Wahalathantri, Buddhi L. and Lokuge, Weena 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1370-1976 and Karunasena, Warna and Setunge, Sujeeva
(2015)
Framework to inspect floodways towards estimating damage.
In: Annual Conference of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council and Bushfire & Natural Hazards CRC (AFAC15): New Directions in Emergency Management, 01-03 Sept 2015, Adelaide, South Australia.
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Abstract
Floodways provide economic and environmental friendly alternative solution over bridges and culverts for roads with low traffic volumes in rural road networks. They connect regional communities, farmlands and agricultural areas to city centers and hence play a vital role in the economy of a country. Design and operational condition of floodways differ from major road infrastructures because the floodway design process allows a certain degree of submergence for floods with high annual exceedance probability (AEP). Nevertheless, natural hazards can cause damage to floodways as evident from the 2011 and 2013 Queensland flood events. 58% of floodway structures in the Lockyer Valley Regional Council area in Queensland, Australia, were damaged during the 2013 Queensland flood event leading to operational failures in rural road networks and isolating regional communities. Damage assessment during the post-disaster event is a difficult but significant step to enhance the resilience of regional communities. A lack of a proper method to estimate the extent of damage can cause significant delays to repair/reconstruction activities and also can lead to errors in the decision-making process on prioritizing the repair/reconstruction works. Such delays can have a detrimental effect on the resilience of the regional communities. In general, floodways are infrequently being inspected or assessed its capacity only after a natural disaster. This irregularity can cause difficulties during the inspection and assessment process, as information on the previous state of the floodway can easily be unknown. Unavailability of a widely accepted inspection framework is the main cause of this problem. Having identified this gap in knowledge, this paper aims to develop a floodway inspection framework. This framework is designed to extend its capability to help the decision makers to quantify the damage and estimate the repair/reconstruction needs. This framework, therefore, contributes to enhancing the resilience of regional communities who are served by floodways.
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