Managing and adapting to natural hazard risk

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, severity and impact of many natural hazards in New Zealand. The increasing impacts of climate change threaten community resilience and wellbeing, infrastructure, the environment and our economy. Therefore, we must manage and adapt to the changing natural hazard risk in our region. We work to strengthen community resilience across our region, so we can adapt to a changing climate and bounce back from natural disasters.

What we're working on

We have many exciting projects underway and planned over the next three years. We work closely with local authorities, iwi and other important groups to make sure our projects help the region.

Current projects

Flood modelling
- We are developing a river flood susceptibility model of the entire region to identify areas that are susceptible to both river and rainfall flooding. This layer will provide insight into flood-susceptible areas where there is currently no information and will replace the current regional flood hazard layer. This modelling will include the impacts of climate change on the flood hazard.
Landslide susceptibility assessment
- We want to understand which areas in our region are most susceptible to landslides.
River Flooding Tool
- Think our Coastal Inundation Tool but for the Waikato and Waipā Rivers. This tool will help us understand the impact and future risk of river flooding. It is designed to start conversations and assist with adaptation planning for communities near the Waikato and Waipā Rivers.
We are working on the Waikato Climate Change Risk Assessment, which will help us understand the range of climate risks the Waikato region may experience, identify locations that require more detailed assessment of climate change risk, and prioritise targeted action and adaptation planning moving forward.

Resilience includes more than climate change. We want to understand the risks from geological natural hazards as well. We are working with the Waikato Civil Defence and Emergency Management Group to understand the impacts earthquakes can have on the region. This project helps us understand the risks of ground shaking and land instability on Waikato communities; this understanding supports community response plans for seismic events. If we know the risks, we can plan for earthquakes that may occur in our region. The Waikato region is exposed to earthquake-induced hazards from many fault sources, including the Hikurangi Subduction Zone, Kerepehi, and Te Puninga Faults in the Hauraki Plains and the Taupō Volcanic Zone.
Waikato communities are already feeling the impacts of climate change, and as a region we need to adapt to our changing climate. The Waikato regional climate change adaptation guidelines assist council staff, external stakeholders and partners to plan to adapt to climate change and encourage a consistent approach across the region. The guide focuses on climate change adaptation and does not include climate change mitigation.

We are working with our communities to help them adapt. You can find community adaptation projects in the Waikato region in the Adaptation section. The council is collaborating with local territorial authorities, providing technical advice on natural hazards and supporting modelling projects, planning and policy, river and catchment management, and project governance.

We are also working through a new framework to assist our council with making sustainable infrastructure decisions.

Planned projects

We have several other resilience projects in the pipeline to help us meet our commitments through the Waikato Regional Policy Statement, Climate Change Roadmap and the 2024-2034 Long Term Plan. We will develop a regional resilience and adaptation strategy and plan to encourage regionwide collaboration on this issue. We will also develop a data strategy and acquisition plan to ensure we develop the right regional datasets to inform community adaptation and increase regional resilience.

We also continually assess the performance of all our flood schemes to ensure council-owned flood risk management infrastructure (such as stopbanks) meets its agreed level of service. To best meet current and future agreed levels of service, we need to understand the viability and integrity of our infrastructure first. This will help us understand whether it is practical to keep upgrading our current stopbanks in all areas or if we should explore other options.

We are looking to identify coastal inundation / storm surge extreme water levels across the region. This will help us understand the likely level of different [Annual Exceedance Probability] (AEP) coastal storm surge levels across the region, such as a 1 per cent AEP (relative to a 1 in 100 year) storm surge event.

We plan to develop a consistent approach for determining risk thresholds across the four ‘wellbeings’ and identify regional risk thresholds. This will enable us to continue our efforts to manage risk consistently and appropriately across the region and increase community resilience to natural hazard risk. These thresholds will support community adaptation planning, sustainable infrastructure decisions and spatial planning.

Managing and adapting to natural hazard risk

What we're working on

Current projects

Planned projects

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