REC324-4299 |
1 - Land-use and building regs
1 - Land-use and building regs
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Relocating communities most at risk with good homes and amenities: That, to empower vulnerable people and communities to relocate, Government through the NSWRA:
• identify and prioritise those communities most at risk from future disasters, and for whom relocation may be appropriate or necessary
• leverage the work done through Government’s homes, cities, manufacturing and skills policies, to collaborate and work with these communities in examining, designing, building and installing affordable, attractive and insurable housing options (e.g. locally fabricated high quality modular homes, or utilising local builders to retrofit and/or relocate existing homes to safer ground) and to enable small housing developments with capacity to grow organically over time
• utilise best-practice policy for rapid urbanism and community-building to establish new settlements. This should include:
— an enquiry-by-design or charrette process led by the Government Architect to ensure that new settlements reflect the aspirations and vernacular of the local community, whilst meeting the technical needs of establishing settlements and delivering infrastructure at low cost. This should also include considering how to repurpose floodplains for community use and benefit, i.e. recreation, sports and energy production as part of the process of returning land below the flood planning level to Government ownership. It should also consider the role of locally manufactured, well-designed and regulated modular housing solutions
— promoting a sense of community by ensuring appropriate amenity (e.g. schools, shops, and services) is available to relocating people and communities at the time of moving to their new settlements
— working with the financial and philanthropic sectors to investigate a special purpose fund to provide continuing support for these communities as they transit through re-establishment.
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REC324-4308 |
26 - Research
26 - Research
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Compound mental helath studies: That, to inform Government policies and programs for mental health and disasters, Government commission a longitudinal study on the effect of consecutive disasters on community mental health.
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REC324-4300 |
1 - Land-use and building regs
1 - Land-use and building regs
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Simplify the planning system disaster provisions: That, to simplify and improve the state planning processes especially when anticipating and recovering from a disaster, Government:
• ensure there is a clear line of sight directing councils and planning authorities to include disaster response and resilient settlement outcomes in long term strategic plans (Regional and District Plans as well as Local Strategic Planning Statements). This may require more prominence to be given to Planning for a more resilient NSW: A strategic guide to planning for natural hazards (Department of Planning, Industry and the Environment) as well as a clear link to the risk-based approach to hazard identification and the disaster adaptation plans
• ensure the NSWRA provides the necessary tools and advice to enable planning authorities to incorporate cumulative impacts of potential natural disasters into strategic plans. These tools should ensure the disaster adaptation plans can be given real effect in strategic plans for settlement and local planning controls
• ensure that Ministerial Directions on hazard and natural disasters (directions 4.1 and 4.6 inclusive) are updated to reflect the new risk-based approach to flood planning levels and deliver the disaster adaptation plans to the zoning process
• create specific flood planning provisions as a new chapter in the SEPP (Resilience and Hazards). These provisions would draw the existing flood planning clauses (5.21 and 5.22 in the standard instrument) up into the SEPP
• put the natural disaster clause (5.9 in the standard instrument) into a new chapter in the SEPP Resilience and Hazards, along with objectives to assist councils to use the clause to build back to more resilient standards
• update planning guidance so that wherever possible community facilities, such as might be used for evacuation centres, are located above the probable maximum flood and essential services are located above the flood planning level
• ensure that the strategic land use frameworks and related controls permit new developments only in line with the evacuation capacity both individually and cumulatively
• ensure that the strategic land use frameworks enable higher density flood resilient precincts to locate more development at or above the PMF and use a higher flood planning level to avoid catastrophic costs from extreme flooding, as well as deliver cost-effective controls for individual structures.
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REC324-4310 |
41 - Emergency Management exercises
41 - Emergency Management exercises
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Task Force Hawk: That, to ensure disaster readiness, Government establish a high-level Government standing committee, Task Force ‘Hawk’, comprising key Cabinet Ministers, Secretaries and Commissioners that meets, trains and exercises to ensure Government is prepared to respond to any emergency. Task Force ‘Hawk’ should resonate with the community in difficult times to ensure the highest level of confidence in Government’s response.
