Our partner E2Designlab refined our RESTORE Tool following their independent review and application of it to four sites along Scrubby Creek in the City of Logan, south-east Queensland.

Our RESTORE Tool is a decision making tool to support the holistic repair of urban waterways. The tool asks practitioners questions about the environmental and urban setting of their restoration site and identifies the ecosystem components likely to be most relevant using a scoring system. It is based on the premise that practitioners will get the greatest return on investment by targeting ecological components that are important for healthy stream function, are highly stressed and have the potential to recover. A compendium of 13 factsheets: Improving the ecological function of urban waterways supports the tool to identify catchment-based and waterway-based actions.

During the independent review, E2Designlab found the RESTORE Tool has many benefits and some limitations. They reported that the test version of the tool is useful in its current setting, but could be improved by refining the user interface and clarifying questions. They have now addressed some of those limitations.

Examples of the changes E2Designlab made include:

  • adding a level of confidence rating to questions
  • including further climatic zone and rainfall considerations
  • clarifying the weighting of attributes.

The user interface refinements include:

  • drop-down menus for scoring items
  • locked key cells (password protected by admin)
  • a glossary of terms, and enhanced navigation.

Some colour and layout enhancements also better align the RESTORE Tool with other CRC for Water Sensitive Cities tools and products.

The updated version is now available here. You can contact Samantha Lemons (s.lemons@uq.edu.au) if you have any questions.

Last updated: 7th Jul 2020