Rethinking Water Planning

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Why is the project relevant to you?

The four statutory water plans are fundamental in determining the future state of our water environments. The decisions that are made within them, and the subsequent delivery of interventions, will determine the state of our waterways over the next few decades. Understanding how they work, the challenges of integrating them, and the potential ways to better undertake that integration, will provide you with a broader understanding of the challenges we face to effectively plan for water.

Key messages for Others

This project has tested/trialled two different approaches to integrating the statutory water planning functions. Neither are perfect, but they do provide a useful evidence base and a basis for any other proposed approaches to be built on.

The participatory systems mapping element of the case studies shows the complexity of the water system and provided a very useful way of working with stakeholders to understand complex systems.

One of the challenges identified thorough the project was the work that still needs to be done across the water industry and with other plan makers to make the evidence bases and optioneering consistent and shareable.

The project had to find the balance between trying to cover multiple aspects of water, over a large area, and the resource demands that come with different levels of detail. We accepted that this type of multi criteria review and option selection would not have as much confidence as the sector specific modelling that is undertaken. Therefore finding the right place to input these approaches into the process, (likely in an iterative way) with the detailed optioneering work is critical.