“People think they’ve got 99 years between floods, and that’s just not true”

As jobs shift and AI transforms work, we’re also facing something more fundamental: how to adapt to a changing climate and where we live.

Engineers and historians say the worst-case scenarios for floods and fire are not distant risks anymore — they’re becoming more likely.

Brisbane City Council engineer Alan Hoban told the ABC that what used to be considered extreme rainfall under global warming models is now the expected scenario.

That matters for how we build cities, plan flood zones, and think about what “preparedness” actually looks like.

Griffith University historian Dr. Margaret Cook has studied the history of natural disasters in Australia and New Zealand — especially floods and bushfires.

She says Australians need to rethink how they understand disasters, because the impacts of climate change will play out in ways that aren’t always intuitive.

Cook says drier ground from prolonged droughts means “we’ll have lost the vegetation, and so we’ll get more problems with erosion and runoff. So rather than soaking in, it might actually run off more”.

She says the southern parts of Australia may face more intense droughts that lead to worse flooding, known as compounding extreme weather events.

The term “1-in-100-year flood” is outdated and misleading, Cook says.

“It actually means a 1% chance of a flood in any given year. But people think they’ve got 99 years between floods, and that’s just not true.”

Cook says the science is clear on what’s coming — more intense rain and flooding — but that while “we have a lot of really good science” there is a lack of “political will”.