FLOOD-EX21 Recovery in practice 2021

About FLOOD-EX21 Recovery in practice

‘FLOOD-EX21 Recovery in practice’ brought more than 100 leaders including mayors, councillors, council representatives and recovery experts from local, state and federal agencies together to exercise and demonstrate recovery planning for an extraordinary Brisbane River flood scenario.

The first large-scale recovery exercise coordinated by the Queensland Reconstruction Authority (QRA), FLOOD-EX21 was held at the new N79 building at Griffith University’s Nathan campus in Brisbane on Monday 18 October 2021.

Exercising recovery plans and processes revitalises capacity and capability. It provides all levels of government and industry with the opportunity to reinforce networks and relationships and to collaborate and communicate enabling Queensland communities to recover faster from the inevitable natural disasters that impact the state.

The extraordinary flood event scenario for FLOOD-EX21 was based on a 1 in 100 Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP) flood event across the Brisbane River floodplain and involved complex recovery planning challenges for all groups involved. Participants worked together to demonstrate how we prepare local recovery plans, functional recovery plans, a state recovery plan and an extraordinary assistance package under the jointly funded Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA).

As part of FLOOD-EX21, the QRA Recovery team coordinated nine individual recovery planning workshops for the four local governments of the Brisbane River Catchment (Brisbane, Ipswich, Lockyer and Somerset), and the five state Functional Recovery Groups (FRGs) including Human and Social, Economic, Building. Environment, Roads and Transport. These nine workshops focused on recovery planning and allowed each individual group to prepare through practice for the coming disaster season, with impacts of the FLOOD-EX21 exercise scenario.

FLOOD-EX21 highlighted the importance of a locally-led approach to recovery planning along with the collaborative relationships between local government and the state FRGs. This was an important opportunity for our state and local recovery experts to give representatives from the new National Recovery and Resilience Agency (NRRA) a greater understanding of how recovery works within the Queensland Disaster Management Arrangements.  

Participants at FLOOD-EX21 included the four local governments of the Brisbane River Catchment and representatives from the five Queensland Government FRGs, along with Queensland Police Service, Inspector-General of Emergency Management, and the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. Other key participants included the NRRA, the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ), the Insurance Council of Australia, the Flood Community of Practice, Suncorp, Red Cross and GIVIT.