Let’s get our ducks in a row: Novel tools for catchment diagnosis and prioritisation of waterway management intervention

Water by Design is a capacity-building programme based in Brisbane, Australia, that focuses on waterway health and aims to aid local governments and the development industry in the goal of better managing waterways and also transitioning to water-sensitive cities. Water by Design’s survey of the issues affecting waterway health reveals a very broad suite of problems to solve. In short, the majority of these problems can be solved via thorough diagnosis of the catchment including assessing the distribution of hazards, values and needs and a strategic planning framework that can prioritise management actions and resources to maximise potential impact. This paper has identified a number of novel tools to simplify the visualisation and analysis of the problems but still address many competing demands that waterway managers need to consider. The tools are inspired by the medical model for managing health and also the addition of red/green/blue colours to produce multidimensional GIs heat maps to identify critical adjacencies within the catchment. With the plethora of management frameworks available today, it is the memorable ideas that survive and are passed on. To address this issue, careful thought has been placed in the design of these tools to enhance the chances that they are remembered, understood and disseminated.