Glenorchy City Council's Stormwater Management Strategy
- Reviewed 3.7 kms of stormwater assets
- 1,800 defects found
- 140 assets covered
The Glenorchy City Council, located just north of Hobart, Tasmania, faces heightened flood risks due to its steep terrain and increasingly frequent heavy rainfall events. In 2021, a flooding assessment highlighted critical vulnerabilities in the city’s stormwater infrastructure, signalling an urgent need for targeted intervention to protect Glenorchy’s 51,000 residents and key assets.
To address these challenges, Glenorchy City Council set a goal of developing a stormwater management strategy within a $2 million budget, allocating $1.3 million to flood mitigation and $0.7 million to renewing existing systems. Partnering with VAPAR, the council adopted a data-driven methodology using VAPAR’s platform to streamline asset inspections, prioritize repairs, and ensure
Project Snapshot
The City of Glenorchy implemented a $2 million stormwater development plan to mitigate flooding risks, using VAPAR’s innovative platform to streamline inspections and asset management. Since June 2023, the city inspected 3.7 km of stormwater assets, identifying over 1,800 defects and making automated repair decisions for high-priority issues.
This data-driven approach has empowered the council to efficiently allocate resources and address critical stormwater infrastructure needs to ensure community safety.
efficient project completion. This approach enabled the council to make informed, strategic decisions in building a more resilient stormwater network.
About the client
The Glenorchy City Council, a Tasmanian city with a population of over 51,000, is located about 7 kilometers north of Hobart CBD. The city is bordered by the Derwent River to the north and east, the city of Hobart to the southeast, the Kingborough Council area to the south, and the Derwent Valley Council area to the west. Given its location and the inclined terrain typical of Tasmania, Glenorchy has experienced increased susceptibility to flooding, prompting the need for a comprehensive flood mitigation strategy.
The Challenge & Opportunity
A flooding assessment was undertaken in 2021 the council evaluated Glenorchy’s Stormwater system susceptibility to flooding. Due to increased rainfall events coupled with the unique nature of inclined Tasmanian terrain.
The engineering & asset planning team have formed a Stormwater system development plan to mitigate flooding risk in the key areas with total expenditure of $2.0 million.
The council will invest $1.3 million on projects focused on mitigation of flooding, and $700,000 on renewal works. It is therefore imperative that they use accurate data reporting & efficient planning to correctly inform their asset investment strategy.
Technology-Driven Inspections with VAPAR:
The council partnered with VAPAR to leverage their innovative asset inspection platform. VAPAR's platform enabled Glenorchy's stormwater engineering team to streamline inspection workflows across five key areas:
- Proactive Inspections
- Reactive Inspections
- Relining
- Patching
- Post-Works Review
The platform allows for a seamless inspection process, enabling the team to track and report defects, make informed repair decisions, and communicate requirements directly to contractors. Through clear status options like "Repair Plan," "Actioned," and "Complete," Glenorchy's engineering team can monitor each project’s progress efficiently and verify finalized work through pre- and post-work inspections.
Results
Since June 2023, Glenorchy has inspected and reviewed 3.7 kilometers of stormwater assets, uncovering over 1,800 reportable features and defects across 140 assets.
For high-priority structural defects (grades 4 and 5), the platform's automated repair suggestions helped inform critical rehabilitation decisions. By the end of the financial year 2025, Glenorchy aims to complete planned work on 16 prioritized assets within the stormwater network.
Conclusion
The partnership with VAPAR has enabled Glenorchy's stormwater management team to achieve significant efficiency in inspection, reporting, and asset management.
The platform’s integration of automated repair suggestions streamlined workflows, and real-time defect reporting has been invaluable in ensuring the council’s flood mitigation strategy is well-informed and effectively implemented.
How Vapar is used in other councils
Trusted by councils & engineering teams around the world
“VAPAR has helped us understand the complexity of using AI for CCTV review, and we are now better positioned to start implementing this technology to improve data quality and asset management processes.”
“As this is a true digital solution we were able to complete the first trial despite the current pandemic through true global collaboration. We have had some extremely promising results from the initial work and look forward with the potential expand the trials.”
“VAPAR provides accurate and effective condition rating to council’s stormwater CCTV video, allowing for significant cost and time savings.”
“We’ve discovered so many improvements and efficiencies using VAPAR as opposed to keeping the status quo. We are really setting ourselves up for success well into the future.”
"The work Trility carried out for CCTV inspection assessments / analysis would usually take months to complete. With the implementation of Vapar, the same task took just weeks.”
United Utilities is always on the lookout for ways we can provide world-class services to our customers. We are interested in partnering with companies like Vapar, who stand out because of their agility, technical skill and willingness to work collaboratively.