Shining a light on the regions: LGAQ Lab creating innovative solutions

Published on 15 October 2026

What happens when Queensland councils start solving problems differently?

Article by Shez Mussa, Manager of Business Development

Key takeaways

• Inside the LGAQ Lab, long-standing local government problems are getting a rethink - using AI, smart sensors and low-cost solutions built for real communities.
• What do barking dogs, flood waters and mosquito outbreaks have in common?
• Queensland councils are tackling them with clever, practical technology.
• A surprising link to everyday procurement: every Local Buy Arrangement helps fund innovation with far-reaching benefits across Queensland.

In today's article I really want to shine a light on the Local Government Association of Queensland - and not just the version most people know.

LGAQ is the peak body for Queensland local government, and you'd be correct in saying it's the sector's most powerful advocacy voice and the organisation that shows up when councils need to be heard. But there is something else happening inside Local Government House that I find genuinely exciting, and it doesn't get nearly enough attention.

The LGAQ Lab, is a dedicated innovation space where councils, startups, universities and LGAQ's own team come together to build low-cost, high-impact technology solutions for problems that have frustrated local government for years. Not theoretical solutions sitting in a strategy document. Working pilots deployed in real communities, solving real problems. Leading that charge is the LGAQ Digital team under the direction of Chief Digital Officer, Tracy Whitelaw and led by Matt Oxlade, Digital Innovation Manager, and the results coming out of the Lab are, frankly, remarkable.

This is my little spoodle, Charli, she is quieter than a church mouse and wherever we are at home, whatever we are doing, she genuinely never barks. Until we are not there. We found this out after being handed a notice from our body corporate stating that "if you cannot manage noise levels caused by the barking of your dog, we will need to terminate your lease in accordance with the by-laws". Furious, my wife and I put together the perfect email response, firing back with our defence that she never barks - but we decided to take our defence a step further and collated data via a webcam we kept turned on while we were both at work.

28. That's the number of barks she was averaging in a minute. We were completely shocked. 

Now this sounds like the kind of issue that ends up as a punchline at a council meeting, but anyone who has had to deal with a dog, no matter how cute, barking constantly throughout the day knows it is anything but funny. Manual logs that are inconsistent and hard to rely on. Dog owners who feel unfairly targeted, often resulting in council officers conducting spot checks that almost never capture the actual behaviour. Mackay Regional Council brought this problem to the LGAQ Lab. What came out the other side is an AI-powered device, sitting quietly in a complainant's home, that automatically isolates dog barks from neighbourhood noise using a custom-trained AI model. It logs events at an 80 percent confidence threshold. A separate AI tool then reviews thousands of logged events in seconds, cross-references them against council's own noise legislation, and generates a compliance report ready for action. A problem that has tied councils in knots for decades now has a clean, data-driven solution that costs a fraction of traditional approaches. This is not a minor improvement; it is a complete rethink of how the problem gets solved.

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The LGAQ Lab has also developed an early flood warning system built for Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire Council which tells an even more powerful story. During ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper, large parts of the community were destroyed - including the traditional flood siren that had served as the early warning system for rising flood waters. The LGAQ Lab was asked to help, and what they built costs five per cent of what a traditional siren replacement would have required. LiDAR sensors take river height readings every five minutes to within one millimetre of accuracy. When flood water approaches the bridge deck, SMS alerts go automatically to subscribed residents. A machine learning model then compares real-time river data against a century of tidal records to give councils a six-day predictive outlook on river heights. All built at five per cent of the cost of traditional models with significantly more capability and deployed in one of Queensland's most remote and vulnerable communities. It is an extraordinary outcome.

Back in Mackay, the Lab has built a predictive mosquito outbreak model that draws on decades of population counts, treatment records, temperature, and rainfall data to give councils up to three months advance notice of potential outbreaks. Three months; the difference between reactive scrambling and proactive community protection. In Carpentaria Shire Council, council officers were making five-hour return trips to manually check whether a remote road was flooded, so they worked with the Lab to build a cloud-based AI system that analyses road camera images every 15 minutes and sends officers a real-time alert the moment conditions change. The same officers who were constantly on road inspections now get an image, a location and a confidence reading directly to their phone.

This is innovation that is genuinely making people's lives better. Which brings me to the next part of this story.

This innovation is supported by the Industry Development Fund (IDF), a collaboration between Local Buy and Telstra who jointly fund technology transformation and innovation projects across Queensland local government. Since its establishment, the fund has invested $7 million into Queensland local communities.

Every procurement activity through the Local Buy NPN1.18 Telecommunication Services Arrangement provides a small contribution to the kind of innovation that builds flood warning systems, AI dog barking monitoring and mosquito outbreak prediction models for Queensland communities.

That connection is worth understanding. Using the Telecommunication Services Arrangement as a funding mechanism for community-focused innovation is a story worth sharing. Because the councils using this Arrangement are not just simplifying their own procurement processes. They are contributing to something much bigger.

The LGAQ Lab is proof of what Queensland local government can achieve when it has the right support, the right partners, and the freedom to think differently about long-standing and new problems. Together, councils, the LGAQ Lab and Local Buy are showing what is possible when procurement is connected to innovation, turning everyday council challenges into practical solutions that deliver lasting value for Queensland communities.

That is worth being excited about.

This is part of an ongoing series shining a light on the regions Local Buy serves across Queensland.

If you would like more information - reach out to Shez Mussa, Manager of Business Development at smussa@localbuy.net.au.