Current Collaborators
eReefs is a research collaboration between the following agencies:
AIMS
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), Australia’s tropical marine research agency, brings significant research expertise in monitoring and ecological responses, deep data stores and modelling knowledge to the eReefs partnership.
The development of routinely operating, data assimilating models of the circulation and water quality within the Great Barrier Reef has been a shared vision for more than a decade. AIMS sees eReefs as the realisation of this vision, and believes that the modelling and visualisation tools developed will not only advance many areas of science but increase the certainty of scientific advice provided to stakeholders in relation to some of the most challenging issues affecting the Reef.
CSIRO
CSIRO is Australia’s national research agency. CSIRO provides the knowledge to help manage Australia’s oceans and atmospheric environment, to plan for and respond to weather and climate related natural hazards, and to ensure sustainable coastal development and growth of marine industries. It delivers practical and collaborative science that enables governments, industries and communities to make informed decisions to preserve and protect natural treasures such as the Great Barrier Reef.
CSIRO is undertaking multiple initiatives to transform ocean information management, which will enhance Australia’s capacity to address national ocean-related information challenges and opportunities. eReefs is a fundamental part of CSIRO’s Great Barrier Reef Research Portfolio.
Queensland Government
Staff from the Queensland Government Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI) operate a Great Barrier Reef Catchment model based on the eWater Source catchment modelling framework. This model is part of the Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting component of the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan, and its results have been used as the river forcing dataset for eReefs marine model hindcast datasets.
In addition to the catchment model, the Queensland Department of Local Government, Water and Volunteers (DLGWV) operates a network of streamflow monitoring gauges throughout the Great Barrier Reef catchments which eReefs depends on as a source of streamflow forcing data in conjunction with the modelled streamflow (where no gauged data exists) for the near-real-time eReefs model datasets.
Historical Collaborators
Previous phases of the research collaboration also included the following agencies:
Bureau of Meteorology
Collaboration partner from 2012 to 2024
The Bureau of Meteorology was involved in the eReefs project from the beginning of the collaboration in 2012, and have contributed several key components of the eReefs platform over the years of their participation.
In the early phases of eReefs, the Bureau developed and hosted several operational web applications, including ReefTemp Next Generation and the eReefs Marine Water Quality Dashboard.
More recently, the Bureau have developed catchment water quantity and quality models able to simulate streamflow and water quality concentration and load at an hourly time scale for all Great Barrier Reef gauged and ungauged catchments. The real-time system was developed by the Bureau and deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) before being delivered to CSIRO to run operationally, while the historical simulation system (streamflow only) was developed using National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). These systems are capable of providing historical and real-time information on water quantity and quality to support the tactical decision-making for a range of stakeholders, and have been used as river-forcing for 69 rivers in the most recent generation of eReefs marine models.
Although the Bureau is not directly involved in the current phase of eReefs development, they will continue ongoing collaborations with eReefs partners on scientific publications, and additionally support CSIRO to operate the real-time and historical systems until June 2025.
Providing trusted, reliable and responsive weather, water, climate, ocean and space weather services for Australia – all day, every day
For further information about the Bureau’s water data information or forecast please contact water@bom.gov.au.