Environmental Flow Manager (EFM)
The Environmental Flow Manager manages all actions specified at EFNs that have been assigned to the manager. The EFM ranks the actions in priority order based on condition and an importance weighting specified for each action. The EFM then determines which actions are to be activated based on the cost (water requirement) of the action and the water available in accounts. The EFM also manages the accounting of the environmental water. It allows the user to set-up portfolios of accounts and to prioritise account and portfolio use.
Figure 1 Environmental Flow Manager Main Menu
Decision point: The Environmental Flow Manager can run every day. However, with a large model and many actions, this may slow down the model run significantly. Therefore, there is an option to run the EFM less frequent, e.g. fortnightly or monthly. The used can set this up through a function.
Portfolios
Setting up portfolios: Accounts need to be set-up in the Resource Assessment. At the Resource Assessment the user specifies accounts, representing entitlements. The system keeps track of the water usage and water available. Resource Assessment functionality is not specific to the new functionality developed for environmental flows (see Resource Assessment SRG). Some functionality has been added to the Resource Assessment for the EFM: Environmental portfolios can be added as ‘Account Hosts’. The user needs to set-up the Portfolio at the EFM first (Figure 1). At the Resource Assessment menu, the portfolio can then be assigned as Account Host to individual accounts (see Figure 2). These accounts then appear in the portfolio in the EFM (See Figure 4) and can be prioritised for their use. Priority indicates which account will be used first. If more than one account have equal priority, the % share indicates what percentage of the volume to be accounted will come from which account. Multiple portfolis may be assigned to contribute to a single group, and prioritised. Account use within portfolios can also be prioritised. An account may only be in one portfolio. Only one account of each account tye may be present in the one portfolio.
Figure 2: Resource Assessment Menu, Associating EFM Portfolio as an Account Host
Figure 3: Resource Assessment Summary with Environmental Portfolio Account Hosts
Figure 4: Portfolio Summary at Environmental Flow Manager with Associated Accounts
Balance Adjustment (Reserve): The user can specify a volume or function by which the available water in the account will be adjusted for EFM priority assessments. If this is a negative volume, this volume will be set-aside for later use (and considered not available to the EFM at this stage), i.e. it acts as a reserve. If this volume is positive, the EFM would consider that there is more water available than there is currently in the account, which could be used to represent an expectation of increasing allocations.
Groups
Actions can be grouped together. The actions in one group will be prioritised and delivered as a package. All actions need to be assigned to a group, but most groups may consist of a single action.
Figure 5 Environmental Flow Manager Groups Main Menu
Unassigned Actions: | Overview of actions that have not yet been assigned to a group. All actions to be managed by the Environmental Flow Manager need to be assigned to a group. A group can have a single action. |
| Create Group per Selected Action | Selected unassigned actions will be placed in new groups (each action selected action will get its own group). |
| Create one group for all selected actions | Adds the selected action(s) to one new group. Note: To add actions to already existing groups the user needs to go to the relevant group and add actions there (see below). |
| Assigned Actions: | Overview of the existing groups and the actions included in that group. |
Figure 6 Assigning Actions and Portfolios to Groups in the Environmental Flow Manager
Actions
Available Actions: | The drop down list shows all actions that have not yet been assigned to a group. An action can be selected and added to this group. A user can select an Action already included in the group and remove it by deleting that action. |
| Cost: | The user specifies the cost of the action as a function. This function can make use of a conservative default cost estimate the software will calculate (the ‘current season cost estimate’). Time of Evaluation for this function has to be set to ‘Environmental Flow Prioritisation ’. |
| Importance: | The user can set-up a function (or a combinations of multiple functions) to calculate the Importance, which determines under which circumstances a particular group of actions should be targeted/prioritised. Time of Evaluation for this function has to be set to ‘Environmental Flow Prioritisation’. If the Importance is zero, the actions will not be considered/activated. |
Portfolios
Available Portfolios: | The user can add one (or more) portfolio(s) from which the action can be delivered. |
| Priority: | Set the priority for portfolio use (for accounting this specific group of actions) |
| Share: | If more than one portfolio has the same priority, the volume to be debited will be shared between these portfolios according the % share identified. |
