CSIRO statisticians are working to help us understand water and climate better to determine what water we have, its quality, and how to manage these water resources for sustainability.
Key science issues
The information we have on Australian water resources is often limited, with data collected at different times and places.
Statisticians are working to obtain valuable information from this data by using sophisticated modelling and monitoring methodologies. The research also helps to ensure that water data collected in the future will be of maximum usefulness to natural resource managers.
The statistical research helps to ensure that water data collected in the future will be of maximum usefulness to natural resource managers.
Focus and outcomes
To make effective water policy and management decisions, resource managers need to understand the complex natural systems with which they operate. To meet this need, the statistical research focuses on the areas of:
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developing statistical design and modelling technologies to enable monitoring, forecasting and management of water demand, supply and quality (including ecosystem health)
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informing environmental policy and management strategies through the design of surveys and sampling schemes and building statistical models to examine status, trends and patterns.
Our statisticians’ work includes:
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developing and using new techniques for integrating data on environmental health collected at different times and places
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designing monitoring programs that guide the how, why, what, where and when of measuring
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incorporating uncertainty in quantitative risk assessment.
The key outcomes of this work will be meaningful, useful information for natural resource managers in making risk informed policy and regulation.
Current activities
The current activities of Landscape Monitoring and Modelling group include:
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CSIRO has played an important role in a multi-agency project managing water quality in South-East Queensland, one of Australia’s fastest-growing regions. CSIRO environmental statisticians are part of a team designing, evaluating and implementing an integrated water quality management strategy for the region.
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A national Water Resources Observation Network (WRON) is being built by the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, a CSIRO initiative. Water Resources Monitoring and Modelling provides capabilities to WRON in monitoring and managing the reliability of sensor data, validating models, developing spatio-temporal models for real-time surveillance and developing statistical models that can integrate structural and statistical modelling.
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Fostering strategic climate research that will underpin a wide range of applications delivering products to manage climate risk via the Indian Ocean Climate Inititiative (IOCI). The IOCI is focused on Western Australia, providing greater understanding of the West Australian climate, both at decadal and inter-seasonal time scales. CSIRO statisticians are contributing statistical science expertise to IOCI in the key areas of nonlinear modelling for seasonal forecasting, modelling and prediction of extremes in time and space and hybrid statistical-physical modelling.
Find out more about our Environmental monitoring and analysis overview.
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