We know what the environment needs, but how to best meet those needs raises questions

The environmental water needs of many of our river systems have been quantified, and significant water assets have been reassigned to help to achieve those watering needs. For example, about 23% of the water assets in the Murray Darling Basin are targeted for use in meeting environmental requirements.

Many questions arise though for this public asset:

• How do you conduct long term planning to ensure enough water is available (especially in a drying climate)?
• Once acquired, how do you plan the use of environmental water for the upcoming season?
• Once you are in that season, how do you apply adaptive management to adjust water delivery?
• At the end of the water year, how do you report the outcomes achieved through the delivery of environmental water?

The answer to these questions is usually a variation of ‘expert judgement’. Through 25 years of being part of this expert judgement process Truii has a developed a series of web applications that capture the expert process to make it transparent, defensible and repeatable.

Our eFlow tools can help resolve environmental water management questions

Truii has created two key web applications to support environmental water management in Australia.

Eco Risk Projector is used to conduct long term planning, including climate change scenario assessment, to quantify the ecological impacts of alternative water use scenarios. It answers the questions:

• Will the water set aside for the environment in my plan ensure that vital ecological processes can occur?
• Will this water management scenario ensure the habitat is suitable for species’ to survive and flourish?
• Under what conditions would we see failure of species and processes through time and across the landscape?
• Which water management scenario would sustain species and processes under various climate scenarios?

eFlow Projector is used for annual water planning, within year progress reporting, and end of year performance reporting. It answers the questions:

• To what degree did we meet our watering objectives for the season?
• Which flow rules were met/partially met/not met at all?
• Where in the landscape were rules met/partially met/not met at all?
• Which flow components (magnitude, duration, frequency, independence, count) were met/partially met/not met at all?
• How much did environmental releases contribute to meeting a flow rule?

Both applications contain:

• libraries of ‘models’ that define water requirements;
• data libraries connected to observed or modelled flow data;

and summaries and visualisations of reporting results, to allow communication of the expert judgement approach.