AquaWatch end-users community of practice: Driving collaboration and innovation in water quality monitoring

CSIRO’s AquaWatch mission is a system intended to deliver near real-time data for monitoring and managing the quality of water systems throughout Australia and the world. This system links a broad network of in-situ sensors, Earth Observation sensors and advanced data analytics. As well as monitoring the health of inland rivers, dams and waterways, AquaWatch has potential application in monitoring coastal wetlands, aquaculture farms, riparian vegetation and terrestrial biodiversity, mine sites, mangroves and coral reef environments.

WaterRA is leading a community of practice (CoP) for end users of AquaWatch’s products and services with an objective to foster collaboration, information sharing, and engagement between AquaWatch and its end users. Among the end-users are water quality scientists and researchers, industrial water users, traditional owners, catchment and resource managers, water utilities, regulators and government departments.

The CoP is an ongoing avenue to build end users’ capacity to use the outputs from AquaWatch and will support end users to be involved in system development, data access, science activities and system validation. To ensure the utility and uptake of AquaWatch’s products and services, the CoP will also provide a platform for end-user feedback to AquaWatch. WaterRA will deliver ongoing activities to bring AquaWatch and the CoP together, and facilitate the cross interactions required to deliver value from this partnership, which is crucial for the success of AquaWatch.