QUT's Flood Hypothetical conference will examine ways to save lives and property from rising floodwaters.
Houses that float up and down on extended stumps, cars that lock 50m from an overflowing creek, construction of transport networks well away from at-risk areas.
These are some of the ideas that will be explored at QUT Business School's Flood Hypothetical, being held in Brisbane this week.
Organiser, Dr Piet Filet, from QUT's Business School, has gathered planning experts, emergency service workers, consultants, insurers, and researchers to look at ways to prepare Brisbane for floods as large as those that occurred in 2011.
"Let's face it: Brisbane is on a floodplain so it's always exposed to floods," said Dr Filet. "We must adapt and built resilience to floods."
"The Brisbane River catchment has 48,000km of rivers and creeks that collect and funnel the flow through greater Brisbane and right past the CBD," he said.
"We can design houses better adapted to floods and, in extreme cases, renovate lower parts of a house with water-tolerant building materials and smart flow-through design.
"QUT's Professor Axel Bruns will discuss the novel ways people helped each other through social media in the last floods and how we could improve and use it in different ways to help us cope during floods," said Dr Filet.
"We can look at ways to store the water through swales and ponds for local flood events, but the sheer volume of water in peak floods means it's impossible to store it."
The event is being held on 4 and 5 February, and is fully booked. It will be live streamed here.