Living with Floods: Reimagining Flood Resilience in Wairoa's Residential Buildings

In the past, the township of Wairoa experienced major flooding events and continues to be impacted by it. When Cyclone Gabrielle struck the township of Wairoa in mid-February 2023, the storm caused widespread flooding throughout the affected low-lying areas and placed considerable strain on the community, as infrastructure suffered damage and buildings and houses were inundated. The current flood control measures that were utilized in the impacted residential homes were insufficient and were not considered flood-resilient to mitigate the impacts of the storm and the impacts of climate change. Therefore, the main research question guiding this thesis is: ‘How can Wairoa’s existing residential buildings be retrofitted to be more flood-resilient and mitigate future climatic flood events by proposing adaptive housing and mitigation strategies?’

The scope of this thesis investigates adaptation and mitigation strategies derived from high-level precedent case studies (both internationally (labelled white) and locally (labelled red)), analyses a specific residential typology (state housing) in Wairoa as a case study, and thus implements feasible adaptation and mitigation strategies through the process of modelling that demonstrate a flood-resilient, retrofitted design that can be replicated in Wairoa's residential buildings.