Paper presented to the 18th Australian Hydrographers Association Conference Canberra, 24-27 October 2016.
Surface water in Queensland is a valuable resource that creates value for landholders when it is extracted and irrigated on crops, and for aquatic ecosystems when it is left in situ.
In Queensland, the Department of Resources (formerly the Department of Natural Resources, Mines & Energy or DNRM) is the agency responsible for balancing the conflicting water needs of these two stakeholders. Historically, this has been achieved by compromise, by limiting extraction to preserve environmental base flows.
There is growing scientific knowledge of the needs of aquatic ecosystems which indicates that the timing of flows is as important as the volume of flow (DNRM 2016).
This paper describes a method by which ecosystem flow needs can be managed using a combination of sensors and visual inspection, and allowing flows to be dynamically varied by applying complex rule systems discharged through a cloud platform to maximize the health outcomes for aquatic ecosystems without reducing the total water available for seasonal irrigation.
We propose a method of allocating surface water to landholders and aquatic ecosystems (water stakeholders) to maximize the value gained from this fixed resource by both. The method involves dynamic variation of flows using the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing.
The needs of these two water stakeholders (landholders and aquatic ecosystems) are in conflict. If unconstrained, landholders may seek to extract excess water for irrigation, to the detriment of aquatic ecosystem health. Conversely, to maximize the health of aquatic ecosystems, all extraction of water for irrigation would cease. This would be at the expense of a 12 billion dollar industry in Queensland (QGSO 2016).
In Queensland, the Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM) is responsible for balancing the needs of industry and community for access to safe and reliable water supplies, restoring natural flow regimes to support high-value ecological assets1 and ecosystem functions. DNRM is restricted in its ability to manage ecosystems, specifically aquatic health through flow assessment only, using the application of rules on the capture and take of water by landholders (DNRM 2016).
1 Ecological assets are an ecosystem component that occurs naturally in the Water Resource Plan area, is critically linked to flow and is dependent on the conditions provided by flow to support its long-term integrity. It may be a species, a group of species, a biological function, an ecosystem or a place of natural value.