eWater source - Australia's next generation IWRM modelling platform

Mathematical models for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) have traditionally been designed for limited hydrologic sector applications with, for example, groundwater being modelled separately from surface water. Water management organisations are increasingly looking for new generation tools that allow integration across domains to assist in decision making processes for short-term operations and long-term planning of both water quantity, water quality and ecosystem health, integrated across urban and rural catchments. This paper introduces the Source Integrated Modelling System which has been developed by the eWater Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) as the new Australian National Hydrological Modelling Platform. Source is a new generation software package that is an integrated modelling environment containing a wide range of hydrological algorithms and approaches that allow defensible predictions of water flow, including environmental flows, and water quality constituents for the full land phase of the hydrological cycle and land uses from headwaters to the sea. In order to fully address IWRM goals, Source introduces the added dimension of water management through incorporation of the full spectrum of trading mechanisms for water ownership, water entitlements and allocations, and tools to assess and identify the relative tradeoffs associated with potential decisions as to how water is shared, used and reused within any catchment, region or basin.