Cost-effective mitigation strategy development for flood prone buildings: Development of costing modules for flood mitigation strategies

This report assesses residential building types in Australia according to their cost-effectiveness and flood mitigation ability, as part of efforts to reduce the vulnerability of residential buildings located in floodplains. It develops a building schema to categorise residential building stock in Australia and assesses mitigation strategies including elevation, relocation, dry floodproofing, wet floodproofing and the use of flood barriers. 

This report also develops a floodproofing matrix to assess appropriate strategies for the five selected storey types, which represent the most common residential buildings in Australia. It discusses the application of these strategies to the storey types during two construction regimes i.e. existing state before any event and a substantial renovation or reconstruction after an event. Each mitigation strategy is evaluated and is costed through engagement of professional quantity surveyor.

This report forms part of the output to a research project titled ‘Cost effective mitigation strategy development for flood prone buildings’ within the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre. The motivation for this project arises from the experience and observations during the recent flooding in Australia in 2011, 2013 and 2015, which caused widespread devastation in Queensland. A fundamental reason for this damage was inappropriate development in floodplains and a legacy of high risk building stock in flood prone areas.