This project builds a decision-support tool that searches catchment land-use options to find those that best support river health in the Birrarung.

The Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017 commits to a healthy, swimmable Birrarung, recognised in the Act as one living and integrated entity. Water quality models are good at describing the state of a river, but they rarely say what to do about it. Current water quality models are good at describing the state of a river, but they rarely translate into actionable intervention guidance. Managers are left choosing between interventions with little quantitative support.

This project couples prediction with optimisation. A machine learning model predicts river health from sensor-measured and land-use data, and an evolutionary algorithm searches catchment land-use configurations for those that improve it. River health is defined in an integrated way. A scoping review of river health modelling and a River Workshop with Traditional Owners, community members, ecologists and water managers together shape which indicators matter and what a healthy river means, so the search is directed toward the values people hold for the Birrarung. The result is a decision-support tool that gives managers a shortlist of catchment interventions worth pursuing, and a clear account of the trade-offs between them.

OPTIMA, the ARC Training Centre in Optimisation Technologies, Integrated Methodologies, and Applications support this research.