Abstract
The Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley, Australia’s longest coastal catchment, is spanned by a river system of more than 470 km, that runs from Goulburn to Broken Bay, covering a total area of over 2.2 million hectares. This region has remained prone to flood events, with considerable mortalities, economic impacts and infrastructural losses occurring quite regularly. The topography, naturally variable climatic conditions and the ‘bathtub’ effect in the region are responsible for the frequent flood events. In response, the Government at the national/federal, state and local level has focused on the design of efficient flood risk management strategies with appropriate evacuation plans for vulnerable communities from hospitals, schools, childcare and aged care facilities during a flood event. Despite these overarching plans, specialized response and evacuation plans for aged care facilities are critical to reducing the loss incurred by flood events in the region. This is the focus of this present paper, which reviews the history of flood events and responses to them, before examining the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques during flood events to overcome the flood risks. An early flood warning system, based on AI/Machine Learning (ML) strategy is being suggested for a timely decision, enhanced disaster prediction, assessment and response necessary to overcome the flood risks associated with aged care facilities within the Hawkesbury-Nepean region. A framework entailing AI/ML methods for identifying the safest route to the destination using UAV and path planning has been proposed for timely disaster response and evacuation of the residents of aged care facilities.
Highlights
Floods are natural hazards that result in loss of life and extensive damages in the form of commodity loss
The HawkesburyNepean region is prone to major flood events due to its topology and the bathtub effect
This study aimed to design an effective flood risk management strategy to reduce the adverse effects of future flood events in the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment area
Summary
Floods are natural hazards that result in loss of life and extensive damages in the form of commodity loss. Most of the Australian inhabited catchments display anthropogenic modifications, suggesting that a deeper knowledge of nature, timing and extent of influences are required to understand changes in flood behavior [5]. It is, difficult to identify various factors associated with the changes in flooding events due to long-term variability in the climatic system [5] and anthropogenic climate change [6,7], but it is challenging to provide flood management and evacuation facilities to vulnerable communities. These three themes—disaster preparedness, aged care facilities and the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley—are at the core of the present paper
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