Catchment Flood-Decision Platform Architect — Water Resilience

The mandate

Rainfall forecasts, gauges, drainage assets, land saturation, road closures and community observations sit in different systems with different update and uncertainty. During recent severe weather, teams could see data but not which thresholds should trigger pump deployment, field inspection, road coordination or public warning. The authority needs a decision platform that exposes uncertainty and human command rather than another flood map.

The deliverable is a Catchment Flood Decision Platform Blueprint for three representative catchments, covering source qualification, spatial and temporal alignment, forecast uncertainty, asset state, threshold governance, escalation, community input and decision record. A reference view and playbook must work through sensor and communications failure and distinguish operational action from public warning authority.

Milestone one at week three provides event reconstruction, decision maps and source gaps. Week seven concludes milestone two with contracts, architecture and threshold governance. At week twelve, milestone three delivers catchment trials across forecast and telemetry disruptions. The accepted blueprint, investment case, operating playbook and rollout sequence form milestone four in week seventeen.

Acceptance requires hydrologists and operators to reconstruct twelve unseen decisions from forecast, observation, asset and field evidence; two catchments must complete degraded-mode exercises; and emergency communications must approve escalation boundaries. The sponsors sign only after internal staff adjust one threshold under governance and rerun a severe-weather scenario without consultant assistance.

The client will provide historic storms, rainfall and level data, forecast products, drainage and pump assets, field inspections, road impacts, warnings, community reports and decision logs. Hydrology, operations and emergency teams will join tests; client engineers build references. Accountable officials retain public warning and field command, and the resilience chief resolves evidence disputes.

Why this is external work

Hydrologists understand forecasts, operators understand assets and emergency teams understand public action, but no internal group owns their combined decision evidence. Mapping vendors emphasise visual integration rather than governed thresholds and degraded operation. External work can connect disciplines neutrally before severe-weather preparation consumes available capacity.

What you will own

• Map pump, inspection, road, evacuation-support and warning decisions to catchment, forecast, asset and community evidence.
• Define source qualification, time alignment, spatial boundary, uncertainty, correction and confidence contracts across inputs.
• Design threshold governance that records rationale, effective date, approver, override and performance after each event.
• Build degraded modes for gauge loss, forecast disagreement, communications outage, inaccessible asset and conflicting community report.
• Run severe-weather scenarios measuring detection, decision time, action consistency, uncertainty communication and manual continuity.
• Compare platform options through operability, geospatial performance, supplier exit, emergency resilience, privacy and lifecycle cost.
• Transfer scenario, threshold and post-event review to permanent hydrology, operations and resilience owners.

Candidate qualifications

• Designed production flood, catchment, water or emergency decision platforms spanning forecasts, physical assets, field operations and public response.
• Combined modelled and observed evidence while communicating material uncertainty to accountable operators under severe-weather time pressure.
• Governed operational thresholds through effective version, documented rationale, override, post-event review and clearly named decision authority.
• Designed workable manual continuity when gauges, communications, forecasts and physical field access failed in the same event.
• Led multi-agency flood exercises connecting hydrology, roads, water operations, emergency management and community warning under realistic timing.
• Delivered vendor-neutral architecture and internal threshold-rehearsal capability before a fixed seasonal readiness deadline without weakening public command.

Non-negotiables

• The named architect must lead Auckland catchment observation and severe-weather exercises with operating teams.
• No commercial attachment may exist with forecasting, geospatial, sensor or emergency-platform suppliers evaluated.
• Public warning, field deployment and evacuation decisions remain with authorised officials.
• Community reports and location information must be protected and used only for approved resilience purposes.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a flood decision where model forecast and field evidence pointed toward different actions.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you govern a threshold change made during an active severe-weather event?
3. 49 words maximum. Which client inputs are indispensable before a degraded-mode catchment exercise can be credible?