Improvements to Burnett River flood early warning 11 Jul 2013 Upgrades to existing river gauge stations in the Lower Burnett River catchment area will improve communications and early warning advice to downstream residents in any future flood event. Bundaberg Regional Council Mayor, Cr. Mal Forman said $205,000 funding from the Cyclone and Flood Warning Subsidy provided by the Department of Local Government, Community Recovery and Resilience; and in partnership with the Bureau of Meteorology and council, will enable an upgraded system of recording stations to be established in the Burnett catchment area. “Existing gauging stations at Walla, Figtree, Coringa, Mt. Rawdon and Mt. Lawless will be upgraded as well as the Sunwater sites located at Woongarra Pump Station, Ned Churchward Weir and Paradise Dam,” he said. Cr. Forman said the upgrades would involve a change to the telemetry or manner in which information was relayed from the stations. “Currently we rely solely on the Telstra network but the upgrade will involve the addition of a VHF radio network with repeater stations sited at Mt. Goonaneman and Mt. Watalgan adding redundancy and reliability to the current network. These stations will transmit real-time data to a base station located at the Bundaberg Regional Council’s main administration centre. The existing network of river gauging stations will be further enhanced with an additional six “rainfall only” stations. “Along with the upgraded river gauges, the fully automated rainfall-only stations will add to the Bureau’s current “Alert” flood warning system and will provide significantly enhanced data collection from the Lower Burnett catchment,” said Cr. Forman. “The additional rain gauges will be installed to help cover an ungauged area located between Mt. Perry and Walla. It was this area in the 2013 flood where extreme rainfall in the order of the 500yr probability event ultimately impacted on the Burnett River.” The Bureau is investigating an upgrade to the existing flood station in Bundaberg which currently consists of a manually read staff gauge. An upgrade to this site would allow the automatic capture of future flood events in Bundaberg. Council and Bureau staff have completed the field investigations relating to the installation of the new equipment. This involved radio path tests in the Lower Burnett from existing recording sites to determine their suitability for the installation of “Alert” flood warning equipment. “I would like to stress that Council will have access to all this real-time data and this is also shared with the Bureau,” said Cr. Forman. The Bureau is the agency responsible for all public weather and flood warnings, but having access to the public warnings as well as the real-time data is essential for Council to respond effectively to future floods,” said Cr. Forman. The new equipment will enable Council’s Disaster Management team to track increases in river heights as they occur. By merging these heights into Council’s flood mapping data, Council will be able to quickly respond and advise residents in flood prone areas of any predicted risks and impacts on the community
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 03:33:43 +0000
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