Submission to Senate Inquiry Inquiry Into Current and Future Impacts of Climate Change on Housing, Buildings and Infrastructure
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A group of concerned Engineers and Scientists Submission to Senate Inquiry Inquiry into current and future impacts of climate change on housing, buildings and infrastructure August 2017 About Us We are a group of concerned engineers and scientists. The professional interests of our group include the planning, design and operation of potable and irrigation water supply, wastewater and stormwater systems and in the planning, design and operation of other infrastructure that may be exposed to risks from inundation by stormwater and flooding. Our planning and design work considers how we can make infrastructure operate in a robust and resilient manner across the spectrum of hydro-climatic conditions that are likely to be encountered, which often leads us to a particular focus on the extreme wet and dry ends of this range. The views that we have provided in this submission are our own and do not necessarily represent the views of our employers or other organisations that we may be affiliated with. Name and qualifications Position(s) and Organisation(s) Phillip Jordan, B.Eng.(Civil), Ph.D., Principal Hydrologist, Hydrology and Risk Consulting, and C.P.Eng., M.I.E.Aust., R.P.E.Q. Fellow of the Peter Cullen Water & Environment Trust Michael Wrathall, B.Eng.(Civil), Manager Knowledge Coordination, NSW DPI Water, and Fellow C.P.Eng., M.I.E.Aust. of the Peter Cullen Water & Environment Trust Richard Cresswell, B.Sc.(Hons), Principal Hydrogeologist & Water Discipline Lead, Eco Logical M.Sc., Ph.D., M.Aus.I.M.M., J.P. Australia, Fellow of the Peter Cullen Water & Environment Trust (Qual) Katherine Daniell Senior Lecturer, Fenner School of Environment and Society, The B.Eng.(Civil)(Hons), B.A., Ph.D., Australian National University and Fellow of the Peter Cullen M.I.E.Aust. Water & Environment Trust Penelope .J. Springham, B.App.Sc. Fellow of the Peter Cullen Water & Environment Trust (Env Health) William Glamore, B.Sc., Ph.D. Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow Water Research Laboratory, School of Civil and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Fellow of the Peter Cullen Water & Environment Trust and Winston Churchill Fellow Andrew Herron, B.Env.Eng.(Hons) Senior Hydrologist, Ecological Australia Contact Committee inquiry members are encouraged to contact our group’s representative, Dr Phillip Jordan, via email Front cover image Obtained under licence from www.shutterstock.com 2 Synopsis Historically, water-focused infrastructure (such as reservoirs; flood-relief installations; bridges; urban buildings and drains) has been designed based on records (data) of previously experienced rainfall extremes and averages. However, in recent decades, rainfall has been considerably more variable in its amounts and characteristics. In relation to water resources, floods, and water quality management in urban streams, this submission points out that: (i) infrastructure-design guidelines need to be reviewed and updated more often to take account of the variability now being seen in rainfall across Australia; and (ii) more widespread data collection, as well as climate change projections, are essential to improve predictions of the impacts of rainfall or lack of it. The submission makes 15 recommendations in response to the terms of reference of this inquiry: Three recommendations in relation to water resources. Two recommendations in relation to groundwater. Eight recommendations in relation to flooding. Two recommendations in relation to urban stream water quality. There are also two recommendations in relation to Australia’s role in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. 3 Context of our submission Historical data has conventionally been analysed and used to assess the robustness of infrastructure design to hydro-climatic variability. In practice, most design has assumed that data collected in the instrumental record (over approximately the last 150 years) will represent the variability over the foreseeable future. Given our current understanding of climatic variability and climate change, it would be unwise to continue with undertaking hydrological analysis and design using only historical data. Milly et al. (2008) summed it up in the title of their seminal paper, ‘Stationarity is dead: Whither water management?’