Sub-Projects
Evaluation
A twelve-month evaluation period is required by the National Water Commission, to take place after the end of the Farms, Rivers and Markets (FRM) project. This sub-project develops a plan for the end-of project evaluation, including measures and methods for its implementation. Early consideration of project procedures and outcomes and how these might be evaluated, provides valuable guidance to the overall project planning process. The sub-project aims to ensure that:
- Project objectives, activities, outcomes and measures are in alignment
- Evaluation processes are established early, to inform each phase of project planning
- The basis for evaluating project performance is debated and agreed, and readily implemented
Conceptual Frameworks
The FRM project integrates a range of disciplinary perspectives and techniques to explore the potential for new and mutually beneficial opportunities for stakeholders - improving farm production and environmental performance while using less water. This sub-project aims to:
- Define and describe conceptual frameworks, including research questions, at relevant units of analysis
- Integrate the conceptual frameworks developed within each discipline into a coherent framework, so that researchers can:
- exchange and debate ideas about objectives, constraints and key variables
- inform and stretch each others’ perspectives and questions
- test ideas ‘in the whole’ so as to refine their research questions
- allocate priorities to elements of the research and mitigate against duplications or omissions
- share findings and build more comprehensive assessments
- develop criteria for the ‘decision gates’ that will enhance the efficiency and relevance of the research through the ‘living project plan’ process
- Develop succinct and readily communicated accounts of project objectives, conceptual frameworks and research questions that can be tested and validated with stakeholders and other research programs
Preliminary Farm and Economic Models
This sub-project uses modelling tools to explore and evaluate the potential for more flexible and opportunistic farm and landscape practices. This is a key step in defining the most promising options for demonstration. The sub-project will:
- Set objectives and criteria for proposed farm and landscape management practices and systems
- Model farm system scenarios as a way of screening possible land use/management combinations against selection criteria (determined above)
- Gather industry and community support and input to the selection of farming systems for evaluation and demonstration
- Liaise with other programs and agencies to ensure that efforts are complementary
- Explore the relationship between on-farm outcomes and other questions addressed within the FRM project, particularly the modeling and management of water resources
- Use a range of biophysical and economic modeling techniques to draw out the most promising options for demonstration and to confirm findings
Data Sets and eResearch
Informing more flexible and adaptive farming systems and decision-making requires comprehensive data sets at farm and enterprise scale, gathered consistently over the longterm.
The FRM project is centred on the Dookie Farm of the University of Melbourne - Dookie Campus drawing on its:
- Extensive record of climate, soil, land use and farm performance
- Public ownership and accessibility
- Division into sub-catchments (for previous soil conservation research)
- Diverse farming enterprises and natural systems
- Ongoing activities in teaching, research and knowledge transfer
This sub-project plans the long-term data sets in terms of what will be measured, by what means, and how the data will be managed to ensure its integrity and accessibility for current and future research. While data will be partly determined by the nature of farm demonstrations (being determined in the ‘Preliminary Farm and Economic Models’ subproject), there is a need for baseline monitoring data to help refine and validate the CAT model (and possibly other models) for use as a predictive tool.Available data will be assessed and input to the CAT model for use in preliminary modeling to support both the ‘Preliminary Farm and Economic Modeling’ sub-project and to inform the data infrastructure layout and design.
Possibilities for real-time and automated data capture will be explored. Regional Development Victoria has established an Irrigation Technologies Cluster in the Goulburn Valley, and this is located at Dookie. By working with this cluster, and with the possible involvement of IBM and National ICT Australia in a further (under discussion) subproject, ‘Sensor and Data Integration’, it is hoped that the data infrastructure envisaged at Dookie can provide a venue for improved technologies, business models and standards.
Farm data infrastructure may prove vital to the development of more dynamic and flexible farm and resource management decision-making. It is envisaged that existing data management tools, including data protocols, will be used. The University of Melbourne has a number of groups working in the advancement of eResearch and eScholarship, and these will be available to advise on IT aspects of this sub-project.
Catchment Information and Preliminary Modeling
The second and third of three primary objectives of the FRM project are to identify:
- More detailed environmental objectives for groundwater and surface water in space and time, for example, where and when low flows are required for the survival of larval native fish
- A detailed understanding of the water balance and flow conditions in the river, including the exchange between ground and surface water and the water quality implications of such exchange
In addition, one of the secondary objectives of the project involves evaluating the potential for real-time measurement and control to provide more flexibility and efficiency in the delivery of water through a partially regulated river system. Thus, researchers in hydrology, hydrogeology, aquatic ecology and control systems modeling, need to familiarise themselves with the catchment – its nature, the available data, key issues, existing studies and research, and so on. They also need to liaise with each other on the nature and scope of each others’ research efforts, and the necessary interfaces between them. This sub-project is a joint exercise in the collation, critical assessment and preliminary modeling of catchment water data, including the water balance. This will inform the ‘Conceptual Frameworks’ sub-project.
Communication and e-scholarship
The FRM project involves many faculties and groups that need to interact to create a collaborative research environment. Therefore, communication and collaboration software is needed to share information and documents in order to perform effective and efficient research.
The Communication sub-project is an IT project. Preliminary work involved:
- Capturing the FRM project’s needs and requirements
- Defining system criteria based on these requirements
- Identifying and evaluating possible solutions against the criteria