An independent review of the Basin Futures platform: a next-generation web-based tool for water assessment education, decision support, and research

An interdisciplinary team led by Professors Tony Jakeman (IWF Director of Research Partnerships) and Sondoss ElSawah (UNSW Canberra) conducted a review of the web-based Basin Futures platform - a next-generation tool to support high-level water assessments. The CSIRO commissioned an independent peer review to ascertain readiness of the Basin Futures for public use, assess current platform capabilities and identify areas of improvement and future requirements, particularly in the communication of uncertainty, modelling capabilities, and platform usability.

Assessment of water resource use is often a difficult process which requires models and necessary data to be collated, analysed, and applied. As a wide range of data and models are necessary, this process is often highly time consuming and computationally demanding. Models themselves often have complex user interfaces and requires specialist knowledge to use and interpret, hampering their use for public engagement and communication. The Basin Futures platform was developed by the CSIRO in collaboration with Land & Water and Data61 as an entry-level tool for preliminary assessment of surface water resources and water scarcity in a basin, and to facilitate participatory modelling processes for research, water resources planning and decision support, and educational purposes. The platform can also be used as a tool to support an integrated approach to water resources assessment considering economic, social, and ecological water requirements, particularly to explore sustainable development policy outcomes.

To support these aims, the Basin Futures platform leverages pre-loaded historical and climate change scenarios’ global datasets, coupled with interactive visualizations presented in an accessible web-based interface. Users can define water resources development scenarios of interest and analyse results without having to worry about data collation and formatting or model setup.

The review finds that Basin Futures has reached a level of maturity suitable for public release and achieves the stated aims of supporting rapid water resource assessments. An initial public release is currently being planned.

For more information please contact Iwanaga.Takuya@anu.edu.au

O’Sullivan, J., Pollino, C., Taylor, P., Sengupta, A., & Parashar, A. (2020). An Integrative Framework for Stakeholder Engagement Using the Basin Futures Platform. Water, 12(9), 2398.  https://doi.org/10.3390/w12092398

Taylor, P., Stewart, J., Rahman, J., Parashar, A., Pollino, C., & Podger, G. (2017, December). Basin Futures: Supporting water planning in data poor basins. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia (pp. 3-8). Here