Current Funding

The eReefs platform and associated research is currently supported by funding from:

Australian Government Reef Trust

Supporter from 2012 to 2026

The Australian Government has supported eReefs since its inception.

From 2025 onwards, eReefs is directly funded by the Australian Government Reef Trust.

From 2018 until 2024, Reef Trust support for the eReefs were administered by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) as part of the Integrated Monitoring and Reporting component of the Reef Trust Partnership agreement between GBRF and the Australian Government.

In 2016, the Reef Trust committed further funding to eReefs under the Reef Trust Partnership.

From 2012 to 2016, the Australian Government matched the Queensland Government’s funding for the development of the eReefs Platform via the Caring for our Country initiative and the Reef Rescue Program.

Historical Funding

Previous phases of the eReefs collaboration were supported by funding from:

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Supporter from 2012 to 2024

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) is fostering a resilient reef for all generations by catalysing and funding science that informs, encourages and inspires. They aim to promote a strategic, collaborative and coordinated approach with their partners in business, government, and philanthropy to fund essential research that delivers meaningful outcomes for managers, users and policy makers.

The Foundation was the custodian of the eReefs vision from its inception. As a part of their broader research portfolio, they provided guidance, coordination and funding for the eReefs collaboration from its beginnings as a pilot hydrodynamic model in 2009, until the modelling suite and web plabform reached full operational status in 2024.

For the first major collaborative phase of eReefs development between 2012 and 2015, GBRF secured an initial $5M investment from BHP which was leveraged with $4.9M from the Science Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF), $8M from the Australian and Queensland Governments, and $16M co-investment from research institutions, including CSIRO, AIMS and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Three more research phases followed with GBRF support: in 2016 to 2017, 2018 to 2020 and 2021 to 2024. The last of these was funded via the Integrated Monitoring and Reporting component of the Reef Trust Partnership between GBRF and the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy (DEE).

Queensland Government

Supporter from 2014 to 2017

In addition to their research participation and co-investment in the eReefs collaboration, the the Queensland Government has directly invested more than $3 million in the eReefs project.

Their initial contribution for $1 million for 2014/15, was followed by an additional $2 million over two years (2015/16 and 2016/17) which supported the completion of the near-real-timee marine water quality modelling work in the first major development phase of the eReefs collaboration.

The goal of this grant was to ensure that eReefs will use the latest technologies to collate and analyse data with new and integrated marine monitoring and modelling to produce understanding, prediction, visualisation, communication and reporting tools that span the entire reef from catchment to ocean. Those integrated tools, in turn, will help the government to plan and assess the results of its investment in land management practices, and in particular whether the associated improvements in the quality of water flowing to the Great Barrier Reef will protect reef ecosystems.

Science and Industry Endowment Fund

Supporter from 2011 to 2016

Spanning a history of over 90 years, the Science and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF) provides grants to science and scientists for the purposes of assisting Australian industry, furthering the interests of the Australian community and contributing to the achievement of Australian national objectives. This unique and esteemed funding arrangement received a substantial gift from CSIRO made possible from proceeds of its fast wireless local area network (WLAN) technology, facilitating the rejuvenated Fund to be a mechanism for significant support of science in Australia.

In 2010, SIEF granted Round One funding of $4 million over five years to the early stages of the eReefs collaboration under the project title e-Reefs – Transforming the Science and Management of the Great Barrier Reef.

BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance