Project Background

Climate change is increasing the risk of flooding and rising water levels across Victoria. All Councils have a role to play in building their community's resilience, in partnership with water authorities, emergency services and other government bodies.

Inner-city areas like Yarra tend to be prone to flooding and rising water levels as water can’t be absorbed into the ground easily and the topography of the area limits the way stormwater can move overland. This impacts the way our city develops, future infrastructure needs and how public spaces are designed.

Our community’s experience and some of the severe storms we have seen across Victoria in recent years has shown we need prompt action to support our residents while we continue working on long-term solutions to mitigate the risk of flooding.

In July and August 2023, we wanted to understand more about our community’s experience with flooding and rising water levels. Your experiences and feedback were measured against the Bureau of Meteorology's historical rainfall data to better understand what weather patterns have the most significant impact on our city.

What did we ask?

We asked our community to describe their lived experience with flooding and rising water levels to better understand how weather events affect our city. Within these experiences, we asked respondents to include:

• the last instance flooding of this nature occurred with approximate dates
• location the flooding experience took place
• the severity of the flooding event
• the frequency of these flooding events
• any images or videos to show the impact.

What comes next?

Using this data we have been able to finalise a series of flood maps to understand how severe weather events impact out city. These maps are in line with:

• our community’s experiences
• best practice design
• an approach benchmarked across multiple Councils

These flood maps will inform planning controls that will ensure future developments are better designed to avoid the impacts of overflow in our stormwater network created during a severe storm.

This will comprise updated stormwater maps under the Building Regulations and a Special Building Overlay (SBO). These are additional preventative measures and are designed to set appropriate conditions and floor levels to mitigate possible flood risk.

The flood map data is available using this link to help you understand your individual circumstances and if your property will be affected.