Geoscience Australia Flood Study Summary Web Services

Brief description

The Flood Study Summary Services support discovery and retrieval of flood hazard information. The services return metadata and data for flood studies and flood inundation maps held in the 'Australian Flood Studies Database'. The same information is available through a user interface at http://www.ga.gov.au/flood-study-web/.

A 'flood study' is a comprehensive technical investigation of flood behaviour. It defines the nature and extent flood hazard across the floodplain by providing information on the extent, level and velocity of floodwaters and on the distribution of flood flows. Flood studies are typically commissioned by government, and conducted by experts from specialist engineering firms or government agencies. Key outputs from flood studies include detailed reports, and maps showing inundation, depth, velocity and hazard for events of various likelihoods.

The services are deliverables fom the National Flood Risk Information Project. The main aim of the project is to make flood risk information accessible from a central location. Geoscience Australia will facilitate this through the development of the National Flood Risk Information Portal. Over the four years the project will launch a new phase of the portal prior to the commencement of each annual disaster season. Each phase will increase the amount of flood risk information that is publicly accessible and increase stakeholder capability in the production and use of flood risk information.

flood-study-search returns summary layers and links to rich metadata about flood maps and the studies that produced them. flood-study-map returns layers for individual flood inundation maps. Typically a single layer shows the flood inundation for a particular likelihood or historical event in a flood study area.

To retrieve flood inundation maps from these services, we recommend:
1. querying flood-study-search to obtain flood inundation map URIs, then
2. using the flood inundation map URIs to retrieve maps separately from flood-study-map.

The ownership of each flood study remains with the commissioning organisation and/or author as indicated with each study, and users of the database should refer to the reports themselves to determine any constraints in their usage.

Lineage

Maintenance and Update Frequency: continual

Statement: This service returns metadata (information about the studies and maps) and data (the studies and maps themselves) for flood studies held in the Australian Flood Studies Database.

Metadata was created by Geoscience Australia, state and territory authorities, commissioning organisations and authors. It was directly entered to the Australian Flood Studies Database, or aggregated from other databases. Regardless of the source, metadata undergoes a rigorous quality check to ensure it correctly reflects the flood study and maps. A description of a quality check process is at http://www.ga.gov.au/hazards/flood/portal/national-flood-risk-information-portal/floods/share-flood-study-data.html.

Data was created by the commissioning organisation or author. The methodology for each flood study is described in the flood study report. The ownership of each Flood Study remains with the commissioning organisation and/or author as indicated with each study, and users of the service should refer to the reports themselves to determine additional usage constraints.