Updating South Australia’s flood hazard mapping and planning rules

Share your feedback on draft updates to South Australia’s flood hazard planning rules.

What's being decided?

The State Planning Commission has prepared the draft State-Wide Flood Hazard Code Amendment to update flood hazard mapping and planning rules across the state, based on new and updated flood studies and modelling.

It aims to guide how development should address flood risk and be designed to keep people and property safe from floods.

The proposed changes focus on three aspects:

• more consistent and updated mapping: using the latest flood studies and data to update flood hazard overlay mapping, based on more contemporary standards and modelling, and applying the three flood hazard overlays more consistently across the state
• improved planning rules: introducing definitions and enhanced policies to make development assessments clearer and more consistent, and to align with national guidance
• faster process for future mapping updates: enabling a streamlined process to update flood hazard overlay mapping in the future as more contemporary flood studies and data become available.

Background

Focusing on flood hazards from watercourses and surface water across the state, the proposed overlay mapping and planning rules have been updated using:

• 30 new and enhanced flood studies which model flood hazard to 2050, including projected climate conditions and development growth scenarios
• previous council flood studies which have not yet been integrated into the Planning and Design Code
• coarse-scale data (rather than more detailed data identified through flood studies) based on river and surface water flood information, used mostly in regional areas.

Using these three forms of flood hazard mapping updates has allowed the Hazards (Flooding – Evidence Required) Overlay to be removed or reduced in many parts of the state.

This will reduce costs and red tape for building in areas where precautionary measures are no longer considered necessary.

Proposed new and updated planning rules provide greater protection to vulnerable people by avoiding developing buildings such as aged care facilities, hospitals and schools where there is an intolerable flood risk.

This code amendment is the final stage of the State Planning Commission’s Flood Hazard Mapping and Assessment Project, which included delivering the Flooding Hazards Mapping Update Code Amendment and procuring new, detailed flood studies to update and enhance flood hazard mapping across the state.

Get involved

Have your say on the draft State-Wide Flood Hazard Code Amendment by Thursday, 13 August.

Find out more by:

• reading the draft State-Wide Flood Hazard Code Amendment
• taking a look at our FAQs and fact sheet
• using our Map Viewer to compare current and proposed mapping
• asking us a question
• joining an online or in-person information session

Have your say by:

• taking our survey
• email a submission to: PlanSASubmissions@sa.gov.au (Subject: Submission – State-Wide Flood Hazard Code Amendment)
• post your written submission to: State Planning Commission, GPO Box 1815, Adelaide, SA 5001

If you would like to view hard copies of the draft code amendment, contact us during standard business hours to arrange a time.

What are the next steps?

We will consider all feedback in finalising the draft State-Wide Flood Hazard Code Amendment.

All feedback will be captured in an engagement report that will be provided to the State Planning Commission and the Minister for Planning to assist with final decision-making.

Once a decision has been made, the engagement report, including all feedback received during consultation, will be published on this webpage and the PlanSA website.

Note: names and organisations will be included with published submissions but personal addresses, email addresses and phone numbers will be redacted.