Why we did it

The Queensland and Australian government invest $30-$50 Million per year in agricultural improvement projects to improve the water quality for the Great Barrier Reef. Where should we invest and what actions should we target to get the best water quality outcomes?

What we delivered

Reefonomics is a web-based planning investment application that couples economic and environmental modelling to allow donor organisations to run alternative investment scenarios and determine the cost and likely water quality benefits of those scenarios.

Reefonomics adopts a recursive, pragmatised, marginal cost abatement curve approach to creating portfolios of investment projects which achieve the greatest water quality benefit for a given budget, or the minimum budget to meet water quality targets.