Based on the increasing rate of coastal change and risk to coastal communities and infrastructure, a consortium of capabilities within Australia’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) is working to develop national coastal research infrastructure – CoastRI. This initiative is proposed to achieve a step-change advance in Environment and Climate as recommended in the 2021 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap.
The development of CoastRI is based on several principles:
- Integrate a suite of infrastructures to deliver a coast-focused initiative to meet stakeholder and end-user needs
- Identify areas where research infrastructure can fill gaps and/or value-add to existing programs, avoiding duplication or displacement of existing efforts
- Operate an integrated and coordinated initiative to harmonise new and existing coastal efforts
- Through combining capability and developing new activities, deliver a measurable step-change advance for research on Australia’s coasts.
CoastRI themes
Consultation with a range of end-users, including government and industry, has identified a range of needs which have been summarised into national-scale themes that CoastRI will work to address. These include physical and digital infrastructure needs to study:
- Erosion
- Inundation
- Coastal and estuarine water quality
- Habitat cover, condition and health
- Biodiversity
- Human settlements, infrastructure and industry
- Community wellbeing
CoastRI will potentially include collection of new data, aggregation of existing data, and modelling to help address these themes. Inclusion of First Nations and data stewardship activities are fundamental elements applicable to all the identified themes.
CoastRI scope
As planning progresses, activities to underpin CoastRI themes will be prioritised for inclusion in the potential initiative based on independent review, alignment with principles, and budget considerations.
Due to the wide range of end-users, it is important to recognise that CoastRI cannot address all coastal research infrastructure needs. Some areas of identified need are already delivered by state government programs, industry operations or organisations outside NCRIS. Some identified needs are too large or complex to be managed within the NCRIS consortium and are thus out of scope. These include observations, data collection and modelling related to bathymetry, groundwater, and catchment runoff/river flow.
CoastRI is designed to serve as a foundation for additional value-adding observing and data collection activities, research activities, co-investment, and the leveraging of collective efforts to further understand and adapt to coastal change in Australia.
Next steps
NCRIS consortium members are working to prioritise elements for inclusion in the CoastRI initiative and to progress this concept as part of the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap Environment and Climate Challenge.
The aim of CoastRI is to fill a major gap in the Nation’s future strategy by building research capacity in the step change area of ‘World-leading environmental and climate infrastructure to underpin Australia’s national adaptation strategy’.