Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS)

A key deliverable of AWR2005 is the specification of a set of tools that will access information published through a distributed water data infrastructure to deliver future water resource assessments. This ‘enduring asset’ is to be known as the Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS).

The development of this specification involved three key tasks:

• Capture of User Requirements – an investigation into who might use AWRIS and the types of data and functionality these users might require or expect.
• Design of a System Architecture – describing the proposed technical architecture for AWRIS and the associated enabling framework at the component level.
• Development of an Investment and Implementation Plan – proposing a strategy for implementing AWRIS and the associated enabling framework along with suggested indicative funding requirements.

Technical reports covering each of these tasks are available from the Publications page.

AWRIS Vision

“AWRIS will provide a comprehensive, credible, open view of Australia’s water resources data and information. It will allow users to review and investigate this data, understand the data in context, and bigger picture details about the data. AWRIS will help further (and add value to) the discussion about water.”

AWRIS will be a set of tools that will access data published through a distributed data infrastructure to deliver, amongst other things, future water resource assessments.

AWRIS Outcomes

Key outcomes of AWRIS will be:

• Provision of on-going access to biophysical data (water availability, water use, and river and wetland health) and some management level information for Australian water management areas.
• Assessments such as AWR2005 able to be performed as a matter of routine. The availability of transparent water resources data, information and knowledge will facilitate improved decision making processes and build public trust and confidence in the overall process.
• Information gathered for AWR2005 and made available through AWRIS can be used in performance indicator and benchmarking assessments.
• Consistency at a national level in terminology, measurement and data collation. This will, in time facilitate:
• an agreed national understanding of the current status at catchment/groundwater management unit level of ecological assets, flows, usage and management regulation and implementation;
• a common hydrological and river health basis for informing debate about water availability, entitlements and usage and the occurrence/protection of environmental;
• a step towards uniform national terminology on water measurement parameters;
• clarification of critical geographic and knowledge gaps;
• improved understanding of where further investment is required to deliver NWI outcomes, and;
• a basis and method by which some changes resulting from the NWI can be assessed.

AWRIS Tools and Architecture

The purpose of AWRIS is to provide tools to users that allow for access to information stored in a variety of distributed databases around the country. As a result of recent proposed changes to the management of water information in Australia, a key contributor will be the Bureau of Meteorology. However, many other organisations will continue to collect water information and may wish to contribute as well.

High level overview of AWRIS Tools

The tools and services provided by AWRIS to its users will include

• Discovery – ability to perform advanced searches for information about water
• Reporting – standard and customisable reports of available water resource information for selected areas, time periods, and subjects
• Mapping – standard and customisable maps
• Data visualisation – graphs and figures that enable visual comparison between selected areas and time periods
• Data download – access and download data and information
• Future tools – includes almanac (water resources facts and figures and other information compiled from common user requests)

High level overview of system architecture

The key characteristics of the proposed architecture for AWRIS are:

• Service Oriented Architecture –to provide real time access to distributed data sources, information will be accessed via web-services as the user requires.
• Browser tools (client tier) – tools that enable the end-user to access data and information. Browser tools include searches and display mechanisms that help the end user.
• Application tools (application tier) – server side tools components that are specific for the AWRIS toolset (mapping services, report tools etc).
• Infrastructure (enabling framework) – infrastructure components that enable the upload and register of (meta-) data, or have metadata harvests and including spatially and temporally enabled catalogue of registered services. This framework allows custodians of water information (data contributors) to make their data available for sharing via standards based web services.
• Contributor tools (contributor tier) – services that allow those who are providing data and information to be able to do so.
• AWRIS builds upon existing and ongoing projects and initiatives, most notably the Water Resources Observation Network (WRON) and the Australian Water Data Infrastructure Project (AWDIP).
• AWRIS will rely on strong governance and project management to ensure that agreements and delivery expectations are met.

Proposed high level architecture for AWRIS, showing the four distinct tiers of components

Who will use AWRIS and why?

Extensive analysis was undertaken across Australia through interviews and workshops to identify who might use AWRIS, and what these users’ expectations might be. An identified set of users are listed below, along with typical tasks that these users might perform with AWRIS.

Implementing AWRIS

The AWRIS implementation plan outlines four distinct work plans for the implementation of AWRIS. The components are:

1. Project Foundation: Develop a business plan for implementation; establish an appropriate governance framework for implementation. Develop appropriate documentation.
   
2. Coordination: Engage an implementation coordinator for the coordinated (parallel) approach to developing the tool set and the framework.  This could also include ongoing project management, stakeholder consultation, communication and change management.
   
3. Enabling Framework: Adopt a national approach to develop the ‘national enabling framework’ in a coordinated manner. Further solution development tasks and specifications.
   
4. AWRIS tool set: Development of prototypes, solution development and specification, vendor and contractor selection and management, project management.

It is clear that the development and implementation of AWRIS will require significant investment at all levels of government in Australia. There is also need for further encouragement and support to government agencies to improve the quality, structure and access of datasets, in support of the development of AWRIS and to provide improved data access.

Technical reports covering AWRIS user requirements, system architecture, and the implementation and investment plan, are available from the Publications page.

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