews of their own, each exploring how large scale
floods could, seemingly so quickly, overcome existing
protective measures, warnings, and emergency proce-
dures. Importantly, these inquiries and analyses appear
to have become a reflex, proposed before many of those
affected had had time to begin their recoveries.
3 | T H E SO C I O - G O V E R N M E N T A L
C O N T E X T I N WH I C H F L O O D
M A N A G EM E N T N O W OP E R A T E S
As more inquiry reports and analyses are published, it
appears that flood risk management is entering a new
period of socio-governmental petrification: one where the
scale, costs, and severity of impacts are prompting ques-
tions about the efficacy of existing flood risk manage-
ment. In this last decade, there have been many Royal
Commissions, State Inquiries, and independent reviews
relating to disasters, with several acting as the State's key
response to a disastrous flood event. New to these reports
are open expressions of frustration and a willingness to
confront past inaction, especially with regard to the
models, predictions, and knowledge that informs expert-
informed management. The 2022 NSW flood inquiry is
most demonstrative of this feeling:
“The Inquiry noted that an April 2021 NSW
Audit Office Performance Audit report on
Addressing public inquiry recommendations—
Emergency response agencies found that two-
thirds of recommendations reviewed in the
audit could not be verified as being imple-
mented as intended, and in line with the
outcomes sought. The audit also found that
agencies did not always nominate milestone
dates or priority rankings for accepted
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EDITORIAL
recommendations, and so could not de-
monstrate if they were managing or moni-
toring them effectively” (O'Kane & Fuller,
2022, p. 9).
Going on to bluntly highlight:
“The Inquiry heard a deep sense of frustration
from many flood-affected residents and com-
munity members over a lack of implementa-
tion and change over time, despite multiple
previous reviews. Many were sceptical that this
Inquiry would succeed in effecting significant
change. Similar findings on implementation
(or lack thereof) were made in the 2020 NSW
Independent Bushfire Inquiry” (O'Kane &
Fuller, 2022, p. 10).
The report suggests that “business as usual” is no longer
acceptable, requiring that flood managers adapt. More
broadly, this situation suggests a need for flood risk
researchers to reflect on the utility of their outputs given
this hyper-contested socio-governmental context.
Perhaps most demonstrative of changing social expecta-
tions around flood management, flood affected commu-
nities are organizing themselves to advocate and
pressure Government. These groups are both a “success”
of the neoliberal State's long-running effort to devolve
risk mitigation to citizens, while also representing an
uncontrollable and unpredictable manifestation of public
discontent that is unlikely to play by the rules that have
guided flood risk management historically.
4 | I M P L I C A TI O N S FO R T H E
JOURNAL O F FLOOD RISK
MANAGEMENT
I have now been an associate editor at the Journal of
Flood Risk Management for a little more than a year,
reading and engaging with many of the papers recently
published. A survey of the articles in this edition shows
valuable contributions to knowledge and rigorous ana-
lyses of many facets of flood risk. These outputs can, in
general, be categorized as efforts to improve understand-
ing of flooding in terms of monitoring, precision, and pre-
diction, with several efforts demonstrating the use of
large datasets to improve flood modelling. A smaller
number of papers explore flood risk management,
emphasizing social networks and civil society's role in
future flood management.

EDITORIAL
These articles make valuable contributions to the
journal and to the wider flood risk management commu-
nity. Moving forward, though, informed by Australia's
recent experiences, the socio-governmental context in
which flood risk management is conducted appears to be
becoming far more contested, resulting in petrification.
While analyses and modelling of flooding may improve
expert understandings, the Australian experience sug-
gests that flood risk management is presently unable to
nimbly and effectively respond to the combination of
changing flood risk and changing social expectations.
Without improved understanding of the barriers to effec-
tive flood risk management, the production of improved
knowledge is unlikely to have desired impact. This block-
age feels like it is “hardening” in Australia, inhibiting the
difficult decisions that are needed. For those of us work-
ing of flood risk research, attention to this emerging man-
agement challenge is critical if we are to contribute
positively.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data availability statement is not applicable for this
article.
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3 of 3
Brian R. Cook
The School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Science
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
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