Tools for all your water and catchment management needs
The eWater Toolkit contains tools, databases and information sources developed by eWater and its predecessors. eWater does not actively support all of the Toolkit’s features, nonetheless they continue to be used by water and catchment managers across Australia and around the world.
The tools currently supported by eWater:
AUSRIVAS – Australian River Assessment System
AUSRIVAS is a rapid prediction system used to assess the biological health of Australian rivers.
These models predict the aquatic macroinvertebrate fauna expected to occur at a site in the absence of environmental stress, such as pollution or habitat degradation, to which the fauna collected at a site can be compared. Providing an indication of the overall ecological health of the site.
AUSRIVAS has two streams:
- Bioassessment for rapid biological assessment protocols
- Physical assessment for rapid geomorphic, physical and chemical assessment protocols respectively.
Eco Evidence
Eco Evidence software facilitates causal assessment for environmental management and offers a mechanism to make the best use of the extensive pool of published research. It allows you to search and access a reusable knowledge bank of evidence, relevant to specific cause-effect associations, extracted from scientific papers.
Eco Evidence is made up of two parts, the Eco Evidence Database and the Eco Evidence Analyser.
The database stores information causal relationships extracted from scientific studies, with a focus on cause and effect assessments. Users can also add evidence to the database.
The Eco Evidence Analyser reduces bias and subjectivity by evaluating evidence from environmental science literature in a standardised, transparent and repeatable manner.
NSFM
NSFM (Non-parametric Seasonal Forecast Model) is a non-parametric seasonal forecasting model that forecasts continuous exceedance probabilities of streamflow (or any other hydroclimate variable).
NSFM forecasts the exceedance probabilities of streamflow several months ahead by exploiting the lag relationship between streamflow and ENSO (El Nino/Southern Oscillation) and the serial correlation in streamflow.
TIME- The Invisible Modelling Environment
The Invisible Modelling Environment (TIME) is a software development framework for creating, testing and delivering hydrological and environmental simulation models and as a foundation for plugins to eWater Source.
TIME can be used to develop and test individual algorithms, such as a conceptual rainfall-runoff model as well as integrated modelling applications that draw together models, data visualisation components and customised user interfaces.
TIME includes support for a number of advanced tools for the visual integration of models, calibration of models using automatic optimisers and the pre and post processing of data.
Toolkit products available through eWater Source (public)
eWater has upgraded many of the most popular Toolkit products to plugins that can be used with the freely available public version of eWater Source. Known as Community Plugins, these are available through the eWater Wiki.
Community plugins are available for many different purposes, including incorporating different rainfall-runoff models, water quality management and processing data.
Visit the eWater WikiToolkit products available as Community Plugins include:
Eco Modeller
Eco Modeller helps forecast effects that are likely to result from particular management activities with natural resources. Eco Modeller helps informs decision making about how to achieve a desired environmental outcome from the natural resources at hand.
A key feature of Eco Modeller is its internal ‘library’ that can store ecological models that are relevant to your situations. Link your data for a natural resources management scenario (e.g. flow in relation to fish sustainability) to appropriate models in the library, and Eco Modeller predicts how the scenario will change over time, in response to management actions.
RRL – Rainfall-runoff Library
The RRL simulates catchment runoff by using daily rainfall and evapotranspiration data. The models may be applied to catchments from 10 km2 to 10,000 km2 on a daily time step.
SCL – Stochastic Climate Library
The SCL provides a library of stochastic models for generating climate data, including rainfall, evaporation or temperature, at multiple timescales, across single or multiple sites.
SedNet
SedNet identifies sources and sinks of sediment and nutrients in river networks and predicts spatial patterns of erosion and sediment load. This tool can help target management actions to improve water quality and riverine habitat.
RAP – River Analysis Package
The RAP helps river and water resource managers to undertake condition assessments, environmental flow planning and river restoration design. It is a collection of 3 tools:
- Hydraulic Analysis – examines the hydraulic characteristics of river channels to determine the optimal discharge for a river reach based on specified rules.
- Time Series Analysis – calculates summary statistics of time series data, including hydrological metrics.
- Time Series Manager – manipulates and manages time series data.