Australia's flood warning systems are being managed by a confusing network of more than 100 authorities and third parties, and in some cases data is not getting to the Bureau of Meteorology, a Senate hearing was told.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A Senate estimates committee was also told on Monday that manual river gauges could pose an occupational health and safety risk to people required to head out in the middle of the night to take readings - particularly in emergencies.
Bureau chief executive Andrew Johnson was responding to questions posed by New South Wales Nationals Senator Perin Davey who raised concerns around flood gauge maintenance and ownership.
Senator Perin pointed to a 2022 New South Wales flood inquiry, which recommended that gauges should be solely managed by the bureau.
She also cited concerns from Lismore City Council around gauges that were not being properly positioned or calibrated.
"It is a risk that there will be times when when we in the bureau are unable to get the data we need to issue the forecasts in a timely way when we are dependent on others for the supply of that critical data," Dr Johnson said.
"It varies enormously across jurisdictions. And so we work closely with our colleagues in the states and territories to try and minimise the risks that you're highlighting."
Dr Johnson said there were about 10,000 rain and river gauges in the National Flood Warning network.
But he said these were owned or maintained by 100 organisations that differed from state-to-state and local government areas.
He said, for example, there were 1100 rain gauges, and 1151 river gauges in New South Wales, but the bureau only owned about 48 per cent of the river gauges and seven per cent of the rain gauges.
It means the bureau is "heavily dependent" on data from state and local governments or other third parties such as water authorities.
And it was the same forecasts and warnings which also varied across jurisdictions, in which some states was the exclusive responsibility of the bureau, but not in others.
He said in Victoria, Melbourne Water produced forecasts and warnings for the bureau to put on its website.
"The bureau seeks to ingest as much of that data that comes from third parties and obviously, we can't assure the reliability of that in some areas like for example, in Lismore," Dr Johnson said.
"It's very complex across the jurisdictions and we're working very hard with our colleagues to try and harmonise those relationships as best we can."
Dr Johnson also pointed to the different standards of gauges between the states. There were more manual gauges in Queensland than in NSW.
"Which is also a risk in terms of occupational health and safety, and people going out in the middle of night to read river heights when they themselves may be threatened by floodwaters," he said.
