Tafoni Pty Ltd

Director · Roderick Marsh

Tafoni works at the intersection of collective decision-making and technical analysis in contested policy areas. The practice brings together structured deliberation, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and mathematical modelling — helping policy makers and stakeholders reason through uncertainty, competing values and complex evidence.

Current work includes chairing the Daly River Water Advisory Committee and assisting the Adelaide River Water Advisory Committee and the NT Department of Lands, Planning and Environment on questions where hydrology, First Nations knowledge, ecological evidence and stakeholder deliberation inform high-consequence water planning and allocation decisions.

The practice draws on more than twenty years' experience across water, climate and energy, public integrity, and the philanthropic and not-for-profit sectors, including the design and establishment of Watertrust Australia.

Select current work

Independent Chair — Daly River Water Advisory CommitteeNorthern Territory, 2024–present Advises the NT Minister for Water Resources on water allocation and management in the Daly River catchment. The committee has just completed its review of the draft Katherine Water Allocation Plan 2026–2036 and provided its advice to the Minister.
Adelaide River water allocation plan — ensemble hydrological modellingNT Department of Lands, Planning and Environment, 2025–26 A 50-member paired GR4J ensemble quantifying the potential hydrological effects of proposed water extraction in a data-poor monsoonal catchment, with GLUE-style behavioural parameter selection and spatially correlated forcing perturbation, to help inform an ecohydrological risk assessment and water allocation planning. The framework includes a satellite-validated floodplain inundation emulator, a salinity bounding analysis, and time-of-emergence and climate benchmarking across 90 hydrological indicators. Independently peer reviewed; reports will be linked here once public.

Select public reports & publications

Valuing Water: the Australian perspective. Lessons from the Murray-Darling Basinco-author · World Bank / Australian Water Partnership, 2022
Fair enough — fairness in Murray–Darling Basin water policylead author · Watertrust Australia, 2026
Perceptions of fairness in Murray–Darling Basin water policylead author · Watertrust Australia, 2026
Watertrust Australia foundational documentslead author · Ian Potter & Myer Foundations, 2019Australian Freshwater Study final report, Overview paper, and the First Peoples' Water Rights and Economics issues papers
Establishing a new entity to influence land and water policy in Australialead author · 2019
Equity, fairness and justice — key concepts for water policyco-author · Watertrust Australia, 2025
Equity, fairness and justice — framing policy debatesco-author · Watertrust Australia, 2025
Murray-Darling Basin, Australia: Its Future Managementco-author, two chapters · Elsevier, 2021
Australasian Journal of Water Resources — Review of the Murray-Darling Basin Planeditor · Vol 27, Issue 2, 2023
Managing conflicts of interest in the public sectorco-author · ICAC / CMC, 2004

Select public code

daly-aquifer-viewerInteractive 3D viewer of the Cambrian Limestone Aquifer system, Katherine Water Allocation Plan area, NT
effect-size-benchmark-explorerCompare how different benchmark frameworks classify the same effect size in ecohydrology
rainfall-ensembleSpatio-temporally correlated ensembles of gridded daily rainfall and PET forcing for hydrological modelling (R)
WatertrustEquitySubmissionsAnalysisText analytics on stakeholder perceptions of equity, fairness and justice in Murray-Darling Basin water policy
shinyWindowVarianceInteractive R Shiny model exploring the statistical properties of hydrologic stress (Nathan et al. 2019)
moreMoreMoreFressozGlobal energy trends analysis testing Fressoz's thesis that primary energies accumulate rather than substitute

Profiles

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