We were recently onsite with a customer in an area of strong housing growth and development.
In this region, rural properties are continually acquired by developers and turned into dense housing estates.
Council was grappling with the best way to manage their flooding datasets given the rapid pace of development means that they are, almost, constantly changing.
Most of the changes are of the form of "inset models" where the developer provides Council with an initial proposed development flood model (and ultimately as-constructed) localised to the development site.
As the previous flood model no longer reflects the floodplain, Council wished to replace that part of the existing model covered by the inset model.
However, they did not want to "lose" the previous model, and wanted to maintain separate metadata for use in their automated flood certificates system.
Traditional approaches for managing this overlap would be to clip out (nullify) the portion of the old model covered by the inset model and either drape/map the updated results or use a composite file to do this virtually.
However, this approach is destructive (or at least involves careful backups) in that changes are made to the original model.
A new mode for composite layers called "override" allows this problem to be resolved instantly by simply adding the developers model results to the composite layer list.
In override mode, the inset model (developers model) completely replaces any surface that it overlays (which is different to maximums mode that dynamically creates a maximums envelope).
As a composite layer is used, the process occurs dynamically as the screen is drawn, meaning the process is non-destructive and allows metadata to be assigned to each individual surface.
In the example illustrated below, the developer has filled most of area bounded in yellow, except for the road (flowpath) and detention basin (SE corner of site).
The images show how the composite layer virtually merges the two models to create a seamless "current conditions" flood surface, literally at the click of a button (well, maybe 5 clicks).
Catchment Model Flood Extent
Catchment Model Flood Depth
Developers Inset Model Flood Extent
Developers Inset Model Flood Depth
Composite (override mode) Flood Extent
Composite (override mode) Flood Depth
The other week the Australian BoM issued their 3 monthly forecast and it's showing a strong signal for higher than average rainfall across the entire eastern two-thirds of Australia.
In particular, there is a >80% chance of more than median rainfall across most of Queensland and half of New South Wales (refer image below).
The outlook suggests there is a 50% chance of it being unusually wet.
September to November Seasonal Outlook - Souce: Australian BoM
Naturally, with forecasts such as this, nothing is certain but it pays to be ready none-the-less.
For those that may not be aware, waterRIDE provides an opportunity to build your own flood forecasting system using data that most organisations have readily available.
In fact, simple and effective systems can be setup in as little as a few days, depending on the type of forecast information that is available to you.
Combining your system with a waterRIDE LITE dashboard means that you have access to your forecasting system in your pocket, no matter where you are.
For those with systems in place, we are running our annual "health check" programme which provides a great way to ensure that both your system and personnel are ready for the upcoming wet season!
We have expanded the search capabilities in waterRIDE to make it easier and faster to locate individual properties on the map.
Our new default online address search comes pre-configured for free-form address searching with, optional, country localisation support.
If you can enter an address that returns multiple matches (eg 420 George St instead of 420 George St Sydney for our Sydney office), you are able to quickly select from a list of matching addresses.
For users that need "exact-match" searching using their cadastre, we've significantly improved the multi-field search tool for instances where addresses are broken into components in the cadasre (eg number, street, suburb as separate fields).
The BING online address search has been removed as this is no longer supported by Microsoft.
We have been steadily releasing incremental versions of waterRIDE 11 since the formal release some months ago.
Many of the changes are new features that did not quite make it into the initial waterRIDE 11 release. However, some of the changes are important bug fixes.
It pays to quickly review the release notes for a release to determine whether it is a priority for you to update. Release notes are always available from the website.
waterRIDE 11.0.4 (August 2025) will be hitting your inboxes shortly for those with valid maintenance plans. waterRIDE CLOUD users are already running the latest release.