Water Planning Tools

Water planning is one of the most important tools for achieving sustainable use of water. While water planning can apply to a range of matters such as flood risk, water quality, water supply etc, the type of water planning with which the National Water Initiative (NWI) is most concerned is water allocation/ water sharing planning. That is, planning how surface and underground water resources will be managed and shared to achieve environmental, economic and social outcomes.

Project Website

waterplanning.org.au

Recent Activities

A wide range of practical experience has already been drawn from across all jurisdictions and integrated with current academic literature, to identify similarities and major differences in planning processes and outcomes sought, as well as strengths, weaknesses and key lessons learnt.

We now need to trial tools for water planning by applying and adapting them for use during the development of a selection of catchment and/or regional water plans. This project is now underway and will work across a small number of regions (the Murray River in SA, Tiwi Islands in NT and the Condamine River in Qld) that are currently commencing active engagement in water planning.

These case studies will develop practical measures to improve:

• the incorporation of climate change and surface water/ groundwater interactions into water plans
• adaptability in water planning (including improvement to monitoring and evaluation) and integration of water planning with broader land use assessments and catchment planning processes
• transparency in water planning and use of the best available information (ecological and socio-economic) to inform judgements in settling trade-offs, and

the equitable consideration of community values (incl. Indigenous)

More Information

Download project brochure

Publications and Resources

None listed

Citation

Land & Water Australia. 2009. Water Planning Tools. [Online] (Updated April 20th, 2009)
Available at: http://lwa.gov.au/node/3088 [Accessed Tuesday 26th of April 2011 11:57:37 AM ].