Research Fellow, iCAM
Integrated catchment assessment, modelling and decision support
Phone: +61 (0)2 6125 8132
Fax: + 61 (0)2 6125 0746
E-mail: Rebecca.Letcher@anu.edu.au

Rebecca completed undergraduate degrees in Science and Economics at the Australian National University (ANU) in 1998, majoring in economics, econometrics and mathematics. Her honours year in mathematics focused on assessing the impacts of farm dams on stream flow yields in the Macquarie River basin, Australia. While completing her undergraduate degrees she also worked as a Research Economist at ACTEW, on water pricing, regulation and forecasting.

She then went on to complete her PhD at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, also at ANU. Her PhD thesis involved the development of an integrated (economic, hydrological) model for assessing water allocation options in the Namoi River Basin, Australia. She has since worked on many integrated assessment projects including the IWRAM project, CLAM, WAdss and Landscape Logic.

Professional Activities

Rebecca's contributions to the field include: member of the Editorial Board of Environmental Modeling and Software; guest editor of Special Issues of two journals (Integrated Assessment; Environmental Modeling and Software); co-author of several keynote addresses; Secretary of the International Environmental Modeling and Software Society (iEMSs).

Academic Highlights

Career highlights include:

• winner of the Best Student Paper prize in General Systems at MODSIM2001
• recipient of an Early Career Research Excellence Award for Integrated Systems from iEMSs in 2004
• winner of a Software Industry Award for Excellence in Software Design for the HICAM (Berowra CLAM tool) in 2007, jointly with Cardno Willing and Hornsby Shire Council.

Selected Publications

Letcher, R. A., Jakeman, A. J., and Croke, B. F. W. (2004). Model development for integrated assessment of water allocation options. Water Resources Research, 40: W05502.

Letcher, R. A., Croke, B. F. W., Jakeman, A. J., and Merritt, W. S. (2006). An integrated modelling toolbox for water resources assessment and management in highland catchments: model description. Agricultural Systems, 89:106-131.

Letcher, R. A., Croke, B. F. W., Merritt, W. S., and Jakeman, A. J. (2006). An integrated modelling toolbox for water resources assessment and management in highland catchments: sensitivity analysis and testing. Agricultural Systems, 89:132-164.

Letcher, R. A., Croke, B. F. W., and Jakeman, A. J. (2007). Integrated Assessment modelling for water resource allocation and management - a generalised conceptual framework. Environmental Modelling and Software, 22: 733-742.

Letcher, R., and Jakeman, A. J. (2003). Application of an Adaptive Method for Integrated Assessment of Water Allocation Issues in the Namoi River Catchment, Australia. Integrated Assessment, 4(2): 73-89.