The Portal is intended to help water planners and planning to draw on a range of disciplines and issues (hydrological, governance, socio-economic, environmental) in developing water plans. It also aims to support water planners to develop, implement and review water plans in real-world contexts that are restricted by administrative requirements and the availability of and access to resources.

The National Water Initiative (NWI) introduces another layer of complexity by requiring water planners to produce plans which balance and attain ecological and resource security outcomes. This requires an array of planning tools. In particular, tools for improving community engagement, risk assessment, socio-economic valuations, Indigenous representation and engagement and transparency in trade-off analysis are increasingly necessary for the development of NWI compliant plans.

The primary target audience for the Water Planning Portal is water planners in individual jurisdictions (Australian states and territories). It will also be useful for senior water planners and policy makers. Secondary audiences for the Portal include key stakeholder groups engaged in water planning and the wider community with an interest in water management in Australia.

At this point, the Water Planning Portal includes:

• A database of tools and tool components. This is growing over time.
  
• A contextual fit for purpose system to provide information on appropriate selection and use of tools.
• Protocols and guidelines to ensure appropriate linking of tools to challenges, barriers, desired outcomes and resource requirements. The guidelines are based on a combination of existing sources (listed here) and our own research.
• An underlying planning framework to guide water planners' selection of planning tools. The Portal is built around the adaptive management framework: a widely recognised planning cycle incorporating six distinct planning stages. Our approach to adaptive management comes is informed by a wide range of sources, listed here. 
  

Firstly, the project team drew upon a number of reports including our own comprehensive literature review undertaken as part of TRaCK research which highlighted the extensive range of tools available to and utilised by water planners in Australia and internationally. This literature review also highlighted key challenges to the implementation of the National Water Initiative experienced by water planners in Australian states, territories and other jurisdictions.

Secondly, we identified frameworks and systems that have been developed to provide water planners and planning agencies with guided access to tools. These were not only from the water context, but also in diverse fields such as community engagement, quality assurance and systems analysis. Of these, a number exhibited features and functions relevant to the proposed portal. Some other planning portals are listed here.

Thirdly, we assessed the applicability of a range of tools to contemporary Australian water planning contexts and tasks through a series of applied case studies. These case studies served to delineate variables that are of immediate significance to water planners: time, cost, expertise required, communication needs, assumed participant knowledge and the intended level of stakeholder participation. These case studies also provided empirical evidence to validate our assessment of each tool and our assumptions about the process of selecting tools.

Finally, we conducted a national survey of water planners to further comprehend and prioritise areas for tool development with a focus on public participation, social assessment and social learning. A number of model frameworks were designed and developed for the integration of components of the Portal. These were subject to internal review by the team.

We have attempted to gather the best available data, research and knowledge in the design of this portal from Australia and around the world. You can see the range of references for the various components of the Portal here.

The portal is designed to serve a number of purposes related to improve the way in which water plans are developed in Australia, including:

• Demonstrating an adaptive management planning framework specific to the Australian context, consistent with the National Water Initiative and current approaches in each jurisdiction;
• Integrating a wide suite of existing and developed planning tools to allow for greater transparency and alignment in the planning process;
• Providing practical and pragmatic guidance to help water planners make sense of the great array of available water planning tools;
• Synthesising multiple sets of data that would otherwise require water planners to access multiple documents, websites, guidelines and guidance;
• Ensuring widespread awareness and adoption of the Portal through a targeted Knowledge and Adoption Strategy that includes communication, engagement and education programs; and
• Outlining evidence-based situational analysis questions to allow tool selection according to parameters that water planners have identified as significant (including available time, resources and expertise and anticipated level of conflict).

The expression ‘fit for purpose' implies that a choice of tools may be made according to purpose and context, and considering variables such as time and cost requirements. ‘Fit for purpose' also implies fulfilment of the requirements of a customer or use. The need for a 'fit-for-purpose' approach hopes to provide planners with a way to navigate through the range of available tools to select something that is best suited to their needs.

Sure. We believe that planning is a generic concept - although the specifics of what you are planning is central, many of the tools have been developed in contexts other than water planning. Over time, we hope to build our understanding of the tools using feedback from practioners who use these tools in a range of settings.