Water scarcity and increasing demand for water are major challenges facing Australia. The need to accurately monitor, assess and forecast the availability, condition and use of our water resources is now more vital than ever.

Water resources information is currently collected and reported by more than 200 organisations across Australia, using a variety of methods. The range of collection and reporting methods and arrangements for accessing water data has made it difficult to monitor the status and use of Australia’s water resources and reliably forecast water availability. This has compromised the effectiveness of water resources management and planning.

CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship’s Water resources Observation Network Research (WRON) Theme is establishing the next generation science and technology platform for integrated water information systems across Australia.

Through the water information research and development alliance between the CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the WRON theme will deliver the R&D capability required for new hydrologic analysis and prediction products to be developed by the Bureau. The WRON theme will also focus on research in next generation sensor networks providing near real time reporting and forecasting of Australia’s water resources.

See our Demonstrators and publicly available data products for an example of the work being produced within the WRON Theme.

Demonstrators

Australian Dam Levels Monitor

A set of tools to view Australian Dam levels in a range of ways:

• Google map interface
• dashboard-style gauges
• hierarchical time-series view
• Widgets for Windows and Mac.

View the tools.

Publicly available data products

These data sets are made available for public use. Users are strongly encouraged to read the documentation accompanying each data set in order to understand the origin of the raw data and any processing that has been applied to bring it to its present form, and for information about referencing the data source.

Remote Sensing Products

NOAA/AVHRR

• AVHRR fPAR Vegetation Data (Donohue et al)

MODIS

• MODIS LPDAAC Land Mosaics for Australia

Time Series Products

Climate Data

• Near-surface Wind Speed (McVicar et al)

Hydrological Sensor Web

• South Esk hydrological Sensor Web

Find out more about Water for a Healthy Country research projects.

Primary Contact

Location

Related Areas

• Water for a Healthy Country Flagship
• The Sustainable Yields Projects
• Water
• CSIRO Land and Water
• CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems

Contact