Modelling

Water modelling focuses on asset mapping and analysis of data about the system to predict failures and plan repair work. Water models inform decision-making processes, including policy, planning and management decisions. They also assess likely impacts from external drivers, such as rainfall change, sea level rise or population growth through migration.

Water models are developed and used to inform decision-making across various water policy, planning and management issues. They include but are not limited to water resource planning, groundwater impact assessment, flood risk management and water quality improvement.

Water modelling is a diverse activity that generally involves developing mathematical and logic-based representations of real-world relationships between different variables. These variables can include aspects such as the spatial and temporal relationships between water quality pollutants, stream hydrology, plant life and other chemical components of river water. The models then use these representations to understand how processes (e.g., pollutant dispersal and fate in rivers and coastal areas) will operate under different conditions.

Some of these conditions may represent anticipated future conditions such as temperature and rainfall distributions under climate change. Others might be designed to represent management actions.

Often these representations are embedded within simulation programs to understand how complex sets of real-world relationships will interact and pan out over space and time. These computational models inform policy, planning, management decision-making, and action-taking.