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Australia

Desktop site screening for Australian projects

Enter an Australian address and get a desktop screening of the wind region and the NCC climate zone, a bushfire prone area map read for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, and a flood planning-control read for Victoria and Tasmania, with everything else reported as not assessed rather than guessed — a starting point for scoping the site assessments you need.

  • 5 SiteIQ site assessments per month
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The problem

Before a building is priced or designed, someone has to ask what the site will throw at it: wind, bushfire, reactive soil, flooding, earthquake, climate and coastal corrosion. Early in a job the answers come from separate lookups: mapping portals, council searches and a geotechnical investigation. What helps at that stage is a short list of which assessments you still have to book — and an honest statement of what a desktop tool cannot tell you.

How it works

  1. Open SiteIQ and start typing an Australian address. Picking a suggestion fills in the coordinates and state, or enter them by hand.
  2. Optionally add the council area, a terrain type and a project type. The council area and the terrain type change nothing (the terrain type is printed back as your input); the project type decides which wind standards the advice names: AS 4055 and AS/NZS 1170.2 for a house, AS/NZS 1170.2 alone otherwise.
  3. Select Check site. The overview covers seven topics: wind region, bushfire, soil class, flood, seismic hazard, NCC climate zone and corrosion. Those it cannot assess are marked not assessed, each naming the source to get it from.
  4. The Actions tab lists what to obtain and a prompt to read the council's planning scheme.
  5. Further tabs show the wind detail, record the BAL you determined with pointers to AS 3959, and build a material checklist.

The overview is a fixed calculation and uses no AI. The wind region comes from Geoscience Australia's map, without a design wind speed, shielding or topography. The NCC climate zone comes from the ABCB climate zone map; near a boundary, confirm it on the map or with the building surveyor. Bushfire comes from the official bushfire prone area map in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT (not assessed elsewhere): a site the map does not return is not found, not cleared, and an unreadable or uncovered map means not assessed. Flood is read in Victoria and Tasmania only, where the maps cover the site, as a planning control: whether a flood overlay applies, not whether the site can flood. Soil, the seismic hazard factor and the corrosion environment are not assessed at all — there is no soil data, earthquake hazard map or coastline. Coordinates far from the state named are refused; an unplaced wind region is marked assumed. There is no overall risk score: a number over unexamined factors could not tell "nothing found" from "nothing looked at".

Worked example

Illustrative inputs, not a real site:

  • location: a rural-residential lot in Victoria, about 36.9 degrees south and 144.3 degrees east, roughly 117 km from Melbourne
  • terrain: suburban
  • project type: residential

For these inputs SiteIQ returns wind Region A (sub-region A5), the climate zone, the flood planning answer, and checks Victoria's bushfire prone area map: a mapped lot is flagged possibly bushfire prone, with no vegetation class, distance or BAL; an unmapped lot is not found, not cleared. Soil, seismic hazard and corrosion come back not assessed, so when the maps answer it reads 4 of 7 site factors assessed.

What you would do next: treat the report as a shopping list. Commission a geotechnical investigation. Check Victoria's bushfire prone area map, and if the lot is mapped, have the BAL assessed on site. Ask the council for flood information and read its planning scheme. Read the hazard factor for the locality in AS 1170.4 (buy standards from Standards Australia), confirm a climate zone near a boundary, and get the corrosivity category from the real distance to salt water.

What it doesn't do

  • It is a desktop screening estimate. No one has looked at the site. Use it to scope the assessments you commission.
  • It is not a BAL assessment. A BAL comes from an assessment under AS 3959 by a qualified person who has been to the site. A flagged site carries no vegetation class, no distance and no BAL rating.
  • It is not a soil classification. That needs a geotechnical investigation, and this screen has no soil data at all.
  • Its flood answer is a planning fact. No overlay is not a finding that the site cannot flood; the Queensland flood level it once showed was invented by a rule.
  • Other planning overlays are not looked up. The one planning line is a prompt to read the scheme yourself.
  • The wind region is approximate near boundaries. It comes from a digitised map and is not suitable for design.
  • It names no wind class, design wind speed or BAL. Each comes from your own assessment against AS 4055, AS/NZS 1170.2 or AS 3959, and you enter it where a tool asks for one.

Codes and standards our tools refer to

We refer to Australian Standards by name, designation and clause number only, and show none of their text, values or requirements. Our NCC 2025 entries are summaries of ABCB material published under CC BY 4.0. Buy the full text of a standard from Standards Australia. How we use standards.

  • NCC 2025
  • AS 3600 — Concrete
  • AS 4100 — Steel
  • AS/NZS 1170 — Loads
  • AS 1720 — Timber
  • AS 2870 — Footings
  • AS 3959 — Bushfire
  • AS 4055 — Wind

Questions engineers ask

Does SiteIQ look up official hazard maps?

For the wind region, which comes from Geoscience Australia's digitised map; for the NCC climate zone, read from the ABCB climate zone map; for bushfire in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, read from each one's official bushfire prone area map where it covers the site; and, in Victoria and Tasmania, for flood as a planning control only, where the planning maps cover the site — whether a flood overlay or zone applies, which is never a finding that the site cannot flood. Bushfire in Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory, flood everywhere else, and soil, the seismic hazard factor and the corrosion environment are not assessed — each is reported as not assessed with where to get it.

Is the bushfire result a BAL rating?

No. A site an official map returns is told only that it is on that state's bushfire prone area map; no vegetation class, distance to vegetation or BAL rating is produced, and the tool calculates no BAL anywhere. On the Bushfire Detail tab you record the BAL you or an accredited assessor determined, and the tool points to the section of AS 3959 for it. A rating a certifier or council will accept comes from an on-site bushfire assessment by a qualified person.

Can I use the soil class for footing design?

There is no soil class to use. This screen holds no soil data and reports soil as not assessed for every site, with the geotechnical investigation named as the next step. It used to show a soil class chosen from the state and the latitude.

Why does the corrosion category say not assessed?

A corrosivity category needs the real distance from the site to salt water, which this tool does not have. It used to band the distance to the state capital instead, which rated coastal Cairns as less corrosive than inland Canberra, and the material schedule then chose concrete cover and fasteners from it.

Where is the risk score?

Removed. Three of the seven factors are never determined, so a score out of 100 could not distinguish a site where nothing was found from one where nothing was looked at — and it was shown on a green gauge. The report now says how many factors were assessed and names the ones that were not.

Does the site assessment use AI?

The overview does not. It is a fixed calculation that gives the same result for the same inputs. The draft wind specification you can generate on the Wind Detail tab is written by AI, for a qualified engineer to review. The Bushfire Detail tab's pointer document is not: it is built from a fixed list.

Related tools

Try it on your next job. Every output is a starting point for a qualified engineer to check.

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StructBy AI outputs are automated or AI-assisted and must be reviewed by a qualified, registered engineer before anyone relies on them. They are not professional engineering, legal or regulatory advice, and they do not replace a site inspection or a formal assessment. Our NCC entries are summaries of ABCB material, not the text of the NCC. Australian Standards are referred to by name, designation and clause number only; their full text is sold by Standards Australia. Verify every value and clause against the current published edition before you use it in design or documentation.