The Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia, CSIRO Land and Water, and the ANU Fenner School recently embarked on a major new partnership to develop the Australian Hydrological Geospatial Fabric (Geofabric). The Geofabric will be a suite of authoritative spatial data products containing a consistent representation of features, and the connectivity between features, of the Australian water system. It will become the framework upon which Australia’s water information related activities are based and through which they are related - spatially enabling the Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS).

A development plan has been has been initiated that will directly support the Bureau’s new role under the Water Act (2007) to deliver the first Water Account in 2010, and ongoing Water Resource Assessments. In the first year the program will develop: a new national Digital Elevation Model at 30m resolution based on the SRTM Level 2 data; national reporting units based on physical catchment boundaries; a nationally consistent surface hydrology database, and a plan to develop, integrate and maintain regional and local scale data on a catchment basis. The plan also aims to integrate wherever possible, with other activities currently supporting a broad range of Australian and State Government, community and industry requirements for spatial information.

This paper will provide an overview of the current and future activities, the methodologies being used and the results to date. Importantly it will also provide an opportunity for key stakeholders to become actively involved in the ongoing development of the Geofabric.