Council Monthly Catch ups:

Let's connect, share an idea, talk about issues and work on solutions as a team. 

Followed by networking. Click to register

To join email rachael.armstrong@hbrc.govt.nz

The Ministry for the Environment granted Regional, Councils funding to support 21 flood mitigation feasibility studies across 15 regions using Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). Each project is due for completion by end of June 2025.

This workshop is a mid-project opportunity for project teams from across the country to compare notes and problem-solve issues, as they enter the final stages of project delivery.

The purpose of this one-day workshop is:

• To build a NBS community of practice within the Regional Sector
• To discuss common challenges and potential solutions
• To understand the WHY, i.e. how each NBS project forms part of a broader flood protection management strategy within their region
• To find opportunities to collaborate and share resources.
• To identify emerging good practice for NBS feasibility studies.
• To initiate development of a good practice guide for the future, based on the NBS pilot studies, as a starting point for the industry.
• To identify next steps and what is needed to progress the use of NBS for flood mitigation.
• To share experiences of running the NBS pilot studies, expand your network, and learn from other projects.

A summary report will capture workshop outputs and suggest guidance for future project implementation.

Who should attend?

We invite each project team to send a range of expertise to cover:

• project management.
• numerical modelling and science
• communication and engagement
• policy implications
• consultants for the project

There may be a cross over within councils and contractors who are managing multiple projects.

Successful completion of a workshop will result in participants being awarded an Attendance Certificate stating CPD hours.

Facilitator:

Liam Foster, WSP

When

Wednesday 12 March 2025

Where

Blenheim, ASB Theatre

Time

9.00am to 5.00pm

Cost

$400.00 plus GST per person.

Where to register

Email Rachael Armstrong - Rachael.Armstrong@hbrc.govt.nz

 

 

Rock Design for River Works

Date 28 March 2025

Location Auckland

Time 9am-2pm (includes lunch)

Cost $500 plus GST.

Council staff $100 discount 

A workshop for designing rock revetments and groynes for River Works

A half-day workshop providing details of best practice methods for designing rock for use in river works. A high-level introduction to geomorphology will be provided for the purpose of understanding how rock works can affect river processes as well as key concepts affecting general scour design. A summary of tools for quantifying hydrological and hydraulic design parameters will be presented followed by guidance on when rock should be considered as a management tool. The design process will then be explained for rock revetments (rock lines) and groynes including general arrangement geometry, sizing, filters, and specifications. Examples will be provided of recent projects including where design/cost/maintenance trade-offs were considered.

Key themes

• Brief introduction to geomorphology – how rivers work.
• Outline tools for quantifying key design inputs – hydrology, hydraulics.
• When to use rock.
• General arrangement geometry for groynes & revetments.
• Estimating general scour (geomorphic change);
• Estimating local scour.
• Sizing rock using three different methods.
• Design of granular and geotextile filters.
• Key specifications for rock.

Outcomes

A better understanding of designing rock for use in river works.

Who would benefit?

Local authority engineers and asset managers, consultants and contractors actively involved in river management, or who have a specific interest in and experience of rivers and their management.

Presenter

Kyle Christensen - River Engineering Consultant

Spaces limited

To register email Rachael.Armstrong@hbrc.govt.nz

International Adaptation Futures conference is taking place this year in New Zealand for the first time.

This landmark hybrid event will unite over 1500 scientists, policymakers, and changemakers to collaborate on solutions for climate resilience and adaptation.

What makes #AF2025 unique?

• Indigenous Solutions & Small Island States: Dive into essential discussions tailored to these communities.
• Art Outreach: Engage with inspiring public art events showcasing creative climate responses.
• Regional Pavilions: Explore insights from Oceania, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
• Workshops: Connect at early-career networking events, plus sessions on managed retreats, Pacific responses, and more, hosted by leading New Zealand universities.

Arrive early for pre-conference events on 12 October or stay for post-conference workshops.

Limited grants are available for students, LDC participants, and Indigenous scholars to ensure broad participation.

Save the date and join us!

Visit https://adaptationfutures2025.com for more details, including registration, schedules, and participation options.

We look forward to seeing you in Christchurch—or online—as we collaborate to shape a resilient future.

