28-30 April 2009, Rydges Southbank Hotel & Convention
Centre, Palmer Street, Townsville
Conference Proceedings
Compiled by Shannon Hogan and Suzanne Long
Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Ltd
ISBN 9781921359354
Published December 2009
MTSRF Theme 5 - Enhancing Delivery
Introduction
The Reef and Rainforest Research Centre hosted the third Annual
Conference of the Australian Government's Marine and Tropical
Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF) at Rydges Southbank Hotel,
Townsville over three days in April 2009.
Over 160 registered delegates attended the meeting, in addition
to invited guests and those who attended select conference sessions
relevant to their industry.
The 2009 conference showcased the latest MTSRF-funded research
outputs relevant to the Great Barrier Reef, the rainforests and
landscapes of the Wet Tropics and the Torres Strait, along with the
human communities that depend upon these ecosystems, plus special
sessions on water quality and climate change.
Within the MTSRF, the Australian Government has conducted an
innovative experiment in the management and delivery of applied
research. In an organisational framework specifically
designed to achieve maximum return on investment in applied
research, the RRRC employs dedicated research program managers and
knowledge brokers to facilitate the timely delivery of milestones
that meet end-user needs, against a background of sustained
management, robust science and fiscal transparency.
The message that well-managed scientific research can help to
improve the sustainability of management and use of Australia's
environmental assets is more important than ever. The MTSRF
'experiment' of management and delivery of applied science is
already showing promising signs of success: the MTSRF is
achieving a seven-fold improvement in project milestone slippage
rates, compared to historical 'norms' of 20-25% milestone delivery
failure.
Most research facilities measure their success in terms of the
number of scientific and technical publications they have produced.
However, the applied, solution-oriented objectives of the research
conducted through the MTSRF mean that, in addition to quality
science publications, performance is more appropriately evaluated
through examination of the impact of this newly-generated
information on policy and practice. As a step towards an
innovative evaluation of this kind, the RRRC has produced and
online booklet that briefly describes some of the many cases in
which MTSRF-funded research has already impacted on policy and/or
practice, and thereby increased the sustainability of management
and use of Australia's environmental assets. These examples
span the entire scope of the MTSRF – from more efficient ways
to biosequester carbon in rainforests, through improved shark
fishery management, to increasing the effectiveness of knowledge
repatriation into Indigenous communities – and are presented
in terms of their capacity to feed into the Australian Government's
strategic priority information needs.
With the fourth and final year of the MTSRF well and truly
underway, the MTSRF research portfolio is particularly focused on
delivering major outputs to address the key research priority areas
identified in the MTSRF Research Investment Strategy for
2006/2010.
