eWater has published these guidelines to promote a best practice, quality assured approach to application of modelling tools, primarily to address water management problems, and provision of decision support to end-users of model results.
The Guidelines for water management modelling: Towards best-practice model application are the first of the hierarchy of more detailed supporting guidelines for model domains relevant to eWater Source.
The latest supporting documents are:
- Guidelines for modelling water sharing rules
- Guidelines for rainfall-runoff modelling
- Guidelines for groundwater-surfacewater interactions modelling.
As eWater is a major provider of modelling products, this family of guidelines help us meet our aim to foster a best practice approach to the use of these products.
In addition, the guidelines addresses a need, identified by many water management agencies across Australia, for model application guidelines. This need has arisen as a result of growing expectations of stakeholders—the National Water Initiative (NWI) and the Council of Australian Governments (COAG)—that there should be a consistent and transparent approach to applying models used to support water management decisions across the country to:
- improve modelling practice
- provide quality assurance, including evaluation of uncertainty
- remove inconsistencies between model applications, including in adjoining catchments where the same model code is used in both, and in situations such as managed river systems that interact with one another
- improve decision making, including improving the use of science to improve the quality and robustness of decisions made and outcomes
- improve communication with end-users of model results: water managers, decision makers and the wider community
- provide a process that is transparent, robust and repeatable.
To download a copy please go to:
https://toolkit.ewater.org.au//Tools/Best%20Practice%20Modelling%20Guidelines