RESEARCHERS who risked their safety to collect information on the Queensland floods have handed their work to the flood inquiry.

Queensland University of Technology's Associate Professor Richard Brown waded into his flooded campus with only a rope and the help of his colleagues as protection when Brisbane was inundated in January.

The 21 hours of raw information he and other researchers collected is believed to be the world's first real-time data on a major flood in an urban area.

Prof Brown has handed his findings to the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry, which is examining the disaster that killed 35 people.

Nine victims were motorists trying to negotiate what they thought were safe, but flooded, roads.

As knowledge on urban floods like that of January's is limited, Prof Brown hopes the data will be useful to emergency workers and disaster planners, engineers and urban designers.

"The world is becoming more urbanised," he said.

"Cities are growing, cities are spreading . . . and are ever looking to build homes in new areas."

Even experts were shocked by the unpredictably of the waters.

"For a little while it would look safe, so you might get in, and within a minute it could be travelling at a speed that's very dangerous," Prof Brown said.

Prof Brown is now seeking funding to study the data he and his courageous team captured.

They have so far found that any criteria for safe evacuation of a building that's solely based on the speed of floodwaters, depth or momentum, cannot account for the hazards of velocity and varying depth.

This could have particular impact for swift water rescuers, who must enter moving waters to help people from their homes and cars.

Of particular interest to the researchers is data from January 13 when the waters were receding, where for 18 minutes they noted "very unexpected behaviour" of the flow and sediment concentration.