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Management of our environmental waterways often requires the development of numerical models to simulate ambient water quality processes such as oxygen, nutrient and phytoplankton dynamics and their interactions.

Traditionally, the usefulness - or fitness for purpose - of such numerical models has been assessed by making statistical comparisons between modelled and observed concentrations. If agreement can be demonstrated under a suite of statistical measures, then a numerical model is considered acceptable and able to be used for environmental analysis. Although sometimes useful, this method precludes developing an understanding of the underlying physical processes – i.e. mass fluxes of water quality constituents - that drive water quality concentration predictions. It is therefore possible that a numerical model can predict ‘the right concentrations for the wrong reasons. By only assessing the concentration-based performance of a model, it is not possible to determine otherwise.

This webinar presents a novel and scientifically sound way that overcomes this shortcoming by using the unique flux based outputs of the TUFLOW FV Water Quality Module to move beyond relying solely on concentration based model performance assessment, and towards a much more reliable mass flux – or process based – assessment of model predictive power.