- Contents
- Chapter One Developing the Basin Plan
- Chapter Two Protecting and enhancing
water resources - Chapter Three Delivering water efficiently
and equitably - Chapter Four Using best-practice
financial, management and
governance systems - Financial statements
- Appendixes
- Murray-Darling Basin Commission:
final report - Glossary and Index
MDBC Strategic Plan 2005–2010, Strategy 2.4: Improve environmental and consumptive use outcomes through development of improved water management and delivery tools
Improving river modelling
Background
The Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) strategy to improve water management and delivery tools includes the creation of:
- a daily model of the River Murray system
- a real-time model of the upper Murray.
The work involves extensive collaboration with research organisations such as the eWater Cooperative Research Centre (CRC).
Highlights
- A test case for the eWater CRC River Manager software product, for the River Murray upstream of Yarrawonga, is under way.
Definition: eWater Cooperative Research Centre (CRC)
eWater CRC is a joint venture made up of 45 Australian water-cycle management, consulting and research organisations, supported by the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program. eWater builds water management tools for partners and also markets those tools. The tools include decision software, guidelines, forecasting models and databases designed for use in operating river systems, managing catchments, developing monitoring programs, and guiding investment in river and catchment restoration.
River operations and planning tools for the River Murray system
The eWater CRC is developing the next generation of tools to support river system planning, management and operation. Two products are being developed:
- River Manager: a model to support planning and policy decision making
- River Operator: a model to support day-to-day operation decisions.
River Manager
Significant acceleration has occurred in the development of River Manager as a result of additional funding from the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and the National Water Commission. The accelerated development culminated in the release of a base model, which is ready to initiate hydrology testing. As part of the acceleration, the River Manager model is being trialled in four catchments across the Murray–Darling Basin in partnership with the relevant jurisdictions. MDBA is contributing resources to support the design of River Manager (in relation to the way in which the model describes physical and management functions) and the trialling of River Manager on the River Murray. MDBA also contributes through representation on the High-Level Steering Committee, User Reference Group and Technical User groups.
River Operator
Work commenced in the last financial year to develop River Operator. River Operator is being designed to support the efficient management of water storage, flow and delivery in regulated river systems. It will support operation decisions such as how much water should be released from storage on a given day. River Operator builds on the functionality provided by River Manager. Development in the last year has focused on creating an interface to enable river operators to interact with the model in a way similar to that for current tools.
A real-time model of the upper Murray
MDBA continued to work with the state data providers to automate the process of gathering data for daily river operations and improving the hydrographic networks. In 2008–09, MDBA initiated a dialogue with the Bureau of Meteorology to explore the possibility of leveraging the hydrologic forecasting activities occurring within the bureau to develop a real-time rainfall run-off model for the upper Murray and mid-Murray.