Victoria's peak body for town planners says the state government must develop a state-wide flood mapping system and warns planners are not being given enough information to reduce the impacts of climate change.
The Victorian division of the Planning Institute of Australia said existing information identifying flood-prone areas was patchy and outdated, leaving new developments at risk of being built in areas vulnerable to river and coastal flooding.
The president of the body, Gabby McMillan, said that Victoria was seeing a piecemeal approach to flood risks, with the onus being placed on local governments to gather data or pay for modelling.
Ms McMillan said that different councils will have different capacities in terms of resources to fund and implement studies.
Some councils have done the work, and have the technical information to underpin a change to the planning controls or put overlays in place, but there are other councils out there that can't do that.
In Victoria's Bass Coast, a region defined by kilometres of unspoiled coastline, the local council spent $200,000 in 2016 to identify areas prone to in-land and coastal flooding and introduce its own planning controls on development.
Three years later, it declared a climate change emergency.
Bass Coast Shire Council mayor Michael Whelan wants flood mapping to be managed as a state issue, and for environmentally sustainable design to be implemented as a planning amendment.
We'll need another 10,000 accommodation units in the year 2036, according to our projection. It's really big for us, said Whelan.
We want to make sure people are protected going forward, that they have got accommodation that's fit for purpose.
We don't want to see people go into vulnerable areas, it's the same thing as avoiding building in bushfire-prone areas. The Planning Institute of Australia said in 2009 that the devastating Black Saturday bushfires were an example of the government responding to environmental hazards, with the development of bushfire hazard modelling, a Bushfire Management Overlay and changes to how Victoria's planning and building systems interact.
Ms McMillan said that the state led the mapping of bushfire hazards and was an acceptable risk.
A similar model, even if not straightforward, could be applied to flooding or other environmental hazards.
We don't want a Lismore situation in Victoria, it's about planning for the future. Climate action is called for as Victoria is hit by floods.
The calls for a comprehensive state-wide dataset came amid a number of serious flooding events in Victoria.
A 57-year-old woman died this week after being swept away by floodwaters in Traralgon in Victoria's south-east.
Residents of Venus Bay and Tarwin Lower in South Gippsland had their major access road cut off, with landslips and large potholes forming in the region due to heavy rain.
In a bill introduced by the Australian Parliament this week, Sustainable Australia MP Clifford Hayes called for the government to integrate environment and climate change policy into Victorian planning schemes.
Anna Hurlimann, associate professor of urban planning at Melbourne University, said Victoria's planning system had to adapt to the growing risks posed by climate change.
If we don't do anything, it's going to cost society a lot. It's going to cost people's lives, and possibly, financially, according to Hurlimann.