. The decline in historical inflows to Perth’s dams, as shown in Figure 1, is one of the clearest Australian examples of this. Figure 1 Historical inflows to Perth’s water supply dams (Water Corporation, 2017) 4 Water resources considerations Policy Guidelines for Water Planning and Management have been developed for water planners and managers in the state and territory jurisdictions (Australian Government, 2010). A guideline module for Considering Climate Change and Extreme Events in Water Planning and Management has been developed as a supporting document (Australian Government, 2017). Groundwater considerations Groundwater underlies all of Australia and the water that exerts a hydrostatic pressure in the pores of the aquifers constitutes both a water source and a structural element beneath any urban development. Design criteria for any infrastructure therefore has to address the potential impacts on and from this resource. While most States acknowledge the critical nature of our groundwater resources, development is predicated on current conditions and a combination of impacts from de-watering for construction and on-going impacts on down-stream users, including the environment (e.g. The Aquifer Interference Policy (2012) in NSW). While this may include consideration of future climate change on the receptors of these potential impacts, less consideration is placed on the effects of natural changes to the groundwater systems due to future climatic changes to recharge and discharge. Thus, for example, reduced recharge in Western Australia due to the decreased rainfall regimes results in lowering of groundwater tables such that drying of the unsaturated zone above aquifers requires greater recharge in the future to facilitate a unit response to groundwater levels and supplies. The reduction in recharge and lowering of water pressures and levels also results in compaction of aquifer sediments and consequent settling and subsidence of the land surface. This may be compounded by increased groundwater extraction during lower rainfall (and hence recharge) regimes as dams are not replenished. Flood considerations Guidelines need to be more frequently reviewed and updated Guidelines for the design and planning of infrastructure, buildings and housing that could be affected by flooding are provided in Australian Rainfall and Runoff (referred to in the remainder of this submission as ARR). The Institution of Engineers Australia (now Engineers Australia) first released ARR in 1958 with the aim of providing Australian designers and analysts with the best available information on flood estimation. Engineers Australia has updated the ARR three times since 1958 and the latest edition was released in draft form in 2016 (Ball et al., 2016), with a final release expected in the next few months. 5 We note that there was a 30-year gap between the release of the third edition of ARR, in 1987 and today. The most recent release of ARR is the result of considerable effort by Engineers Australia, Geoscience Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology and others in the hydrology and engineering professions between 2012 and 2016. The long gap between updates of ARR had detrimental impacts on design and planning of infrastructure. Since about the early 2000s, it had become obvious to well-informed hydrologists and engineers that the 1987 edition of ARR was becoming increasingly out of date. Consequently, when ARR was recently updated, there were large changes in the Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP; probability of a flood event occurring in any year) associated with the design floods for particular catchments and locations. These changes were due to large changes in the accepted industry-standard techniques for design flood estimation over these three decades, and the accumulation of a much larger available record of observed rainfall and streamflow data. Infrastructure that was designed in accordance with the 1987 edition of ARR to have immunity against flooding in, for example, a flood event with an AEP of 1%, may then be found, in accordance with the revised ARR, to have considerably smaller or considerably larger flood immunity. The changes between the editions of ARR are sufficiently large that, in some cases, the AEP of the design event for a particular piece of infrastructure could change by as much as, or more than a factor of 10. Need for more widespread data-collection and climate-change projections The design rainfall estimates provided with the 1987 edition of ARR were based upon some of the rainfall station data collected up until the mid-1980s. The design rainfall estimates updated by the Bureau of Meteorology in 2016 for use with ARR were based upon a more extensive database of rainfall, drawing upon more than 30 years of additional rainfall data and data from extra rainfall stations. The rainfall analysis for the 2016 edition also drew upon more contemporary techniques for statistical and spatial analysis (Bureau of Meteorology, 2016). Assessment of flood risk for very rare events is of particular importance to the safe design, maintenance and operation of dams. Design flood estimates for rare events are particularly influenced by estimates of Probable Maximum Precipitation, and these estimates were last updated by the Bureau