About

What is Water360?

“An educated community is an engaged community”

Water360 education products help water utilities, municipal councils, universities and government organisations with their water education and customer engagement programs.  An extensive range of digital education material – videos, animations, guides and interactive maps – can help explain your water story and better engage others in water planning and management.

Water360: Ready-to-go education and engagement material can be embedded and adapted for your organisation’s website, interpretive displays, e-learning courses, stakeholder workshops, community forums, and social media.

Water360 has been developed with support by the Australian government and the water industry in Australia and the United States.  Education and engagement products are widely applicable to the international water community. Your organisation can obtain a licence to access the complete video collection or purchase products individually. In addition, you can work with Australian Water Innovations (WaterSecure) to develop new education and engagement material for specific purposes, campaigns, branding or language. The choice is yours.

Who manages Water360?

Australian WaterSecure Innovations (WaterSecure) is an Australian not-for-profit company which manages Water360.  Following national engagement with peak Australian water industry associations, WaterSecure was established in 2016 by the International Water Centre and the Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence. WaterSecure’s office is based in Brisbane.

Research-based

Water360 education products and engagement tools are grounded in quality social science and communication research, conducted by universities and research institutions internationally. Public perceptions, community values, and the use of words, images and language are critical in how we understand, communicate and manage water in our towns and cities. 

Water360 evolved from several innovative, collaborative R&D projects, including:

• Communicating risk: This project identified key enablers and barriers to effective risk communication, as well as successful strategies for dealing with the challenges of implementing and promoting confidence in potable water reuse projects.

• Community acceptance: This project found that variables influencing community acceptance of water reuse include the quality and consistency of the community outreach, levels of water scarcity and perceived levels of environmental benefit.

• Planning and governance: This project examined the planning, governance and regulation issues arising with the South East Queensland Western Corridor Project, the West Australian Groundwater Replenishment Trial and a Water Purification project proposal in the ACT.

• Rethinking community engagement: This investigation into successful community engagement programs synthesised a variety of qualitative research findings and outlines a series of implications for community engagement practices and the design of media strategies.

• Water quality and public health: This project examined and analysed the historical safety of potable recycled water schemes and the quality of the water produced drawing upon experience and data from seven schemes from around the world.