Rethinking Water Planning

Image to be added

Why is the project relevant to you?

This study developed and tested two methods for making joint investment decisions across flood, water resources, water quality, and environmental plans. It's important to note that these statutory plans are only part of ongoing investment activities in catchment areas. Including all of the non-statutory plans was too complex to deliver as a must within there designed approaches. However, the project relied heavily on local experts to understand the connections between water systems and specific catchment characteristics.

Key messages for Environmental practitioners

Participatory mapping is a simple and visual method to analyse the impact of decisions and priorities across an entire system. This project showed its effectiveness at a catchment level, but it can also be applied in more detail to local systems.

Call to action

Standardising the evidence and digital formats used in statutory plans will greatly support the joint development of these plans.

Call to action

The tested approaches used catchment-based analysis to guide decisions strategically. However, they are not meant to replace the specific modelling done in each sector. These approaches should complement and work alongside existing processes.

Call to action

Our conclusion is that having a single, unified plan isn't the best approach. Instead, we should focus on improving collaboration between different areas of the water sector and spatial planning.

Call to action