Demonstration of the climate adaptation toolkit workflow

This report documents the state of knowledge of the secondary, or indirect, impacts of climate change and prioritises topics for investigation in the MD-WERP climate adaption theme.

Science and research

MD-WERP theme	Climate adaptation
MD-WERP theme 1 project	Climate adaptation toolkit
Research lead	Centre for Regional and Rural Futures, Deakin University, CSIRO
Authors	Georgia Dwyer, Galen Holt, David Robertson, Joel Bailey, Martin Job, Lara Palmer and Rebecca Lester
Author contact details	Rebecca Lester David Robertson
Date of publication	April 2023
Report full title	Demonstration of the climate adaptation toolkit workflow
Keywords	Murray–Darling Basin; climate change; toolkit; water management; hydrology; hydrological modelling; uncertainty; integration; scenario assessments; environmental outcomes; social; cultural; economic; causal networks; ModelArch
Summary of output	The impacts of climate change will affect the social, economic, environmental and cultural values of the Murray–Darling Basin. Some elements will be more vulnerable to climate change than others. The toolkit, HydroBOT, enables end-users to choose future climate scenarios, identify possible adaptation options and then model the flows associated with those scenarios. These can then be used to understand the resultant response of identified values (e.g. environmental, economic). This report demonstrates the key functionality of HydroBOT. This includes a description of the structure of HydroBOT, its use and then demonstrates its capabilities for a range of synthetic scenarios representing climate change and adaptation.
Key findings / recommendations	HydroBOT is an open-source R package that enables end-users to choose future climate scenarios, identify possible adaptation options and then model the flows associated with those scenarios. These can then be used to understand the resultant response of identified values. HydroBOT is specifically designed to be flexible, enabling users to tailor the analyses and presentation to their own use case, with many possible summary figures. At the same time, it enables robust scaling of findings in space, time and across objectives, preventing common errors. This new capability will enhance the ability of the Australian Government to account for the impacts of future climate change on water supplies and Basin assets in water planning. It will support non-flow-related decisions.
Target audience	Water managers, researchers, Australian Government, state governments, water and environmental consultants

Report
Publication title	Published	File type	File size
Demonstration of the climate adaptation toolkit workflow	11 Apr 2023	PDF	3.39 MB

Published date: 19 May 2025