On August 1st 2023, the Victorian ANCOLD YP members attended an event at the State Incident Control Centre (ICC) in the Melbourne CBD. The ICC is run by Emergency Management Victoria (EMV) to coordinate and respond to all types of emergency incidents across the state, including the significant flooding experienced by much of Victoria in October 2022.
The event included presentations from the team at EMV summarising their roles in responding to emergencies, including the centre manager, support, mapping, social media, relief and recovery, intelligence, communications and strategy. Other speakers included; Steve Muncaster (SES) on the importance of input information for emergency response decision making; Siraj Perera (DEECA) on Victorian dam regulation, dam incidents and climate change impacts; Griffin Barry (Melbourne Water) sharing his experiences from responding to a dam safety incident at a private dam; and Richard Mannix (HARC) on the fundamentals of operational flood forecasting and dam operations during floods.
The presentations provided great context for the importance of the work done by members of the dams industry and how that information is utilised and relied upon by many agencies during emergency response situations. The event was attended by over 40 ANCOLD members from all over Victoria (and Tasmania!). The presentation sessions were followed by a tour of the ICC and networking amongst the YPs. Thank you to the ICC & speakers for making this great event happen.
ANCOLD is an incorporated voluntary association of organisations and individual professionals with an interest in dams in Australia.
