Monthly Archive for February, 2011

WSUD and Flooding: 35th EEA Stormwater Management Workshop

A 2-day Workshop entitled “Stormwater Management (source control)” has been organised by EEA (Engineering Education, Australia) for Thursday/Friday 17/18 March, 2011 in Sydney. The Notes provided in the course are based on content of the award-winning manual “WSUD: basic procedures for ‘source control’ of stormwater – a Handbook for Australian practice” edited by Professor John Argue (University of South Australia). This document is endorsed by Stormwater Industry Association (SIA), Australian Water Association (AWA) and by Dept of Water, Western Australia. The Notes have been regularly updated since first publication in 2004

The content features a balance between the three domains of WSUD (stormwater) practice – quantity control, pollution control and stormwater harvesting. Serious issues of stormwater management in Australia are posed by the prospect of 35 million population by 2050. How will Sydney’s existing stormwater infrastructure cope with change to selected regions under the ‘high rise’ option being proposed as the likely re-development scenario? What strategies can be adopted to enable existing (competently-performing) infrastructure to cope with this scenario without expensive upgrade? How can re-development in catchments with existing under-performing stormwater infrastructure be managed to enable the in-ground works to progressively meet greater capacity demand without expensive upgrade? Must the creeks and natural waterways on Sydney’s northern, western and southern perimeters be sacrificed to hard-lining in the wake of the proposed expansion? Positive, strategic answers to these and many other questions based on WSUD ‘source control’ practices will be provided in the Workshop.

The Workshop will also include results of hydrological modelling that provides a ‘design front-end’ for use in the MUSIC model. The pollution control practice presented takes advantage of enhanced treatment available in parent soil masses. The fate of dissolved pollutants is singled out for particular attention.

The short course includes: design procedures based on state-of-the-art analyses and best overseas practices adapted to Australia-wide conditions; case study illustrations drawn from field installations with between ten and 18 years of Australian operational history; design ‘worked examples’; introduction and access to rainwater tank sizing software applicable across Australia. The Workshop will be led by Professor John Argue.

Attendance at the Workshop earns 32 hours credit for continuing professional development purposes with Engineers Australia. More information about the workshop including course content, cost and Registration Forms may be obtained from Ms Ann Ellis on (03) 9326 9777 or HIDDEN EMAIL

ARR Update February 2011

The article below is reposted from the AR&R admin team, for full details check out their website.

Call for Reviewers
Those interested in reviewing projects should email HIDDEN EMAIL briefly describing which projects they are interested in reviewing and what qualifications/experience they have in those practice areas.

Draft Chapters
Draft chapters of the new edition are placed on the website as they become available. Industry is reminded that the current edition of ARR puts the responsibility on practitioners to stay abreast of current research/best practice and not to use out dated techniques even when documented in ARR. It also explains that ARR is not to be treated as a standard where compliance with the published document constitutes acceptable practice. The draft flood frequency chapter of the new version of ARR is currently available. The introduction and chapter on peak flow estimation are expected to be released December 2011. www.arr.org.au/doc_drafts4download.html

Project Updates
-Project 10 (People Safety) was extended to investigate Vehicle stability during flood events. The Literature review conducted by WRL is now available on the website http://www.arr.org.au/Website_links/ARR_Project_10_Stage2_Report_Final.pdf

General Updates
Climate Change-
Engineers Australia with the Assistance of BoM and CSIRO are developing their climate change strategy which will outline research necessary to define the impact of climate change on design rainfall, losses, temporal patterns etc.

Website-
We have received a number emails about the menus on the website. The website is standards compliant. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer is not even close to standards compliance and while every effort has been made to ensure that all the pages herein are visible with Internet Explorer there may be some small discrepancies. If you are having serious problems there are a number of excellent open source and proprietary browsers that are standards complaint and will render these pages correctly, for example Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Safari. Updating your Internet Explorer version may remove the problem. If this doesn’t work please use the site map link at the bottom of the page.

Regards
The ARR Revision Team