Flooding is a natural part of a river’s cycle.

Nature-based solutions to flooding can be a range of measures that respond to the needs of the catchment to reduce the impact of flooding.

These measures aim to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems.

As well as flood mitigation, nature-based solutions bring multiple benefits including long-term social, environmental and economic flood resilience.

Some examples of solutions include enhancing vegetation buffer strips along waterways, changing land use on floodplains, reconnecting rivers to wetlands, reinstating ancient river channels and relocating or raising infrastructure.

This project is about partnering with communities to:

• Develop a framework and process to evaluate options for reducing flood impacts on communities
• Quantify and value the impact of nature-based solutions on flood mitigation and other co-benefits
• Seek innovative and practical nature-based approaches to flood risk mitigation in the study location
• Recommend novel and effective financial incentives for implementing nature-based solutions
• Provide a foundation that will empower local government decision-making on solutions suitable for the local context
• Identify opportunities to overcome barriers to implementation.
  
  

ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions (ICEDS) are ecologists, hydrologists and social scientists, partnering with communities to develop the first Australian guidelines on nature-based solutions for flood mitigation and resilience.

You can find out more about who we are and what we do here.

If you would like to know more about this project, email disastersolutions.iceds@anu.edu.au