 

Key Learning Objectives/Outcomes

Familiarity with key principles in fluvial geomorphology and their application to various river management situations (e.g., catchment (and regional) planning, sediment flux issues, and relation to flood hazards). Build familiarity with key principles in fluvial geomorphology and their application to various river management situations 

When

Monday 20 October - Tuesday 21 October 2025 TBC

Where

Wellington and Waikanae

Time

Two full days (8am-5pm)

Exact times to be confirmed

Cost

$950.00 plus GST for 2-day course. Council rate – $800.00 plus GST

Where to register

Email Rachael Armstrong - Rachael.Armstrong@hbrc.govt.nz

Key themes

Management issues for which geomorphic insight is fundamental:

• Work with the river (nature-based solutions) – respect diversity, work with process
• Determine what is realistically achievable
• Be proactive, precautionary, pre-emptive – tackle threatening processes
• Risk management
• Integrated Catchment Management
• Active and passive practices (including the do-nothing option) – hard versus soft engineering practices … Role of maintenance (weed management)
• Flood management/protection versus ‘living with a living river’
• Managing river erosion
• Using sediment budgets to manage sedimentation issues (including sand/gravel extraction)

Spatial Dimensions of geomorphologically-informed river management

Catchment

• Fundamental geomorphic unit
• Longitudinal profile – source, transfer accumulation zones
• Network relationships (tributary-trunk stream pattern, flux)
• Connectivity relationships

Channel planform: Braided, wandering gravel-bed, active meandering passive meandering, discontinuous watercourse (wetland/swamp)

Channel geometry

• Downstream and at-a-station hydraulic geometry
• Size and shape

Geomorphic units

• Erosional and depositional forms (and process relations)
• Channel (instream) and floodplain
• Assemblages – and approach to analysis of morphodynamics, condition, recovery (Fryirs & Brierley, 2021)

Bed material size

• Bedrock, Boulder/cobble, gravel-bed, sand-bed, fine-grained
• Bedload, mixed load, suspended load

Temporal dimensions of geomorphologically-informed river management

Timescale: Geologic, geomorphic, engineering

Magnitude-frequency relations

Equilibrium versus non-linear relations

Legacy effect (landscape memory)

Processes of geomorphic river adjustment

• Balance of impelling and resisting forces
• Stream power, shear stress
• Resistance elements – role of riparian vegetation, wood, ecosystem engineers
• Entrainment, transport, deposition (Hjulstrom curve)
• Sediment transport – Bedload, suspended load, solution load
• Aggradation/degradation regime – Lane Balance

Evolutionary trajectory of rivers (and recovery potential)

• Relating character and behaviour (capacity for adjustment/range of variability) to evolutionary trajectory
• Scoping (modelling) prospective river futures to determine what is realistically achievable in management

Geomorphology and river health (condition)

What do we measure where, how and why?

What do we measure against?

Geomorphic relations to Māori conceptualisations of rivers

A living river ethos, mauri, mana, ora

How geomorphology can support river management (indicative only – set up follow up specialist courses)

Scoping river futures - Proactive and precautionary approaches to Visioning & Catchment Planning

Concern for treatment response

Geoethical considerations – concerns for social and environmental justice

• Risk management
• Integrated Catchment Management
• Active and passive practices (including the do-nothing option) – hard versus soft engineering practices … Role of maintenance (weed management)
• Flood management/protection versus ‘living with a living river’
• Managing river erosion
• Using sediment budgets to manage sedimentation issues (including sand/gravel extraction)

Presenters: Ian Fuller, Gary Brierley, Jon Tunnicliffe

Level One Asset Management Course

This course provides a contextual overview of the core elements of Asset Management (AM). Using case studies across different industries we will explore the benefits of Asset Management, required practices, lifecycle management, risk management and how to move forward on the AM journey. At the conclusion of this introductory course, participants will have a clear understanding of the key elements of AM and how to compile an asset management plan that aligns with organisational outcomes.

Syllabus

• Introductions and Course Overview
• Asset Management Overview
• Asset Management – The Organisational Context
• What is the State of my Assets?
• Valuing Assets and Understanding lifecycle implications
• Levels of Service – Do my assets deliver what is needed?
• Risk Management
• Lifecycle Management
• The Asset Management Plan
• Continuous Improvement
• Managing the AM Journey
• Summary

Presenter: Catherine Bayly 

Catherine is an experienced Infrastructure and Asset Manager. She has worked with and for local government organisations for over 20 years in NZ, Australia and the UK. Example work includes physical delivery of capital projects up to $300m, management of city assets, auditing AM competency of international water and river management schemes and most recently the design and completion of a national asset management system for the NZ Water Industry. Cath has co-developed competency based asset management courses in Australia which have been delivered to large scale asset owners including BHP Billiton, the defence force and the water industry. Cath has competencies in all elements of asset management and is particularly passionate about continuous improvement to efficiently deliver community services

When

27 March 2025

Where

Auckland

Time

9.00 am to 5.00 pm

Cost

$900.00 plus GST.

Council rate – $700.00 plus GST

Where to register

Email Rachael Armstrong - Rachael.Armstrong@hbrc.govt.nz

A one-day workshop on practical examples of river management practices, and the context in which options are considered. Participants to bring case studies of recent works or current sites where works are proposed.  The workshop will be discussion based, with a short overview of the wider context of river management. 

 A look at practical examples of river management practices

Who would benefit?

Local authority engineers and asset managers, consultants and contractors actively involved in river management, or who have a specific interest in and experience of rivers and their management.

