Many people in natural resource management (NRM) have experienced the frustrations of not having access to the appropriate natural resource information they need for making informed decisions. A pilot for the new Datahub project will be a great step forward in resolving some of this frustration by addressing the drivers that influence availability and access to knowledge and information.

The pilot project will commence in mid February and run for approximately five months. It is a collaboration between the Regional NRM Groups Collective (RGC), Terrain NRM, Queensland Murray-Darling Committee (QMDC) and the Department of Natural Resources and Water’s (NRW) Catchment Programs, and will involve a number of additional regional NRM bodies as stakeholders.

DataHub will make it easier for resource managers, planners and researchers to access relevant information on a wide array of NRM related topics. The project will support a regional collaborative network to implement new functions and structures to improve knowledge and information brokerage and exchange.

An additional outcome will be improved knowledge and information management processes to support the data trawl components of performance story reporting by regional NRM bodies for the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country program.

The first step in making all this happen is to identify ways to encourage the use of processes which will allow for easy information sharing. The pilot will achieve this first step by focusing on specific NRM themes in the identified regions, trialing new information sharing approaches, and documenting the processes that work for stakeholders.

The project will be directed by a steering committee and regional working groups.  In addition to reducing natural resource managers’ frustrations by allowing NRM decision making to be built on more complete information, the benefits of the Dathub include coordinated knowledge and reduced duplication.

For more information contact NRW’s Catchment Programs’ Phil Maher or Kirstin Kenyon.