A National Water Resources Data and Prediction System for Australia

Australian water resources have a turbulent history of management, arising from a combination of jurisdictional and physical system characteristics. The position of state boundaries along rivers and across landscapes, and the imposition of state-based management regimes, have resulted in the water resources of large river basins being assessed and managed in significantly different ways. In addition to this, Australian water resources exhibit some of the world's highest variability in flows, leading to large uncertainties in prediction, and management, of the resource. This situation has been exacerbated in recent years as precipitation has diminished and become more variable, enhancing Australia's reputation as a land of 'droughts and flooding rains'. Under various future predictions of climate it is forecast that Australia's water resources will become more scarce and less reliable. In this situation the keys to improving future management of Australian water resources are to monitor the water resource, understand the interaction of water system components of demand and supply and the characteristics of the system, to predict the future state under a variety of conditions and management regimes, and to use system monitoring to improve such understanding and prediction. To achieve these ends the Government of Australia approved, in 2007, the development of an Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS). This system is designed as a national end-to-end system, taking data from long term and real-time monitoring networks, through a national data collection and collation centre, to web-based provision of water data, information, prediction and forecasting tools, and predictions. This paper describes the vision, and architecture, implementation and development issues of the AWRIS (http://www.bom.gav.au/water).