2008 – Estimating construction flood risk

Peter Hill, Phillip Jordan, Rory Nathan, Emily Payne

Abstract: There are a number of issues that need to be considered when deriving estimates of floods used to assess construction flood risk. This paper outlines the derivation of seasonal flood frequency curves and highlights the important differences in seasonality across Australia and the variation with the exceedance probability. Examples are provided as to how these seasonal frequency curves are used to estimate the construction flood risk during a particular construction activity in a safety upgrade for an existing dam or construction of a new dam. The paper also touches on the issues associated with estimating consequences for assessing construction flood risk.

Keywords: construction flood, risk, seasonal hydrology, hydrologic loading