LifeSim essentials - Australian Water School
10/09/2025

Live Training

LifeSim essentials

Hands-on with LifeSim to model evacuations, road networks, and flood life-loss.

Starts 16 Oct

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About

This course provides a practical introduction to LifeSim, a powerful tool for estimating potential life loss and direct economic damages from natural and dam and levee failure floods. Through a blend of expert-led demonstrations and guided, hands-on exercises, participants will develop both the theoretical understanding and applied skills needed to model evacuation scenarios, road networks, and potential life-loss from flood events.

Over three sessions, participants will receive step-by-step guidance from the authors of LifeSim to build a flood risk model. This course is designed to deliver actionable insights, allowing participants to gain a deep understanding of LifeSim's capabilities and tangible skills to apply them in diverse real-world contexts, from urban infrastructure planning to emergency response.

Designed for engineers, planners and professionals in flood risk, emergency management and infrastructure planning, this course emphasises practical application. Participants will strengthen their ability to integrate LifeSim modelling into professional practice, supporting evidence-based decision-making and effective policy development.

Details

Date
Thursday, 16 October 2025 - Thursday, 30 October 2025
Time
10:00am (Australia/Sydney; find your local time)
Location
Online
Format 3 x 2-hour sessions + course material & resources
Cost AUD $895.00 (INC GST)
Code LC-26-3-157
Contact training@awschool.com.au
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Register your interest: https://awschool.com.au/training/lifesim-essentials/

Presenters

Woodrow Fields

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) Institute for Water Resources (IWR)

Woodrow "Woody" Fields is a Senior Consequence Specialist at the USACE Risk Management Center (CEIWR-RMC) with over 15 years of experience in risk assessments. His work focuses on developing innovativ... Read more
Woodrow Fields

Jason Needham, P.E.

HDR Engineering, Inc.

Jason Needham is HDR’s Flood Consequences Practice Lead with more than 25 years of experience in dam and levee safety. He is recognized as a leading specialist in flood consequence estimation, advan... Read more
Jason Needham, P.E.

Course Overview

This course provides hands-on training with LifeSim, a free USACE agent-based system for estimating life loss by simulating population redistribution during evacuations from high-hazard events. LifeSim can be applied across a range of scenarios, including floods, dam breaches, tsunamis, hurricanes and fires. Using Monte Carlo simulation, it captures natural variability, uncertainty and potential for life loss in complex situations such as flood events.

Over three interactive sessions, participants will develop practical skills, build a complete flood risk model, and apply your learning to real-world applications for infrastructure planning, emergency response, and policy development in flood risk management. The course emphasises practical applications, enabling professionals to assess flood risk, simulate evacuations, and model road network impacts with confidence.

Watch this sneak peek video to discover the practical skills and insights you’ll gain in this course:

Learning Outcomes

In this course, you will be able to:

  • Explain the purpose of LifeSim and its role in flood consequence estimation.
  • Set up and run LifeSim simulations for defined scenarios.
  • Identify and adjust key input variables and analyse sensitivity of results to those variables.
  • Interpret LifeSim outputs, including evacuation performance, population impacts, fatality estimates, and damages.
  • Evaluate and communicate model results to support risk-informed dam and levee safety decisions.

 

Course Outline

Session 1: Introduction to LifeSim

(Thursday, 16 October from 10 AM – 12 PM Sydney Time)

  • LifeSim overview and key capabilities for flood risk assessment.
  • Setting up a study and defining parameters.
  • Importing hydraulic data for rivers and floodplains.
  • Reviewing structure and data.

 

Session 2: Warning and Evacuation in LifeSim

(Thursday, 23 October from 10 AM – 12 PM Sydney Time)

  • Warning and evacuation overview.
  • Setting up emergency planning zones.
  • Configuring road networks.
  • Defining destinations.

 

Session 3: Estimating Life Loss with LifeSim and Reviewing Results

(Thursday, 30 October from 10 AM – 12 PM Sydney Time)

  • Important considerations when estimating life loss.
  • Developing a LifeSim alternative.
  • Creating and running a simulation.
  • Reviewing and interpreting results.

 

Format

  • 6+ hours of session recordings with unlimited access for 30-days.
  • Pre-and-post-course materials to go through via the AWS learning platform.
  • Homework exercises between the 3 sessions.
  • Slides, manual/s and background readings.
  • Ability to ask questions to the presenters at any time through the live sessions and via the learning platform.

 

Pre-requisites

Watch this past AWS webinar: Advances in flood consequence assessments

Requirements

Completion certification

  • Participants earn CPD hours/points (i.e. with Engineers Australia) for at least 6 hours for the entire course. 
  • On completion of the course attendees will be issued with a Certificate of Completion. 

 

Refund Policy

Frequent Asked Questions (FAQs)

Contact Us: +61 8 7424 2294 | training@awschool.com.au
awschool.com.au/training/lifesim-essentials/