Coastal Ratepayers United (CRU) have just released the peer review conducted by Dr Willem de Lange.

Back in May we wrote on why an independent peer review of Flood Maps is Crucial, in early June wrote a piece on Flood Modelling and Ratepayers: a crisis of confidence and supported CRU’s endeavours to commission an independent report.

CRU advise this report is now with Council and have requested a meeting with them and AWA.

CRU have stated the following:

“The report, authored by Dr Willem de Lange, raises serious concerns about the modelling used by AWA and its application to identify individual properties affected by the flood modelling.

Dr de Lange’s findings are clear:

• There is no assessment of the actual likelihood of the predicted flood events occurring, which is necessary to define the flood risk.
• There is no evidence that the models used were validated.
• Apart from the rainfall depth and sea level rise, the AWA report assumes that all other factors affecting flood hazard would remain constant for over a hundred years.
• The methodology used in the report did not include any risk assessment.
• There is no information to assess the probability of the scenarios used occurring, particularly the extreme scenario of RCP 8.5 and RCP 8.5H+, which is recognised as implausible.

You can read the report here