Project team meets on Lockyer Valley case study

The first end user workshop for the project B8: Enhancing resilience of critical road structures under natural hazards was held at the Springfield Campus of the University of Southern Queensland on 25 July 2014.

The workshop was attended in person by three end user partners and nine researchers representing the four strands of the project. The focus of the workshop was to plan the data collection and end user engagement in the first case study: the Lockyer Valley floods of 2011 and 2013.

Researchers presented the progress on each of the strands and tabled the draft of the first report on failure of road structures under natural hazards, which covers the nature of natural hazards considered, critical road structures and their attributes and the preliminary analysis of two case studies: bridges and floodways in the Lockyer Valley region under floods.

A review of the methodologies for vulnerability modelling of infrastructure was also presented and discussed.

The major outcome of the workshop was the strong commitment from Lockyer Valley Regional Council for provision of data and stakeholder forums for the research project. End user partners identified the gaps in their practice, where research outcomes would deliver most benefit and made the observation that the methodology and outcomes of research will be widely applicable and beneficial to all local councils in Australia exposed to natural hazards. 

It was agreed that a concept for a replicable risk management tool will be developed during the next phase of the project.  It will create a priority list of assets quantifying the level of the risk to the asset from natural hazards considering structural failure probability, out-of-service time, cost of repair, maintenance and cost to the community.