Christchurch Mayoral Flood Taskforce

Stormwater Conference

In early 2014 Christchurch had the heaviest sequence of rainfall since the 1970s. Several large rainstorms fell in the city, saturating the ground, raising river and stream levels, and flooding homes, properties and streets. In many areas flooding was made worse by damage from the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquake sequence.

Many residents trying to recover from the earthquakes were faced with flooded and unhealthy homes. They reported increasing health problems, stress and financial challenges. Christchurch City Council set up a Mayoral Flood Taskforce with urgency on 29 April 2014 to deliver urgent, practical help with short-term flood defence measures until existing programmes to repair earthquake-damaged infrastructure, waterways and land were completed. The majority of these programmes will take several years, or longer, to implement.

The Taskforce was required to develop an assessment framework, carry out field assessments, develop solutions, and consult with the community within an extremely tight timeframe of 10 days for the initial report. The Taskforce adopted a multi-discipline, multi-consultancy/client partnership in order to achieve this.

Key lessons learnt from the Taskforce are presented in this paper. These lessons include: the importance of a clear scope for engagement; the development of rapid field data collection and survey tools through the use of mobile and web-GIS technology; the development of flood vulnerability categories; how a flexible ‘toolbox’ of response measures contributed to efficiencies; the importance of providing a clear decision making structure; the role of community meetings in collecting flood data and focusing on those affected; the benefits of widely collaborating with other agencies; and the transition of the Taskforce measures back into the normal mode of operation.

Conference Papers Resource - Conference Papers Stormwater

1. Sylvia Maclaren.pdf

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21 Jun 2016