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Regulatory Acceptance

ANUGA is accepted by regulators in multiple jurisdictions for flood studies and development assessments. As an open-source solver developed by a national geological survey (Geoscience Australia), it carries strong institutional credibility.

Acceptance by Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction Status Notes
Geoscience Australia Developed by GA Used for national tsunami risk assessments and flood studies
Wollongong City Council, NSW Accepted Used in flood studies for development applications
ACT Government Accepted Used in Canberra flood mapping projects
Pacific Island Countries Accepted Used in PACFLOOD tsunami inundation mapping (Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu)
UK Environment Agency Not tested ANUGA not currently listed; TUFLOW and MIKE+ are standard
FEMA (USA) Not standard ANUGA could be submitted for approval on a case-by-case basis
Australian state governments Varies Generally accepted where the modeller can demonstrate competence and validation

Key Points for Regulatory Submissions

Open-Source Advantage

  • Full transparency — regulators can inspect the solver source code
  • No black box — every calculation is auditable
  • Reproducible — anyone can run the same model and verify results
  • GPL licence — free to use, no licence cost barrier for review

Validation Evidence

When submitting ANUGA results to a regulator:

  1. Reference the ANUGA validation suite — 30+ benchmarks covering analytical solutions, lab experiments, and field cases
  2. Cite peer-reviewed publications — 100+ papers using ANUGA
  3. Include a local benchmark — run a known flood event in the study area to demonstrate model performance
  4. Provide the model files — ANUGA's portable format means reviewers can re-run the model

Institutional Backing

ANUGA is developed by:

  • Geoscience Australia — Australia's national geoscience agency (Department of Industry, Science and Resources)
  • Australian National University — Mathematical Sciences Institute

This is government-agency-grade institutional backing — comparable to the organisations behind other major hydraulic solvers.

Hydrata Cloud and Regulatory Work

Hydrata runs unmodified ANUGA. For regulatory submissions:

  • Results are identical to running ANUGA locally
  • Model files are exportable in portable scenario.json format
  • The run_anuga package (MIT, open-source) handles file translation
  • Reviewers can re-run any Hydrata simulation locally without a Hydrata account

Growing Acceptance

As AI-assisted modeling becomes standard practice, regulators will need to evaluate platforms that support automated workflows. Hydrata's MCP server and REST API provide full audit trails of:

  • Who created the model
  • What parameters were used
  • When the simulation ran
  • What compute resources were used
  • Complete input/output file provenance