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Planning for a Flood Resilient Townsville

The possibility of flooding is part of Townsville life. Our city sits on a coastal floodplain and evidence shows our environment is changing in ways that could increase the likelihood and impact of future flooding.

Council’s role is to gather the best evidence to understand the risks, share information with the public and make the best possible decisions about how to maintain and enhance our city’s resilience.

We carry out research and build models to understand where flooding could happen and what the consequences of different events and circumstances might be. Based on this, we review and update our planning scheme (the Townsville City Plan) and other policies to provide the best possible guidance and protection for Townsville.

All of this is an ongoing process – we develop more accurate ways of measuring flooding, build better quality historic records over time, and utilise new and improved scientific research. Using all this, we can make more informed and better decisions about risk and our responses to it.

New and updated flooding information

Over the past four years, we have carried out new flood studies and compiled new, improved flood depth mapping for Townsville. Council is also adopting a new risk-based approach to flood planning, in line with industry best practice and Queensland planning regulations, and we have created new flood risk mapping for our city.

This information is available to help everyone make better decisions about development in Townsville – whether that’s planning of new homes or housing estates, an extension to your home or a big commercial development. Referring to Townsville’s flood depth and flood risk mapping will also help you understand what planning policies may be applied to future development proposals.

You can access these new maps and studies by visiting our flood maps and studies pages – you’ll also find more information about how research and investigation was carried out and the standards we follow to ensure the accuracy and validity of our models.