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:
- Reference the ANUGA validation suite: 30+ benchmarks covering analytical solutions, lab experiments, and field cases
- Cite peer-reviewed publications: 100+ papers using ANUGA
- Include a local benchmark: run a known flood event in the study area to demonstrate model performance
- 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 the same ANUGA solver and the same pipeline. For regulatory submissions:
- Results are directly comparable to running ANUGA locally on the same inputs
- Model files are exportable in portable
scenario.jsonformat - The
run_anugapackage (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