Further, to improve the preparation for and timely response to disasters, and to ensure the emergency management systems and plans are fit for purpose, effective and appropriate, within 12 months Government, via the SEOCON, ensure all emergency management processes and plans have been updated and implemented.
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REC324-4303 |
39 - Disaster Risk Management
39 - Disaster Risk Management
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Risk-based approach to calculating flood planning: That, to take account of greater knowledge of climate change, Government reinforce its adoption of a risk-based approach to calculating the flood planning level for planning purposes and, through the NSWRA, immediately start a process of revising all flood planning level calculations in the state’s high-risk catchments. Flood planning level re-determinations for all high-risk catchments should be completed within 3 years. These revised flood planning levels will need to be factored into all development applications (in-progress and new) in those high-risk catchments. The risk profile of high-risk catchments should be revisited at appropriate time intervals to check that levels are current. A review should take place if there has been a significant trigger event (i.e. changed rainfall, development) or at least every 5 years. As well as reviewing the flood planning level, this 5-yearly review should include reviewing any floodplain lease conditions and adjusting them as necessary in the light of better knowledge of climate change impacts. In working out a tolerable, risk-based flood planning level, consideration should be given to the PMF, 1% AEP, 0.02% AEP, existing development, approved but not yet constructed developments, and existing and approved but not yet constructed evacuation routes.
In coordinating this flood planning level re-determination process, NSWRA should work closely with local councils, DPE, communities, state water authorities and state and national engineering and research organisations. In doing so, the NSWRA should also:
• extend and then maintain the DPE state-wide flood database and associated visualisation interface. This database, which should link to LandiQ, would support:
— monitoring of the flood warning and sensing environment
— monitoring of trends in rainfall activity and impacts, including timing, cause, extent and intensity
— tracking trends and identifying patterns in associated weather and climate signals that contribute to severe floods
— evaluation of the cost and effectiveness of risk mitigation efforts, including land preparation, planning use and management, to enable a better understanding of what works
— simulation of extreme rainfall events and resultant flooding
— identification of ‘at risk’ river and catchment systems for flash flooding
— rapid and effective deployment of resources during a flash flood event
• act as the main coordination point for all NSW hydrological modelling, working with local government, other state agencies, universities, professional bodies (e.g. Engineers Australia) and the Australian Government (especially the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO) to improve future NSW flood risk assessment (and hence accuracy and timeliness of flood prediction) by building more formal connections between the extensive existing physical hydrological modelling (done by various NSW agencies) with the Bureau’s meteorological and climatological research and riverine flood models
• support local councils to improve modelling of and ensure adequate and appropriate alarm systems for flash flooding.
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REC324-4312 |
17 - Assets and technology
17 - Assets and technology
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Impact to essential services: That, to minimise disruption to essential services, including outages which compromise basic communication coverage, and to ensure access to safe water supply and power during flood events, Government work directly or together with the Australian and other state governments and/or their relevant power and telecommunications regulatory, policy and market bodies to:
• ensure there are sufficient redundancy options known and made available (for example, backup diesel generators, deployed temporary telecommunications facilities, etc.) to supply power to essential telecommunication infrastructure, alternative telecommunications infrastructure and water treatment facilities.
• ensure that the telecommunication entities, electricity network providers and water treatment managers are using up to the minute, whole of catchment models to inform business continuity planning in the event of flooding
• facilitate cross carrier roaming arrangements between carriers and the public for basic text, voice and data during the period of emergency in areas directly affected by flood
• ensure all essential services are mandatory members of the Emergency Management Committees at state, regional and local levels
• ensure the state understands essential services redundancies and what emergency redundancy options are available from Australian Government agencies
• ensure, given the heavy reliance on essential services by community and government during a disaster, essential services loss, redundancy and build back better principles are exercised through emergency management committee processes annually.
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REC324-4304 |
1 - Land-use and building regs
1 - Land-use and building regs
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Landholders can access information on previous disasters: That, to ensure there is a single source of ground truth to prepare for and respond to emergencies, and to provide people with a better understanding of their individual property and community risk exposure, an online visualisation tool be developed to display, for all land parcels (land titles) in NSW, the extent of known disasters that have affected each piece of land in NSW in the past. This information should be made available through the Planning Portal and, particularly in light of climate change, the data involved should be revised and updated at least every two years and after each major natural disaster.
