Ipswich City Council has outlined a number of measures being undertaken to minimise future flood risk.

Last week the council launched an online flood-mapping service which allows local residents to download free maps identifying the extent of the 1974 and 2011 floods.

Council CEO Karl Wulff says stage two of the system’s development is a map which provides access to real-time data on current flood levels, which the council plans to develop over the next year.

He says the council has 27 flood studies under way to identify costs and possible solutions to flooding problems in the region. This is due to be completed by early next year.

The studies “will provide options and the cost of those options, and then it is an assessment of how do you budget and provide for the realisation of those options”, he told the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry, which held a hearing in the city last week.

He says most of the studies were under way prior to this year’s floods.

The council has also commissioned a study to examine the feasibility of levees around the centre of the city. None currently exist in Ipswich.

“These are very complicated structures and have far-reaching implications,” he said. “If you move the water from one spot, it is going to go somewhere else. So they are not a simple, short-term fix.”

He says some form of property buyback scheme is also being considered in some of the city’s older areas where excess stormwater flows through private properties.

“There are a number of ways to fix these problems, either through underground drainage… the installation of detention basins, or in extreme cases the purchasing of the properties to create an overland flow path.”

He told the inquiry the council has adopted a new approach to the reconstruction of council assets such as roads and buildings which were damaged in the floods to make them as resilient as possible against future flooding.

The inquiry also heard from Ipswich residents who complained of insurers’ allegedly poor and misleading communications, processing delays and the denial of their claims.

Meanwhile, a new report for the Brisbane City Council has proposed flood mitigating dams on the Bremer River and Lockyer Creek, stormwater backflow valves and levees around major sites like the Brisbane markets at Rocklea and raising the Wivenhoe Dam wall as leading flood mitigation options for the city.

But consultancy GHD rules out river barriers such as those used on London’s Thames River.

GHD’s report was tabled at a council meeting last week and will be handed over to the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry for consideration.