Urban water strategies drive forward global, national, regional and state-wide water initiatives
Image credit: Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP)
From the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to Water for Victoria, Sustainable Water Strategies to Integrated Water Management Planning, Urban Water Strategies give localised delivery of priority water policies.
This includes ensuring climate change policy is delivered at the local level.
However, without knowing the consequences and uncertainty associated with the impacts of climate change, it would be very difficult for Victoria to prepare for our future.
This is where hydrological models come in.
They use data and trends to forecast what might happen in the future. Of course, you can’t know the future and there are many potential things that could happen – too many to count! Models consider several possible outcomes that could take place – this is called scenario planning.
In preparing for the Urban Water Strategies, the Victorian Government used models to simulate low, medium and high scenarios that incorporate some of the uncertainty posed by climate change. This helps the Victorian Government plan for when new investments in the water infrastructure or water-saving technology will be needed to respond to climate variability and its impacts on the state’s water resources through Urban Water Strategies.
Urban water strategies are one example of a case study where models have been key in developing strategies and making government policy decisions. Models have been key in many other cases of strategies development, policy and investment decisions and government initiatives, including using models by water authorities for their system operational activities and by environmental managers for managing environmental objectives in the river basins. Models are cost-effective tools developed and maintained to be useful for many purposes over decades.
Some examples of these are:
- Sustainable water strategies
- Long term water resource assessments
- Murray-Darling Basin salinity management strategy
- System compliances
- System operational reviews
- Streamflow management plans
- Environmental flows studies
- Water savings assessment and reviews
- Seasonal determination outlook
- Latrobe Valley Regional Rehabilitation Strategy
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Page last updated: 05/05/22