National water planning resource goes online

An interactive web resource to help people easily access information on the status of water planning across Australia has been launched by the National Water Commission.

This online web application, based on the inaugural National Water Planning Report Card 2011, provides a summary of the status of water plans across Australia, including the quality of existing water plans, their implementation and areas for future improvement.

Releasing the report, Commission Chair Chloe Munro explained, “Good water planning is the roadmap for how we share water resources and is critical to build confidence about these often difficult community decisions.”

The web resource is intended to promote better practice in water planning and encourage informed national discussion. It does so by allowing people to examine the information in the Report Card at a range of levels.

Users can compare key elements of water planning at national, state and local levels - across 157 water plan areas. ‘Clickable’ jurisdictional maps show locations of water plan areas, allowing users to drill down to local plans.

A comprehensive search tool allows the user to search by keyword and filter plans by:

• state or territory
• groundwater or surface water
• whether the plan is in the Murray-Darling Basin
• year the plan was completed
• any of the 12 assessment criteria

Up to four assessments can be compared via the search results, displaying the assessment criteria for the selected plans side by side.

The commission has developed this web resource as a contribution to more effective and transparent water planning reporting.

The National Water Planning Report Card web resource is available at www.nwc.gov.au.