Solene Lao made such an impression during her summer McCusker Centre for Citizenship internship with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) that she has been offered casual employment with the Department.
Solene is studying a Master of Environmental Science at UWA specialising in water catchment and rivers.
“As a Flood Research Intern, I was assigned to the Blackwood Catchment, gathering data about historical floods and producing flood intelligence products – primarily an automatic catchment schematic, and flood cards – to be used internally by DFES,” Solene said.
“The schematic will depict live data related to the river height, flood class and the river trends at each river gauge, and the flood cards will illustrate the impact on surrounding assets that past floods have had, as well as what the impact of improved preparedness measures could be.”
Solene’s internship supervisor, DFES Senior Risk and Intelligence Officer Petina Blackwell, praised Solene’s progress on the projects.
“Solene demonstrated that she could deliver high-quality outcomes which is why we have offered her casual work to continue with the projects.” Ms Blackwell said.
“Solene’s work has assessed a range of flood information to summarise and improve the access to flood impact information which can assist operational staff during flood events.”
Solene said the internship had increased her awareness of the challenges faced by communities due to climate change.
“My projects were not only about reporting about floods, but also asking follow-up questions, like ‘now what? How did this flood impact the town and its community? What do we need to know to be prepared for it or when there is a similar event?’.”
Solene applied for the internship to get exposure to real-life projects that could help the community and deepen the knowledge she had built up through her studies at UWA.
“My internship opened my eyes about the complexity of a government agency and how each employee from each department contributes to the bigger picture,” she said.