Murray-Darling Basin Floodplain Inundation Model (MDB-FIM)

The Murray‐Darling Basin is one of the most important catchments in Australia covering over 1 Million square kilometres. It contains numerous wetlands of national and international importance, including many RAMSAR listed wetlands. It is also home to approximately 2 million people and its water resources have been highly developed for irrigation, industrial and domestic water supply. The basin provides 70% of Australia’s irrigated crops and pastures. As a result of this water resource development the condition and extent of the aquatic ecosystems of the Basin have declined. To address the over-allocation of water and to restore and secure the long term health of the aquatic ecosystems of the Basin, the Australian Government is developing a plan to manage the water resources of the Basin as one entity.

In order to manage the aquatic ecosystems in the Basin it is important to understand the extent of floodplain inundation and the regime of flooding across the entire Basin. As no model of flooding existed for the Basin, the Murray‐Darling Basin Floodplain Inundation Model version 1 (MDB‐FIM1) was developed as part of the ‘Ecological Outcomes from Flow Regimes’ project, funded under the National Water Commission’s Raising National Water Standards Programme. MDB-FIM1 was produced from satellite imagery and other available floodplain and wetlands inundation mapping. Based on MDB-FIM1, MDB-FIM version 2 (MDB-FIM2) has focused on advancing the methodology and improving the modelling accuracy.

Details of MDB-FIM2 are described in [2], with an overview in [3]. The original method used in MDB-FIM1 is described in [4] and [5].

MDB-FIM2 is available under licence, and is considered a research tool. The following caveats are applied on the use of its products:

• The data are the output of a research product and, as such, does not conform to coding standards and have not been quality assured;
• The data has been produced by a regional-scale model at 500 m resolution and is not accurate at site-scale;
• The inundation patterns have been derived for historical, modelled flow scenarios and cannot be directly compared to observed inundation patterns.

As such, users should apply their knowledge of the Basin when interpreting the dataset.

The product is described in [1]. For further information, contact Dr Yun Chen.

[1] Metadata statement (PDF, 413 kB)

Further reading

[2] ‘Murray-Darling Basin Floodplain Inundation Model Version 2.0 (MDB-FIM2)’ (2012).  Chen Y, SM Cuddy, LE Merrin, C Huang, D Pollock, N Sims, B Wang and Q Bai, Technical report. CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, Australia. (Link TBA)

[3] ‘Linking inundation timing and extent to ecological response models using the Murray-Darling Basin Floodplain Inundation Model (MDB-FIM)’. Chen Y, SM Cuddy, B Wang, LE Merrin, D Pollock and N Sims. In: Proc of 19th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Perth, Australia, 12-16 December 2011, MSSANZ.

[4] Chapter 19 in ‘Ecological Outcomes of Flow Regimes in the Murray‐Darling Basin’. Overton IC, MJ Colloff, TM Doody, B Henderson and SM Cuddy (eds) (2009). Water for a Healthy Country Flagship Report, CSIRO, Adelaide.

[5] ‘Murray-Darling Basin Floodplain Inundation Model’ (2010). Version 1. Overton IC, TM Doody, D Pollock, JP Guerschman, G Warren, W Jin, Y Chen and B Wurcker. Water for a Healthy Country Flagship Technical Report, CSIRO, Adelaide. (Link TBA)