Climate Exchange

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The river basins for which seasonal streamflow forecasts are currently

provided (top) and a sample of the forecast terciles for Victoria (above)

Source: BoM

providing flood forecasting services and seasonal climate

outlooks. From January 2009, key water forecasting serv-

ices stakeholders participated in planning meetings and

user needs workshops hosted by BoM.

One valuable example of stakeholder collaboration

during the development of the service was an iterative

process to gain feedback from users about the display of

low-skilled forecasts. In order to manage this, an options

paper was developed and feedback was requested from

key agencies. The responses drove the development of

a trial solution using a seasonal streamflow forecast-

ing experimental website. Further feedback was then

requested before implementation.

The current forecasting system is based on Bayesian joint

probability (BJP) modelling.

To ensure timely and reliable

delivery of the Seasonal Streamflow Forecasting Service,

BoM developed a new modelling system called Water

Availability Forecasting for Australian Rivers (WAFARi).

Through frequent contact between the BoM service team

and external stakeholders, critical user needs for the

service were identified. New features satisfying these needs

were quickly implemented, providing users with tangible

products upon which they could provide more specific

feedback. As a result of these efforts, WAFARi evolved

into a full operational system equipped with many tools

to support the entire workflow for the seasonal stream-

flow forecasts. These tools range from data management

in a central database to web publication. Some of the tools

were designed to exploit the parallel computing power of

a massive BoM cluster to accelerate the computationally

intensive analysis of the BJP model.

The seasonal streamflow forecasts are prepared at the

beginning of each month by EHP staff members and

uploaded to BoM’s website, which is the most common

place for stakeholders to access the forecasts and informa-

tion about them. Following forecast publication, an email

Unregulated inflow to Hume Dam, forecast period: Mar 2012 - May 2012

Historical data and the forecast probability distribution (left), and the forecast exceedance probability (right), for Hume Dam in Victoria

Source: BoM