Sydney Water Engineering Panel

Using Australian Water Resource Assessment (AWRA-L) model for catchment conditions

In this seminar we introduce the AWRA-L model and website; detailing outputs, performance and use. An in-house use case of how the Bureau of Meteorology is using AWRA-L to estimate antecedent soil moisture conditions for operational flood warning is presented. It is scheduled for:

8th April 2019
5:30pm Networking and Registration
6pm Start
Bureau of Meteorology
Level 15
300 Elizabeth Street Surry Hill

A printable flyer is available for download.

Pre-registration is mandatory to reserve your spot in this prime venue.

2019 Stormwater NSW Conference

The details for the 2019 Stormwater NSW Conference are now live with full details at:

2019 Stormwater NSW Conference
27 – 29 August 2019
Pacific Bay Resort, Coffs Harbour, NSW
snswconference.com.au

SPLASH: Innovation in the urban development sector big ideas, new technologies, integrated design

Details

Venue: Sydney Water Building, 1 Smith St Parramatta, Level 4

Date: Thursday 14 February 2019

Time: Registration from 8:00am. Event starts at 8:30am -12:00pm followed by a light lunch and networking

Cost: $150 (incl. GST) – Splash Members, CRCWSC Members

$185 (incl. GST) – Non-members

Register Now

Overview

Our changing urban form offers opportunities for vibrant, walkable suburbs that support a connected community. Urban growth and densification, climate change, and increasing health costs, are driving an increased interest in green infrastructure and water sensitive urban design due to the multiple benefits that they can provide.

In this national seminar series, we showcase innovative developments that create the types of communities we all want to live in. Each development demonstrates how integrated design can deliver leafy suburbs that connect communities through access to high-quality private spaces, streetscapes and parks, with active links to healthy urban waterways. Combined, all of this offers lifestyles that support improved physical and mental wellbeing.

This is your chance to hear from project managers of award-winning developments across Australia who have incorporated innovative urban water management into successful housing developments. The key focus of this seminar is to learn:

why we should embrace new approaches to urban greening and sustainable urban water management
the challenges to innovation and how they were overcome
the enabling factors that contributed to the development’s success
how the market is responding to these innovative developments.

White Gum Valley (Western Australia), Aquarevo (Victoria), Barangaroo, Fairwater and Willowdale (TBC) (New South Wales) have responded to community demand for sustainable housing choices, lower utility costs, and developments that offer attractive tree-lined streets to support more active lifestyles, providing high quality lifestyles.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

On behalf of the Sydney Water Engineering Panel thanks for being a part of our community in 2018. We had a great year with 2019 shaping to be even better.

We hope your 2019 is also great and that you can continue to share the journey with us together.

Funding for Local Infrastructure Projects in California

The Australian section of the ASCE is hosting its regular free Sydney Summer Lecture series again this year with Jeff Cooper visiting. Jeff is the Director of Municipal Services with NV5 which is a provider of engineering and consulting services to public and private sector clients as well as being the ASCE Region 9 Governor, that is for California.

In this lecture, Jeff Cooper will speak on funding local infrastructure projects in California in the USA. Due to taxing limitations, communities often need to get creative in funding projects. The presentation discusses the challenges, the options and the ways to be successful in funding projects. In addition, 3 specific projects will be presented: Undergrounding Overhead Utility Districts; Street Light Improvement Districts; Sewer fees for improvements and maintenance.

Details
5 for 5:30pm
Thursday 15th November 2018
Cardno Conference Room
Level 9, 203 Pacific Highway
St Leonards NSW 2065

Also available online: https://cardno.zoom.us/j/2572627660

RSVP
If you plan to attend in person or remotely then please:
Email Kitty Kan at: [email protected] Or call her on Telephone +61 2 9496 7700
By Wednesday 14 November 2018.

Printable Flyer
A printable PDF flyer is available for download.

Fish Passage Presentation Slides

Thanks to the support of our presenters we have been able to post PDF copies of their slides for your information:

John Haris: pres01-Harris.pdf
Martin Mallen-Cooper: pres02-MallenCooper.pdf
Matthew Gordos: pres03-Gordos.pdf

It was an interesting presentation with a great turn out.

