2.1 Context

As our understanding of the natural environment advances, the questions asked of water quality and ecological numerical models are rapidly increasing in breadth and complexity. Setting up, calibrating and executing defensible environmental models has therefore become an increasingly challenging proposition.

The architecture of the WQ Module has been deliberately designed to assist users in overcoming some of these challenges, and in doing so improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which numerical modelling can support environmental management. Importantly, the WQ Module’s architecture provides a mechanism by which users can rapidly initiate and execute water quality simulations without (at least in early modelling stages) concerning themselves with the often time consuming set up and parameterisation of simulated environmental processes.

In short, the WQ Module has been designed to provide immediate and easy access to its supporting state of the art environmental modelling science. The architecture that provides this easy access is tiered and these tiers are described below.