Assessing Water Supply Security in a Nonstationary Environment. About 25% of the global population currently has inadequate access to safe and secure water. This number is expected to rise to 50% by 2050 due to increased populations and reduced river flows. While a visible water crisis (such as the one in Cape Town in 2018) can culminate in the funding of new water supply infrastructure, a planned push for infrastructure augmentation often stalls due to contradictory projections of how much wate ....Assessing Water Supply Security in a Nonstationary Environment. About 25% of the global population currently has inadequate access to safe and secure water. This number is expected to rise to 50% by 2050 due to increased populations and reduced river flows. While a visible water crisis (such as the one in Cape Town in 2018) can culminate in the funding of new water supply infrastructure, a planned push for infrastructure augmentation often stalls due to contradictory projections of how much water will be available in the future. To address this, a novel alternative for assessing water security is proposed. Our approach assesses change using historical information on river flow and water demand, adapting these to form projections that exhibit greater reliability than currently existing alternatives.Read moreRead less
Water availability and demand: better forecasts, better management. This project aims to improve Australia’s capability in the provision and use of water forecasts for managing water resources. The current water forecasts are not fully utilised by water agencies as they are not sufficiently comprehensive and advanced. This project expects to achieve a step change in the uptake and utility of hydro-climate forecasts through an extensive partnership of leading researchers and operational agencies ....Water availability and demand: better forecasts, better management. This project aims to improve Australia’s capability in the provision and use of water forecasts for managing water resources. The current water forecasts are not fully utilised by water agencies as they are not sufficiently comprehensive and advanced. This project expects to achieve a step change in the uptake and utility of hydro-climate forecasts through an extensive partnership of leading researchers and operational agencies of hydro-climate forecasting, with federal, state and regional water agencies.Read moreRead less
Improving water quality modelling by better understanding solute transport. Poor stream water quality is a critical problem in Australia and globally. Stream water quality depends directly on pathways and time taken for water to transport pollutants through catchments. Predicting these pathways is highly challenging and currently requires specialised data. This project aims to better model the movement of water from rainfall to streams, enable greatly improved use of water quality data routinely ....Improving water quality modelling by better understanding solute transport. Poor stream water quality is a critical problem in Australia and globally. Stream water quality depends directly on pathways and time taken for water to transport pollutants through catchments. Predicting these pathways is highly challenging and currently requires specialised data. This project aims to better model the movement of water from rainfall to streams, enable greatly improved use of water quality data routinely collected in Australia's catchments and thereby better predict water quality behaviour. Proposed field studies aim to support this development. The outcomes sought are improved planning and management of water quality in our rivers, lakes and estuaries, improved health of these water bodies and improved water supplies.Read moreRead less
P-band soil moisture sensing from space. This project aims to develop radiative transfer models to demonstrate that a P-band radiometer capability can remotely sense the top ~15cm layer of soil moisture, through a series of tower and airborne field experiments. Timely soil moisture information on this near-surface layer is critical to improved water management for food production in the face of extreme climate variability. Current satellite technologies are limited to the top ~5cm layer of soil ....P-band soil moisture sensing from space. This project aims to develop radiative transfer models to demonstrate that a P-band radiometer capability can remotely sense the top ~15cm layer of soil moisture, through a series of tower and airborne field experiments. Timely soil moisture information on this near-surface layer is critical to improved water management for food production in the face of extreme climate variability. Current satellite technologies are limited to the top ~5cm layer of soil using an L-band radiometer. This project is expected to give farmers the soil moisture data they need to optimise their available water resources to maximise food productionRead moreRead less