Science translation work for the Gold Coast's water environment monitoring program.

Background

The City of Gold Coast undertakes a comprehensive Water Environment Monitoring Program (WEMP) to monitor, maintain and improve the health of local waterways. Until now the City did not have an established approach to communicate this information to a range of stakeholders, particularly interested community groups, citizen scientists and Councillors. There was a desire that a report could also be designed in a way to engage the broader public. The City engaged Water Technology and Relative Creative to undertake this work.

Opportunity for futures

Communicating complex scientific information in a way that the broader community is able to understand and engage with is important in increasing environmental awareness. This particular project communicates waterway health in an understandable way alongside information about actions that can help improve waterway health.

Approach

We worked closely with Water Tech to understand the clients needs, developing and facilitating a workshop with the relevant team in council to further unpack what needed to be communicated. Water Tech then drafted the document, analysing the relevant data. We were able to build on this content, alongside what we had learnt from the engagement workshop to develop a highly designed report that both celebrates the City’s natural water environments and shares with the community how to better care for them.