Cross-drainage hydraulic structures such as culverts and bridges in urban landscapes are prone to get blocked by the transported debris (e.g., urban, vegetated), which often reduces their hydraulic capacity and triggers flash floods. Unavailability of relevant data from blockage-originated flooding events and complex nature of debris accumulation are highlighted factors hindering the research within the blockage management domain. Wollongong City Council (WCC) blockage conduit policy is the leading formal guidelines to incorporate blockage into design guidelines; however, are criticized by the hydraulic engineers for its dependence on the post-flood visual inspections (i.e., visual blockage) instead of peak floods hydraulic investigations (i.e., hydraulic blockage). Apparently, no quantifiable relationship is reported between the visual blockage and hydraulic blockage; therefore, many consider WCC blockage guidelines invalid. This paper exploits the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI
Floods are the most recurrent, widespread and damaging natural disasters, and are ex-pected to become further devastating because of global warming. Blockage of cross-drainage hydraulic structures (e.g., culverts, bridges) by flood-borne debris is an influen-tial factor which usually results in reducing hydraulic capacity, diverting the flows, dam-aging structures and downstream scouring. Australia is among the countries adversely impacted by blockage issues (e.g., 1998 floods in Wollongong, 2007 floods in Newcas-tle). In this context, Wollongong City Council (WCC), under the Australian Rainfall and Runoff (ARR), investigated the impact of blockage on floods and proposed guidelines to consider blockage in the design process for the first time. However, existing WCC guide-lines are based on various assumptions (i.e., visual inspections as representative of hy-draulic behaviour, post-flood blockage as representative of peak floods, blockage remains constant during the whole flo