News

The National Water Commission has engaged the Institute for Sustainable Futures to bring together leading practitioners and researchers from around Australia for series of workshops to explore current issues that impact urban water planning in Australia.

The first workshop ‘Incorporating climate change uncertainty into urban water supply-demand planning' was held Melbourne on the December 3, 2008.

The workshop explored how to incorporate the impacts and uncertainties of climate change in supply-demand planning. The purpose of the workshop was to bring leading practitioners together and discuss the current developments in this rapidly emerging and important field. Our aim is to develop a resource paper to guide practitioners in the Australian water industry about how to account for climate change within the existing Australian Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) framework. This is due to be released in mid 2009.

The second workshop 'Analytical techniques in urban water demand analysis and forecasting' was held in Sydney on the 2nd February,2009.

This one day workshop involved a representative cross-section of practitioners and was intended to collaboratively map and critique the analytical methodologies employed in deciphering urban water demand. The objectives of the workshop included:
- developing a shared understanding of available methods and tools for urban water demand analysis and forecasting
- review the methods and their practical applications in the Australian water industry
- explore best practice approaches and combinations of methods
- generate strategies which contribute to improving best practice in urban water demand analysis and forecasting in Australia
- inform the development of the resource paper.

The third workshop 'Incorporating sustainability assessment into IRP for urban water'was held in Brisbane on February 24, 2009.

This was a closed workshop to explore the use of sustainability assessment in urban water planning. The workshop discussion sessions allowed researchers and practitioners to share the latest developments in this area. The discussion generated in the workshop will help to shape a National Water Commission industry resource paper to guide practitioners on incorporating sustainability assessment methods into urban water supply-demand planning and decision-making. The paper will be available later in 2009.