16
BAMOS
Jun 2019
Article
Citizen science and weather history—
the start of a productive relationship
Mac Benoy
Email: [email protected]
In 2002, David McCarthy, a recently retired Council Works
Manager approached Chris Wright, the Manager of Hydrology
at the South Australian Regional Office of the Bureau of
Meteorology. David was aware that during his professional
years he had approved the construction of buildings in what
was evidently a flood plain. As there was little to no information
on flood occurrences in the State, David undertook to rectify
this by initiating a project under Chris’ expert consultancy, and
the Bureau’s offer to provide the necessary office space. The DVD contains a downloadable copy of the book (pdf ) and
further reference material including downloadable databases
that can be interrogated using spreadsheet, database or GIS
software. Each flood is listed with its date, latitude/longitude
coordinates, impact (e.g. human/animal death, infrastructure/
agricultural damage etc.), and references to the source news
articles. In addition, the DVD contains images of floods in both
still and video format and a listing of South Australian rain
gauges and natural resource management areas.
The methodology chosen was to scan back copies of all
significant newspapers published in the State looking for articles
that described floods. Without significant funding, David used
his previous managerial experience and established a work-
for-the-dole program that engaged close to 100 participants
who spent three years at the State Library in Adelaide doing
the research. Any article mentioning a flood was photocopied
and sent to the office for processing. The office, in turn, was
staffed by volunteers who recorded the article in a database,
aggregated multiple mentions of a flood into one folder then
wrote a brief description of the incident. In this way, 200,000
issues of 20 newspapers identified 3,000 flood events in 1,400
locations in South Australia (SA) over the 170 years of European
settlement. It was believed that, at the time of publication in 2006, this was
the most comprehensive flood chronology ever compiled by a
national meteorological service, especially at the notional cost
of providing office space and access to I.T. facilities. It tapped
into a wide range of free expertise ranging from advisory board
members in the hydrological community, staff within the
Bureau of Meteorology and a range of volunteer professionals
who contributed their skills in project management, research,
data design, content development, history, editing, publishing,
graphic design, web development, and marketing. Recently,
the contents of the DVD have been published online as part
of a subsequent citizen science program to rescue Australia’s
historical weather data (http://www.met-acre.net/Floods_in_
SA/).
The work was summarised in a 240 page book and an
accompanying DVD. The key section of the book is the
chronological entries of floods where each is summarised
in a paragraph followed by references to newspaper articles
containing greater detail provided by contemporary accounts.
The State Library of South Australia undertook to curate
photocopies of all articles in ring binders ready for easy
reference by researchers. This referencing has subsequently
been made much easier with the development of the National
Library’s online Trove Newspaper. Also included in the book are
seven monographs about aspects of floods written by experts
in their fields. The Flood Chronology was followed by two ongoing projects.
Flood Editor and historian Tony Rogers continued publishing
books on the history of South Australian meteorology including:
an oral history of the Bureau’s SA Regional Office staff, a book
on significant historical weather events in the State, an account
of how favourable descriptions of climate were used to attract
immigrants, and a history of early work of SA’s foundation
meteorologist, Sir Charles Todd.