Revised Flood Studies

Revised flood studies: share your stories

The Western Downs has an unfortunate history of major flooding events. In 2022, we experienced five separate major flooding events causing $180M in road damage throughout the region.

Council is updating its riverine flood studies for Chinchilla, Dalby, Jandowae, Miles, Tara and Wandoan to improve future flood risk management and resilience in our region. The revised flood studies will use modern technology, best practices in hydrology, and new modelling methodology to improve regional flood plain mapping in these towns since they were last developed in 2014.

As part of the review, Council is re-modelling historical major floods for each of these six towns. During July and August 2025, we invited residents to review the existing flood study reports and share their local knowledge to make sure the new models match what really happened.

In sharing their lived flood experiences, rainfall records and photos of historic flood events, our local community will help Council improve the accuracy of our flood modelling and maps.

The revised flood studies will:

  • reflect the lessons learned from recent major flooding events;
  • incorporate flooding experience and insights gained from community consultation;
  • provide better understanding of future flood behaviour across a range of design flood events;
  • be calibrated and verified, where possible, against historic flooding events; and
  • provide detailed information to assist with policy making, planning, development, and flood mitigation.

The revised models should be available for community feedback in November 2025 through a series of drop-in sessions.

This project is fully funded by the Australian and Queensland governments under the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.

Stantec has been engaged to deliver and coordinate the revised flood studies across the six Council areas.

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