Samantha Watt

Samantha Watt is a Principal Water Resources Engineer with Jacobs. Over her 20 year career, Samantha has developed hydrologic and hydraulic models for floodplain planning and infrastructure projects across all states of Australian and internationally.

Samantha has a particular interest in dam safety risk assessment, leveraging her skills in extreme design hydrology, dambreak modelling and consequence assessments for large dam projects.  Samantha leads the Asia-Pacific dams practice at Jacobs, and enjoys bringing together the many disciplines needed to solve complex dams engineering challenges.  She brings an approach that balances technical rigour and pragmatism to develop bespoke project solutions.

Samantha enjoys developing our next generation of flood modellers, engineers, and planners. She recently led a two-year project to enhance Sunwater’s hydrology and consequences capability leading an integrated team, and standardising processes, and tools. She also guest lectures as part of UQ’s Plan-Making Studio, sharing insights on integrating floodplain considerations into place-based planning.  

Involved in:

• Flood Simulation Optimisation and Cloud Computing (December 2025)