Melbourne School of Engineering Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

CRC for Irrigation Futures (CRC IF)

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is a research node of the Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures which also includes the Institute for Land and Food Resources (ILFR). The CRC comprises 13 partners including 5 Universities.

The CRC IF builds on the work undertaken by Land and Water Australia's National Program for Irrigation Research and Development (NPIRD), and National Program for Sustainable Irrigation (NPSI) Programs.

The mission of the CRC for Irrigation Futures is to facilitate cooperative research, training networks and programs which continuously improve irrigation policy, tools, practices and process to:

The CRC for Irrigation Futures will achieve these goals through four programs:

The Department's hydrology group is currently involved in two of these programs.

 

Program 1: Policy & Planning for Change

This program explores the social, economic and legal policy and planning innovations and possible research investments needed to assist the transition to future sustainability from paddock to regional scale and beyond.
 

Program 2: Sustainability - Rural & Urban

This program aims to support the analysis of the whole of the hydrologic system within the appropriate context to determine solutions to key sustainability issues for any coastal, river valley, floodplain and periurban/urban irrigation scheme.

 

Program 3: Technology & Practice

This program is focused on providing the leadership and capacity to identify and develop tools and techniques to enable the industry to double the value of irrigated output while reducing the volume of water required for both urban and rural irrigation.

 

Program 4: Education

This program is the backbone of the CRC. It is designed to continue propagating the CRC impacts beyond 2010. It will focus on four areas, namely: Post-Graduate Research Programs, Post-Graduate Coursework Programs, Undergraduate Expansion and Industry and Community Training Programs.