AUSQUAL, an Australian Water Quality Management Model

The established deterministic diffuse water pollution models have been found to be too data intensive and complex for general use given the present limited water quality data in Australia. AUSQUAL has been developed to obtain results from a limited data-base. For each land-use type AUSQUAL allocates a coefficient for imperviousness, continual rainfall loss and pollution availability. For each sub-catchment weightings can be allocated for runoff continual loss, point source and areal loadings for pollutants, and percentage for different land-uses. The results of this simple and data efficient type of modelling exercise have been effective for calculating simple hydrology, gross export of pollutants and pollutograph shape for six urban catchments in Sydney.