Natural disaster-prone councils in south-east Queensland say the Bureau of Meteorology’s decision to axe its free real-time flood forecasting tool is a “cost shifting” exercise with “potentially deadly consequences”, with New South Wales emergency services also affected.
For nearly 30 years, the BoM has provided local governments, emergency services and water managers around the country with free access to Enviromon – a tool used to inform emergency alert systems which collects, displays and analyses data from rainfall and river level gauges for flood forecasting.
But the bureau will end ongoing support and maintenance of that service for external users by July and replace it with a US-developed software program called OneRain, which cannot be sublicensed – and so cannot be provided free to councils and other public bodies.
While rainfall and river level data can still be accessed via BoM’s website and organisations can register to receive updates, these would be sent through in 15-minute intervals, as opposed to the current five-minute intervals provided with Enviromon.
Brisbane City council is among those which deem that 10-minute lag unacceptable in the potentially life-threatening situation of flash flooding, which regularly strikes the local government area of more than 1.3 million people. It is exploring procuring its own software – which the council estimates could cost $500,000 to set up, not including ongoing subscriptions.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Brisbane City council’s environment chair, Tracy Davis, said the “reckless and dangerous” change would end vital access to real-time flood data and called on the federal government to intervene.
“Scrapping this service to councils could mean the end of creek alerts and leave lives at risk,” Davis said.
“This is cost shifting with potentially deadly consequences.”
When asked to respond to the council’s concerns, a spokesperson for the BoM said: “Flood warning data information will continue to be published for free on the bureau’s website”.
“Under the Meteorology Act 1955, the Bureau of Meteorology provides riverine flood forecasts and warnings across Australia. Flash flood warnings are a local and state government responsibility,” the statement said.
The Gold Coast City council estimated the cost of replacing Enviromon at about $600,000 over five years.
Its mayor, Tom Tate, called on the federal government to meet those costs as “the BoM is a commonwealth responsibility”.
“We are doing our bit but we need all levels of government to continue to fund critical disaster management infrastructure,” he said.
The Local Government Association of Queensland chief executive officer, Alison Smith, called on BoM to “provide an equivalent replacement service” to local governments across the state.
“When weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe it simply does not make sense that a service taxpayers have already funded wants to charge for emergency information,” Smith said.
“The BoM has a core role as a national provider of public weather and environmental information.”
Unlike in Queensland, where flood warnings are the responsibility of local government, in New South Wales that role falls to the State Emergency Service.
A NSW SES spokesperson said the organisation used Enviromon software and was “working with the bureau as we transition to alternative arrangements”.
A Victorian SES spokesperson said it did not use Enviromon.
BoM said Enviromon no longer met “basic cybersecurity, stability and resilience standards required of a flood forecast and warning system”.
“As a result, the Bureau has been engaging with external users to support them through the transition,” the spokesperson said. “The individual user requirements will determine the option that works best for them.”
The software change will not just affect local government. Seqwater – which manages dams and reservoirs in south-east Queensland and works in flood mitigation, including the release of water during times of flood – uses Enviromon but is now trialling a product by the company behind OneRain as a replacement.
The office of the federal environment minister, Murray Watt, referred questions to BoM.
The controversy over Enviromon comes as the BoM faced another storm of criticism over its new $86m website. The Bureau apologised for the handling of the redesign last month and promised to make changes after Watt said the website was “not meeting many users’ expectations”.
“After failures such as the website for such a high amount of money, we have concerns about the internal processes of checking and validating any technology BoM seeks to roll out,” the shadow emergency management minister, Ross Cadell, said.
Cadell said BoM should have made sublicensing to councils and dependent organisations a precondition of its contract when looking to replace Enviromon.
OneRain Australia director James Logan said Enviromon was no longer “a viable platform”. Written over 30 years ago, he said it required outdated versions of Microsoft Windows that were insecure and could not meet modern requirements.
Logan said the councils had several choices, including other private companies, and that his was just one option.
“In general, it’s a good thing that there is a process to get everybody to update to some new software that has more capability than Enviromon has,” he said.
