1 Spatial hydrological framework to study catchments response to heavy rainfall related hazards in the Sunshine Coast Region Sanjeev Kumar Srivastava, Deidre Pincott Miller, Damian McGarry, Toby Clewett, Gary Duffey Keywords: Climate change, spatial hydrology, catchment-based approaches, rainfall-related hazards Abstract/Summary Landscape systems across the world have been altered dramatically to support modern economies, and there is strong evidence suggesting that most of the warming observed over the last fifty years is attributable to these activities. This, together with other associated climate-change events such as extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels, (which has increased through the twentieth century), are already affecting sensitive ecoregions across the globe. The archives of spatial information coupled with open- source software tools provide diverse ways to analyse and visualise scenarios of deleterious effects of climate change at a much finer scale. This study presents the framework of an ongoing project that utilises a combination of commercial and open-source geospatial data analysis software to identify areas with higher vulnerability by investigating existing spatial data. The datasets investigated in the study include catchment based characteristics derived from a spatial hydrology model using a high resolution hydrologically correct digital elevation model (DEM), land use, and empirical datasets on hazards related to flash flooding. The paper discusses how the integration of spatial and statistical techniques along with spatial hydrological models enable derivation of iŶdiĐes that ĐaŶ proǀide iŶsight iŶto a ĐatĐhŵeŶt’s response to surface hydrology during heavy rainfall events. Introduction Over the past few years several extreme weather events were noticed that were mainly attributed to climate change (Anderson, 2011). These extreme events were mainly dominated by heavy rainfall and subsequent flash floods have occurred across different parts of Queensland (Srivastava, 2011). The frequencies and magnitudes of these events have been closely attributed to cyclical climate variability observed during La Nina climate cycles for the western