About the Technique

The Australian Rainfall and Runoff Data Hub is a tool that allows for easy access to the design inputs required to undertake flood estimation in Australia. Background on the development and use of this data can be found in Australian Rainfall and Runoff (2016). The Data Hub accesses data that is © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) and published under CC BY 4.0. The data hub was not produced and is not managed as part of the Australian Rainfall and Runoff update.

To use the tool enter your catchment centroid in latitude and longitude, or upload a catchment boundary file. Supported file formats are:

Shapefile – you must upload all of the shapefile components together (not just the .shp, also the .shx and .dbf at a minimum). If the shapefile is not in latitude and longitude projection (WGS84), include the .prj file so the Data Hub can reproject it automatically.
GeoJSON (.geojson or .json)
KML (.kml)

Uploaded catchment boundaries must contain polygon geometries. If the geometric centroid of the catchment falls outside the boundary, a representative point inside the catchment will be used instead, and a note will be displayed on the results page.

Catchment Outlet (Optional): You may also provide an optional catchment outlet location (latitude and longitude). The outlet is used only for jurisdiction-sensitive layers (Default IFD Depths, Storm Losses, Preburst, and ARF Parameters) to determine which jurisdiction rules apply. If no outlet is provided, the catchment centroid is used.

Next select the data you wish to obtain from the tool by ticking the checkboxes or by hitting "Select All".

Baseflow Factors, All IFD Datasets, and Climate Change Adjusted IFD Datasets are not included in "Select All". Baseflow Factors are calculated for the contributing area upstream of a point and therefore should be calculated at the catchment outlet.

Now hit submit and a page will appear with your data. Results can be downloaded in the following formats:

CSV-Format Text file – available at the bottom of the results page.
JSON file – available at the bottom of the results page.
PDF report – includes the ARR logo, date, input data summary, a catchment map (if a catchment boundary was uploaded), and all results formatted for printing. Available at the bottom of the results page.
Temporal Patterns – zipped and available for download via the "Download (.zip)" link in the heading of the Temporal Pattern section of the results page.
IFD Tables – individual IFD tables can be downloaded as CSV, or an entire IFD layer section can be downloaded as a ZIP file containing all tables.

User Details (Optional): You may optionally provide a Name, Project, and Company name. These details are included in the text, JSON, and PDF downloads for user convenience.

Note the csv could be included as an appendix of your study to improve reproducibility of results.

Advanced Use:

API requests can also be sent to the server directly. Point queries can be sent through a URL using GET. Catchment boundary queries, including Shapefile, GeoJSON, and KML uploads, must be sent as multipart form POST requests using the file field shapeFile[].

When requesting text file output, the results of this style of request yield a file similar to the one downloadable on the regular results page, with the temporal pattern increments also displayed at the end of the file.

Point GET requests

The form of a point GET request is as follows:

?attribute1=value1&attribute2=value2

An example URL request to obtain all the data at (-29.573, 152.648) in latitude and longitude in JSON form is as follows:

?lon_coord=152.648&lat_coord=-29.573&type=json&All=1

To receive the text version of the same data, use the following URL:

?lon_coord=152.648&lat_coord=-29.573&type=text&All=1

Catchment upload POST requests

Catchment files cannot be uploaded through the browser URL bar. Submit the same attributes as multipart form fields and attach the catchment boundary files using shapeFile[]. Supported upload formats include Shapefile component sets, GeoJSON, and KML. GeoJSON uploads may use .geojson or .json filenames, but .json files must contain valid polygon GeoJSON.

The following examples use a GeoJSON catchment request in JSON form:

curl -X POST "" \
  -F "shapeFile[][email protected]" \
  -F "type=json" \
  -F "All=1" \
  -o results.json

The same request using Python is:

import requests

url = ""
data = {
    "type": "json",
    "All": "1",
}

with open("catchment.geojson", "rb") as catchment:
    files = {
        "shapeFile[]": ("catchment.geojson", catchment, "application/geo+json"),
    }
    response = requests.post(url, data=data, files=files)

response.raise_for_status()
with open("results.json", "wb") as output:
    output.write(response.content)

For NSW point or catchment queries, the JSON response includes the recommended preburst temporal pattern layer as RecPreburstTP where the relevant query location is in NSW. This layer contains pattern_table, a duration/AEP table of selected event IDs and preburst ratios, and selected_patterns, the selected temporal pattern events and increments.

Allowed options are listed in the table below:

Checkbox Label	Command Line Name (attribute)	Allowed Values (value)
Latitude*	lat_coord	Real Number
Longitude*	lon_coord	Real Number
Outlet Latitude	outlet_lat_coord	Real Number
Outlet Longitude	outlet_lon_coord	Real Number
Output Type	type	html (default), text, json
Select All (except baseflow, All IFD Datasets, CC Adjusted IFD Datasets)	All	1
River Region	RiverRegion	1
ARF Parameters	ARFParams	1
Storm Losses	StormLosses	1
Temporal Patterns	TemporalPatterns	1
Area Temporal Patterns	ArealTemporalPatterns	1
Default IFD Depths	BoMIFD	1
Median Preburst Depths and Ratios	Preburst	1
Other Preburst Depths and Ratios	OtherPreburst	1
Climate Change Factors	ClimateChange	1
All IFD Datasets	AllIFDDatasets	1
Climate Change Adjusted IFD Datasets	CCAdjIFDDatasets	1
Climate Change Adjusted Losses	CCAdjLosses	1
Baseflow Factors	Baseflow	1

*Required

Contact Us:

This website is managed and maintained by industry.

If you have have questions or feedback please send an email to [email protected]

Data Attribution

Bureau of Meteorology Intensity-Frequency-Duration (IFD) design rainfall depths are © Commonwealth of Australia 2016, Bureau of Meteorology. They are sourced from the Bureau of Meteorology 2016 Rainfall IFD Data System and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Where the Data Hub envelopes Bureau of Meteorology IFD depths with other IFD datasets, or adjusts them to a different climate baseline, the depths presented are an adaptation of that material. The Bureau of Meteorology has not endorsed and is not responsible for those adaptations.