Melbourne Water flood mapping, Australia
- Oliver Ashton
- Sep 1
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 30
“Flood Platform greatly improved project efficiency by accelerating hydraulic simulation timelines, optimising computational resource use, and simplifying post-processing through a unified, data-efficient environment."
Yuan Li, Senior Associate Hydrologist, Jacobs - Australia
Key Facts
Support for Multiple GPU Simulations: Flood Platform allows many hydraulic model simulations to run at the same time using multiple graphics processing units (GPUs). This significantly reduces the time required to complete large volumes of simulations.
Optimised Use of Computing Resources: Flood Platform intelligently assigns simulations to available computing hardware based on performance metrics, allowing all available resources to be used efficiently and minimising processing time.
Live Monitoring of Simulation Progress: Users can observe the status of simulations in real time through a central interface. This feature helps identify issues early, improves transparency, and supports better project coordination.
Centralised Post-Processing of Model Outputs: Flood Platform provides tools to process all simulation results within a single environment. It handles large datasets and produces a consistent set of flood intelligence outputs, such as interactive high-resolution mapping that can be tagged and used for planning and decision-making.
Melbourne Water manages a network of catchments across Greater Melbourne to support flood risk planning, emergency response, and community awareness. To provide the most accurate and up-to-date flood information, Melbourne Water will review flood models every five years and update them every ten years, through the Greater Melbourne Flood Information Program. As a foundational step, Melbourne Water is delivering the 2021–26 Flood Mapping Program, which aims to provide comprehensive flood mapping for all municipalities across Greater Melbourne and the Westernport region, using the latest flood modelling standards.
Jacobs has been engaged by Melbourne Water to support the development and enhancement of flood models and mapping across several catchments within the Greater Melbourne region. This work is being delivered through multiple projects under the 2021–26 Flood Mapping Program framework. The maps will also form the basis for a public engagement process to collect community insights and lived flood experiences, helping to validate and refine the data.
The scope of work includes the creation of detailed hydrologic and hydraulic models, as well as the generation of high-resolution flood intelligence maps using advanced hydraulic simulations.
Key challenges associated with these projects:
Extensive Geographic Coverage: The program spans a large and diverse area, requiring the integration of data across multiple municipalities and catchment types.
High Volume of Models: A significant number of individual models must be developed or updated, each tailored to the unique characteristics of its catchment.
Model Complexity: Many of the models are highly detailed, incorporating high-resolution topographic data, complex 1D drainage networks, and a mix of urban and rural land uses. This level of detail is essential for accurately representing flood behaviour in both densely built and natural environments.
Intensive Simulation Requirements: Each hydraulic model must undergo numerous simulations, i.e., often numbering in the hundreds, to comply with the latest Australian Rainfall and Runoff (ARR) guidelines. This includes testing across a range of Annual Exceedance Probabilities (AEPs), climate change scenarios, storm durations, and ensembles of temporal rainfall patterns.
Extensive Post-Processing Requirements: After simulations are completed, each model must be post-processed to produce a single, consistent set of taggable flood intelligence outputs. This process involves managing and analysing a large volume of data to extract meaningful and usable information.
Jacobs used Flood Platform to achieve the successful and timely delivery of multiple projects with high simulation demands, and to address the technical challenges involved.
*The entire program covers an area of approximately 13,000 km². Jacobs' scope includes around 5,000 to 6,000 km².
Summary
Flood Platform significantly improved project efficiency by enabling hundreds of hydraulic simulations to be completed within days, compared to several weeks using traditional methods. It optimised the use of available infrastructure, such as GPUs, by intelligently distributing workloads across different models and projects. Additionally, the platform streamlined post-processing by consolidating tasks in one environment, reducing the need to store large volumes of raw model outputs in project repositories.
Yuan Li
Yuan is a hydrologist and flood modeller with experience across flood modelling and mapping, floodplain risk management, flood forecasting, flood impact assessment of different scales of development, and integrated water management in the Australia and New Zealand region.
