Integrated Water Management – Merri-bek City Council

Rain defined subcatchments within the Merri-bek Local Government Area (LGA) and created a storyboard outlining the key characteristics of each subcatchment. This work identified opportunities and risks related to Integrated Water Management (IWM).

Above & Beyond Strategies

The Merri-bek City Council (previously known as Moreland City Council) has conducted several past studies and analyses within the municipality. Rain Consulting was engaged to collate all previous studies, analyses, policies, strategies, and plans into one simplified source of information for Merri-bek.

Rain delivered the following solutions.

• Subcatchments within Merri-bek were simplified to a total of five and characterised based on the information available.
• Conducted an extensive literature review of relevant Council documents related to IWM (sectors include maintenance, asset management, urban forest and diversity, climate change, drainage and engineering, IWM-specific studies).
• Facilitated workshops to extract key local information, perspectives and pain-points from Council, as well as collaborative external stakeholders such as neighbouring Councils, established committees and water authorities.
• Created an updatable geospatial QGIS tool to capture capital works, key IWM sites, opportunities, risks and issues in visual and table formats.
• Created a skeleton “scorecard” to track Merri-bek’s IWM progress against IWM goals

Greater accessibility, understanding and education of Integrated Water Management at Merri-bek, presented in an easily digestible format. The project delivered a main report, along with supporting items such as an updatable document.

Rain Consulting is currently working with Merri-bek to further develop sub-catchment “scorecards” based on the information and outcomes achieved from this project. This data helps the Council understand how it is tracking in relation to its Integrated Water Management goals. Furthermore, it will assist the Council in prioritising works and strategically targeting locations that require more attention within the LGA.