Improving modelling for water resource management and transitioning to the National Hydrologic Platform

This initiative ensures that Victoria's water policy development, and the management of Victoria's surface water resources and its share of interstate systems, is supported by technical knowledge, resources and up to date water resource models.

Total EC3 investment to date: $5.6321 m

2012-13 expenditure: $1.4710 m 
2013-14 expenditure: $1.1840 m 
2014-15 expenditure: $1.1721m 
2015-16 expenditure: $1.8050 m

Progress

Australia's National Hydrological Modelling Platform, eWater's Source software, is being developed to deliver a consistent, transparent and defensible national approach to the hydrological and water quality modelling and reporting framework.

As part of this initiative, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) has been supporting the National Hydrological Modelling Strategy through funding and technical inputs to the development of Source software. In addition to providing funding to eWater Ltd for the development of Source software, DELWP is implementing Source in a trial catchment consisting of the Goulburn, Broken, Campaspe and Loddon valleys, and has worked closely with eWater and water corporations to ensure Source can be adequately applied across Victorian water systems.

Under this initiative, DELWP has:

• provided significant technical contribution in the development of annual accounting and carryover functionality by testing functionality and resolving issues;
• identified numerous impediments to the implementation of Source in Victorian systems, including bugs, issues and improvements;
• established an additional agreement with eWater (in addition to 2015/16 NHMP Mark II) to resolve software impediments in a reasonable timeframe to ensure that Source satisfies Victorian requirements; and
• contributed to inter-jurisdictional discussions about Source development through the NHMP Technical Working Group.

DELWP has also undertaken a significant amount of technical work to implement Source in the northern Victorian catchments. This includes:

• completion of  separate daily time-step Source models for Goulburn, Broken, Campaspe and Loddon (GBCL) valleys to cover a wide range of operational and water management rules;
• completion of 12 technical reports  to extensively document the development of Source models of Goulburn, Broken, Campaspe and Loddon valleys;
• commencement of Stage 1 of the Integrated Source GBCL model development (i.e. representation of key interconnected northern Victorian water supply systems in a single model);
• completion of development of daily data input series for the Goulburn, Broken, Campaspe and Loddon valleys; and
• commencement of development of daily data input series for the Wimmera-Mallee water supply system.

Over the course of the project, DELWP has worked closely with other jurisdictional areas including MDBA modelling staff to ensure that a consistent and best practice modelling approach is adopted across the Murray Darling Basin. Knowledge gained through the project has been disseminated to various stakeholders through Source workshops held with other Victorian Government agencies.

Over the last four years, eWater Ltd has released 43 beta versions of the software and four production versions, for which DELWP has provided feedback and significant contribution to software development and enhancement including functionality testing.

More information is available at eWater Source.