Monitoring equipment helps forecast flooding

Bundaberg Regional Council has embarked on a cost-effective water and rain monitoring trial with Aquamonix.

The new sensors will provide valuable data to help model flood waters in urban creeks and tidal irrigation channels around Bundaberg.

Bundaberg Regional Council Roads and Drainage portfolio Spokesperson, Bill Trevor, said the gauges will provide Council with rainfall and water level data on key catchments within the Bundaberg City area, Burnett Heads and Moore Park Beach.

“This data will enable Council to calibrate hydraulic models and simulate real storm events, providing increased confidence in stormwater modelling outcomes,” Cr Trevor said.

“As each of these gauging stations transmits the data in real time back to Council, through Council’s LoRaWAN network, it will assist us to prepare for storm and flooding events.”

“These gauges will give council a little bit more visibility into what’s happening around our stormwater drains and culverts.

“All we need now is some rain!”

The project was delivered in partnership between Council’s Engineering Services and Information Services teams.

Smart product manufacturing consultants, Aquamonix, were engaged to supply and install the gauging stations.

A dozen gauges have been placed around the Bundaberg Region with four new water level gauges within the Bundaberg Creek catchment.

Two are in the Saltwater Creek catchment and one along Rowlands Road at Burnett Heads.

Six new water level gauges have also been placed at Moore Park Beach.

Aquamonix engineer, Ashley Hannigan, said the equipment cost a quarter the amount of traditional methods.

“Traditional monitoring is very expensive because the sensors have higher stability and structures are much larger,” Ashley said.

“The sensors are not as accurate as the traditional system, but if you can put a number of them around the region, you’ll get better coverage and distribution than with a single gauge.

“They’ll give a better understanding of how flood channels work when it is actually raining, as until you have some data it’s difficult to predict what is going to happen during a serious storm event.”

Article originally produced by Derek Schlennstedt from Bundaberg Now