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REC324-4293 |
17 - Assets and technology
17 - Assets and technology
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Essential services and floodplain infrastructure: That, to minimise disruption to essential services (power, communications, water, sewerage) and to ensure flood infrastructure is fully serviceable before flooding, Government ensure:
• essential services infrastructure (communications, water, power and sewerage) is situated as much as possible above the flood planning level. And to minimise disruption to medical services, aged care services and the police, Government ensure hospitals, medical centres, nursing homes, aged care facilities and police stations are situated above the probable maximum flood level
• floodplain infrastructure (drains, levees, flood gates) items are all assigned to an appropriate lead agency which has responsibility for ensuring they are fully maintained and functioning especially when floods are likely.
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REC324-4319 |
26 - Research
26 - Research
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Climate and weather research: That, to enable effective mitigation and adaptation measures in response to changing climate risks, Government establish NSW as a world centre of disaster research and technology development. This should include:
• maintaining and enhancing climate and weather research capability in NSW through establishing a long-term research funding network/partnership (the NSW Climate Extremes Network – NCEN –modelled on other successful research networks such as NSSN) with the state’s universities, coordinated and led through the ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate Extremes (with funding renewed based on performance every 5 years) to ensure leading-edge climate change research and modelling capabilities are available to government agencies and NSW businesses and communities. The funding will enable NCEN to hire researchers and build training programs for students and researchers to enrich the research environment, and the impact of the research in decision making within NSW
• commissioning further research and technology development (through NCEN working as appropriate with the Bureau of Meteorology, Natural Hazards Research Australia, CSIRO and research organisations worldwide, as well as the ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate Extremes) to understand the weather patterns conducive to extreme rainfall (including more detailed rainfall event attribution studies) with a view to increasing rainfall forecasting accuracy in time and location.
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REC324-4305 |
39 - Disaster Risk Management
39 - Disaster Risk Management
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Cost benefit framework:That, to enable a more systematic prioritisation of investment options in risk mitigation before, during and immediately following a natural disaster event, Government adopt and utilise a Disaster Cost Benefit Framework. This Framework will enable Government to estimate the investment required for any given disaster, starting with flood events, and will enable the fast allocation of funding based on detailed and rapid analysis of flood and property modification, mitigation, preparation, response and finance related options including:
• flood modification measures/flood defence (including dams/ water management; levees; waterway or floodplain modifications; etc)
• property modification measures/flood risk mitigation (including land filling; flood proofing; house raising; optimum zoning; removal of development (buy back schemes/relocation))
• response modification measures/flood preparation (including flood warnings; upgrading evacuation routes; evacuation planning; emergency response and education programs; flood data collection and sharing; etc)
• finance related options (including building standard reforms; restructure and reduction of stamp duty; direct subsidies; government reinsurance pools; etc)
The Framework should build on the preliminary version developed by NSW Treasury and provided to this Inquiry. To support this Framework, Government should also use the NSW Adaptation Fund that can be drawn on during or immediately following a flood event.
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REC324-4296 |
1 - Land-use and building regs
1 - Land-use and building regs
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Caravan parks and manufactured home estates: That, to ensure that permanent residents of caravan parks and mobile housing estates are protected from flood, Government: • prohibit permanent residency in caravan parks and mobile housing estates situated below the risk-based flood planning level. Caravan parks for holiday makers could still be on the floodplain with the provision that, if a flood is imminent, they need to be evacuated • address the issues raised in the 2015 Discussion Paper (Improving the regulation of manufactured homes, caravan parks, manufactured home estates and camping grounds).
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REC324-4307 |
9 - Community education
9 - Community education
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Flood education: That, to build disaster resilience in future generations as floods and other natural disasters are a fact of Australian life, the Department of Education should design, implement and deliver an evidence-based, targeted education campaign (like sun exposure) in schools (new disaster curriculum).
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