Water Accounting for sustainable water resources management – role of hydrological modelling (original) (raw)

2015, Weber, T., McPhee, M.J. and Anderssen, R.S. (eds) MODSIM2015, 21st International Congress on Modelling and Simulation

With increasing competition for finite and often scarce water resources, water information is critical for the water reform process. Water accounting, a systematic approach of organising and presenting water information relating to the physical volumes of water and how water resources are being used, provides a unique tool for integrated water resources management as well as for economic analysis of water issues. Due to limitation of available data and information at suitable spatial and temporal resolutions, it is difficult to produce water accounts in a consistent and systematic way in most of the river basins around the world. Hydrological models, if designed and implemented appropriately, can play a significant role in producing consistent and standardised water accounts complementing observed data and information. CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology of Australia have developed a hydrological river system model called "AWRA-R" for producing Australia's national water accounts. AWRA-R includes all the key hydrological processes and anthropogenic water utilisation that are required for producing different fluxes and stores for water accounting. The model is flexible enough to be able to use all available data sources (when modelling data rich and data limited regions) to provide nationally consistent and robust estimates. This paper describes the AWRA-R model and its calibration, validation, and application in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia for producing various fluxes and stores required for water accounting in the basin.