Abstract
The premise of sustainable development infers the need to integrate risk management with land-use planning and sustainable community development. To achieve ‘sustainable’ floodplain management, policy makers and local government officers need to have an effective knowledge of the risks considered to be ‘acceptable’ by the community as well as the levels of flood awareness and local experience. This knowledge then needs to be further incorporated into acceptable risk standards and floodplain land-use policy – but how can this be achieved? Research to date has identified several factors relating to government, perception, resource availability and communication which limit such integration. Based on a case study on the Gold Coast, QLD, this paper presents the views of local government officers on potential solutions to address the problems of setting and communicating flood risk standards in land-use planning.