Videos From Fish Passage Posted

We’ve now posted the videos from the fish passage presentation in August. There was some audio problems but these should be manageable. PDFs of the presentation slides will be posted shortly.

Check out all three videos on our YouTube channel.

ARR2016 User Survey

This post is on behalf of a researcher at UNSW.

We would like to invite you to complete a survey on how Australian Rainfall and Runoff (2016) is being used and implemented. This research is being completed by UNSW honours research student Michele Guild and supervised by Dr Fiona Johnson. We are interested in the opportunities, barriers and limitations that are facing professional engineers in using ARR2016. If you use ARR we would appreciate you taking the survey. The consent and participant information form for the survey can be accessed via the survey directly https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RHC78TM or downloaded from http://www.hydrology.unsw.edu.au/survey-on-australian-rainfall-runoff-2016

Hydraulics of Fishways

Fishways for Engineers

When: 1st August 2018, 5:30pm for 6pm
Where: PSA Auditorium (see map below)
CPD: 2 hours
RSVP: Online at EA
Cost: $0 for EA members, $30 otherwise
Printable Flyer: Available for download

This presentation will be delivered in three parts followed by a Q&A style session with all three presenters. Across the three sections of this talk we will cover:

A brief overview of the biological issues surronding fishways as well as the critical need to include these structures in all water management plans and designs – particularly to be included at the early project conception stages.
The high capital and maintenance costs of fishways and how smart engineering solutions based on a detailed understanding of the biological needs of different species can, and is, bringing these costs down as well as improving performance.
An overview of the hydraulics classification of fishway structures including rock ramp, vertical slot, fish lock and other fishways.
Presentation of recent collaborative field trials by the Department of Primary Industries and UNSW WRL and their immediate application to design standards

Fishway Design and Example Montage (©NSW Department of Primary Industris, ABC News)

Speakers

Dr Matthew Gordos, Visiting Fellow John Harris and Dr Martin Mallen-Cooper

This presentation will be delivered in three parts. Dr Gordos is the Senior Manager – Fish Passage Unit and the Department of Primary Industries – Fisheries. John Harris is a visiting professor at the University of NSW and Dr Mallen-Cooper of Fishway Consulting Services. All three presenters have unique experience of both the research and practical applications of fish ladders and hydraulics as well as their design and implementation.

Venue Map

Scientia Scholarship at WRL

Prestigious Scientia PhD Scholarship at UNSW Water Research Laboratory now available in project “An innovative fishway to restore migration for freshwater fish”

The Scientia Scholarship program is a prestigious program attracting PhD scholars of exceptional quality to work on selected cutting edge research projects. The stipend is A$40K per year with a further A$10K per year available for career development and international collaborations. The tuition fees are also covered for international applicants.

In a cross-disciplinary project, the supervisor team of WRL’s Dr Stefan Felder, Adjunct A/Prof William Peirson and Prof Richard Kingsford from UNSW’s Faculty of Science have combined their expertise to progress an innovative fishway to restore migration for freshwater fish.

Fish are the most threatened of freshwater vertebrates. Internationally, fish populations have declined 76% over the past 40 years. A primary contributor to this loss are dams obstructing migrations critical to many fish life-cycles. UNSW scientists and engineers have developed an innovative fishway to restore migrations over high dams. The project builds on successful fish attraction trials as well as numerical and physical modelling. The study will move to larger scale, optimising fishway design by large-scale experiments with live fish. The objective is a final design to restore fish passage to previously obstructed river systems internationally.

Due to its interdisciplinarity, the project is open for HDR candidates from a range of disciplines within Science and Engineering. While it will be beneficial that the HDR candidate has some understanding and background of either ecology or applied fluid mechanics, the diverse expertise of the project team will ensure that the HDR will receive adequate training in a range of areas relevant to the project. The project will be mostly experimental and the HDR will be based at the UNSW Water Research Laboratory. The HDR candidate would need to be self-driven, motivated and willing to learn new project-related knowledge from both engineering and ecology.

The deadline for prospective applicants to express their interest on this research project is 20 July 2018.

Further information and the expression of interest link are available online.