Water scarcity issues in Australia are being driving by a number of factors including global warming, increased urban and agricultural demand and over allocation for farming. Our ability to quantify the problem is hampered by the fact that water information is managed by multiple jurisdictions in a way that hampers our ability to quantify our water resources. In order to address the problem, the Commonwealth Government under the Water for the Future plan has committed $450 million to the Bureau of Meteorology to become the lead agency for water information in Australia.

A key component of the Bureau’s water information strategy is to build an Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS) to be the authoritative repository for water data and reporting in Australia. The Australian Hydrological Geospatial Fabric (Geofabric) is the geospatial framework that will underpin the AWRIS. It will hold key spatial data layers within a single, consistent, national geospatial framework for hydrological features.

The concept for the Geofabric project is based on a similar project in the United States (US) known as the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD). The NHD is a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that contains information about surface water features and the connections between them. It is coordinated by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in partnership with federal and state government departments. This paper will analyse the NHD as a benchmark for the Geofabric. The focus is on what lessons can be learned in application of a hydrological spatial framework for Australia.