When

TBC

Where

Wellington

Time

One day (9am-5pm)

9.00-10.30 

Morning Tea

10.45-12.15

Lunch

1.15-2.45

Afternoon Tea

3.00-5.00

Cost

$500.00 plus GST.

Council rate – $400.00 plus GST

Where to register

To register interest email Rachael Armstrong - Rachael.Armstrong@hbrc.govt.nz

Key themes

• River management options: relating to river type and reach character.
• Site context and pre-flood conditions: of flood history, channel changes and sediment transport activity.
• Option selection: from potential bank protection and channel management measures.
• Relating works to site: dimensioning structural bank works, scoping channel measures and margin vegetation management.
• Learning from mistakes: all river management measures are temporary, thus monitoring and observation skills to learn from the river is essential.
• Information techniques of drone imagery and comparing historical imagery (examples of this) and what this tells us about channel form and the rates of channel change, plus measuring bed material size.

Outcomes

A better understanding of river dynamics and the requirements of river engineering, and of different practices used on different types of rivers and around the country.

Presenter Gary Williams and Tony Dunlop. 

The extreme weather events of early 2023 caused widespread flooding in the Auckland region. In response, Auckland Council initiated a rapidly evolving programme of work to quantify and understand the magnitude of the events and their impacts on the community, support and shape the wider recovery effort, and to develop the frameworks and tools that would be needed to enable the assessment of affected properties for potential buyout or risk mitigation works.

For the purposes of Auckland Council’s response to the severe weather events of 2023, Council determined that flood-affected properties would be eligible for consideration for buyout or subsidised risk mitigation where there was a high risk to life to vulnerable people in an existing 1% AEP flood event. However, at the time of the 2023 floods, there was not a defined framework for assessing risk to life from flooding. This presentation describes the framework developed by Auckland Council to assess risk to life at the property level in the Auckland Region.

A literature review revealed that existing approaches to flood risk assessment in New Zealand and overseas tend to assume widespread fluvial or coastal flooding which results in a uniform level of flood hazard across a wide area. In contrast, Auckland’s small catchments and steep topography tend to produce pluvial flooding that is highly localised and flashy. This has material implications for the risk assessment methodology. Key challenges encountered in the development of the framework included how to account for the spatial variability of flood hazard at the property level, how to account for the behaviour of people who might be on a property at the time of flooding, how to account for those who are most vulnerable, and how to integrate flood hazard assessments at multiple locations on a property into a single rating that represents risk to life in a 1% AEP event.

The presentation discusses how these, and other challenges were addressed in the development and application of the Property-level Risk Assessment Framework.

Presenter Fiona MacDonald

Fiona is Principal for Flood Risk in Auckland Council’s Healthy Waters and Flood Resilience department. Her role involves understanding existing and future flood risk across the region, and working with other parts of Council to manage this risk. Since the Anniversary floods she has been working on Council’s flood response and recovery work, with a focus on the decision making frameworks for property categorisation.

To register https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0HnRJoVPTueuUOG01r8ASA

In February 2023 the east coast of Te Ika-a-Māui/ the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand was severely impacted by ex-Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle (ETC Gabrielle), leaving a trail of destruction and 9 fatalities. The east coast has a relatively high level of exposure to the impacts of decaying ex-tropical cyclones that move south out of Melanesia/ western Polynesia, often tracking across Hawke’s Bay. ETC Gabrielle was particularly intense with sea surface temperatures in the Tasman Sea playing a part in maintaining that intensity. It’s speed and track brought unprecedented wind, rain and waves/ storm surge - some rain gauges recorded in excess of 500mm in 24 hours and peak intensities in excess of 50mm/hour. Accordingly the damage associated with this event was catastrophic for parts of Hawke’s Bay, in some places shifting residential buildings off their foundations and in other places completely burying houses in silt.

In the weeks following that event central Government instructed local councils to categorise the risk of continued occupation of impacted residential properties, with the highest risk subject to a voluntary Crown ‘buy-out’. PDP was engaged by HBRC to assist with that categorization and in particular that highest risk Category 3 delineation, based on the broad ‘risk to life’ consideration that were so dramatically highlighted with the event – the depth of flooding, velocity, rate of rise, entrained silt and debris volumes. It also included a range of other considerations – geographic features that concentrate the hazard, the availability of safe egress and the complexity of the hazard. The work culminated with the identification of close to 300 Category 3 residential properties subject to voluntary buy-out and the confirmation of around $200M in funding (excluding insurance payouts). The presentation will provide a summary of that work and highlight some of the challenges associated with it.

Ramon is a river engineer with over thirty years’ experience in the field of civil engineering and has just short of 20 years’ experience in regional sector leadership roles mainly with Otago and Manawatu-Whanganui (Horizons). He’s a Chartered Professional Engineer and current part of the NZ Society on Large Dams management committee.

To Register https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_D2NThWW_T1Waw_sr9cIsBg