Measuring the success and outcomes from Natural Resource Management actions is complex and often requires extensive resource investment. Investment we do not have.

Projects and programs undertake evaluation to demonstrate achievement of outcomes, however as the whole of system level-specific monitoring and evaluation does not occur without State lead State of Environment evaluations.

Our systems analysis that forms the basis of the Regional NRM Strategy also tells us that individual resource issues do not function in isolation, but as part of a complex interlinked system.

The TPC and Dashboard of resource condition provide a means of monitoring and reporting outcomes using surrogates, assumptions and indicators.

We do not pretend it is right, but what it does provide is an indication of trends in our key priority areas.

The Regional Strategy identified seven big resource issues in the Avon River Basin as being important as they are fundamental to the underlying structure and function of the region.

Development of these big issues is usually controlled by a fast or slow moving ‘controlling variable’, or ‘system indicator’. The 'threshold' of each controlling variable indicates a major tipping point where the resource issue fundamentally changes state.

The NRM Dashboard identifies the drivers impacting these resource issues and aims to determine whether they are moving towards or away from the threshold.

Using existing data sources we can efficiently monitoring trends in the environment that can indicate how the priorities in the Regional Strategy are progressing.

The Dashboard data comes from a range of existing data sources and we recognise the contribution of over 40 different data custodians who freely share this data with us.