Water scarcity in Australia is driven by eight major factors: increasing urban demand; expanding farm dams and plantations; increasing groundwater extraction; irrigation supply demands; bushfire recovery impacts; the need to increase environmental flows; and the impacts of a drying and warming climate. The Commonwealth Government, through the Improving Water Information Program of the Water for the Future plan, has committed $450 million over ten years to the Bureau of Meteorology to provide increased access to water information through the development of the Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS).

AWRIS will assemble hydrological monitoring data obtained under the Water Act (2007) from over 200 separate organisations in Australia to populate a national database. These data will be made publicly available and will be used to generate water resource assessments and forecasts, and annual National Water Accounts. AWRIS will be underpinned by the Australia Hydrological Geospatial Fabric (Geofabric), which will help us account for water as it moves through the landscape between areas, uses and users. The Geofabric will describe the connections between most of Australia’s hydrological features, including rivers, dams, lakes, aquifers, diversions, supply channels, drains and monitoring points.

This presentation will provide an overview of the Bureau’s Water Information Program, including funding of improvements to Australia’s hydrologic monitoring network, assembly of data, development of AWRIS and output products, research and development being undertaken through an alliance with CSIRO, and plans to spatially enable water information through development and expansion of the coverage, resolution and richness of the Geofabric.