Sydney Water Engineering Panel

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Baseflows for Design Flood Estimation (ARR Project 7)

The next Panel presentation will be given by Rachel Brown, of SKM, who is the manager of the ARR Project 7 project team. It will be a 5:30 for 6pm start at UTS Broadway.

Please note: this will not be at the usual Chatswood venue rarher it will be held at UTS. Also it is being held on the Thursday and not the usual third Tuesday.

An important aspect of flow estimation as distinct from flood estimation is the relative importance of the baseflow component of a hydrograph. Whereas the direct runoff component is the most significant component of a hydrograph for flood estimation and the baseflow component is neglected, this is not always the case for general flow estimation. In recent years the need to estimate small flood flows (in-bank floods) has arisen and, therefore, estimation of baseflow needs to be considered within Australian Rainfall and Runoff.

This project focuses on the development of appropriate techniques for estimating the baseflow component of a hydrograph. It is expected that both statistical and deterministic approaches be developed to meet the various needs of the industry.

This project will result only in preliminary guidance in a form suitable for inclusion in Australian Rainfall and Runoff.

Printable PDF flyer.

EA Eminent Speaker: Flood and Storm Surge Levees

EA is hosting a talk by Dr Dr Steven Hughes from Colorado State University (USA) on Flood and Storm Surge Levees – design, maintenance & performance in particular how it relates to the failures during Hurricane Katrina. See the PDF flyer and the EA blurb below:

Dr Hughes is the Senior Research Scientist for Colorado State University, USA and is an international expert in the research and policy of Flood and Storm Surge Levees. He will be speaking on the timely topic of Flood and Storm Surge Levees – design, maintenance and performance and drawing on his experiences in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina.

Monday 16th May
Time: 5.30pm for 6pm Start
Auditorium, Engineers Australia Sydney Division, 8 Thomas St, Chatswood

Seats limited to 130 – please book online early!

Please RSVP online HERE or see the attached flyer for further details.

Please note: this presentation is hosted by EA and not the Panel event. If you do attend please confirm as the last presentation we advertised for EA was cancelled at the last minute with no warning.

Environmental Award for Rainwater Thesis

According to a recent EA release Benjamin Taylor of USQ won the National Student Environmental Engineering and Sustainability Award:

University of Southern Queensland postgraduate student Benjamin Taylor has been presented with the 2010 National Student Environmental Engineering and Sustainability Award from Engineers Australia’s Society for Sustainability and Environmental Engineering. He received the award for his graduate research project Rapid estimation of rainwater yield throughout Australia and review of Queensland rainwater harvesting operating policy.

Source: EA News

Stormwater Management – What Progress Have We Made?

The next Panel seminar will be on Tuesday 19th April 2011, 5:30 for a 6pm start at the EA Auditorium, Chatswood. It is a panel Q&A session:

A big leap was made in the way we manage storm water 15 years ago when industry and the public embraced a more holistic view. Storm water systems were no longer seen as just a way of conveying urban runoff in a way that minimized inconvenience for the public. The focus on storm water systems started to include water quality, softer more environmental systems, repairing the ecologically of systems that had been neglected and more recently using storm water as a resource. This seminar’s participants were at the forefront of these changes and bring their combined industry experience to look back on the progress we have made.

Panel:

Dr Geoff O’Loughlin, Anstad Pty Ltd
Dr Peter Coombes, Bonacci Water Pty Ltd
Dr Brett Phillips, Cardno

Drinks and nibbles will be available.

A PDF flyer is available.

PDF of Hugh’s Presentation: The Complexities of Surface and Groundwater Interactions

Hugh has kindly made a pdf copy of his presentation available.

The Complexities of Surface and Groundwater Interactions

The next Panel presentation will be held on Tuesday 22nd March, 5:30 for 6pm at the EA Auditorium Chatswood and is title: The Complexities of Surface and Groundwater Interactions. The presentation will be given by Dr Hugh Middlemis, Senior Principal of Aquaterra, Adelaide.

The complexity of surface and groundwater interaction has traditionally resulted in an approach based on simplifying assumptions. Engineers have usually taken a “top down” approach of concentrating on the surface processes, which involve fast hydrologic response times, and not analysing the slower sub-surface processes in much detail. Hydrogeologists have usually taken a “bottom up” approach, which simplifies the surface water process and concentrates on dealing with the longer term sub-surface processes. Neither approach is ideal.

Full details and a more extensive biography are available: Water Panel Flyer March 2011.

SSEE: Invitation to Field Tour of Rouse Hill – Australia’s Largest Community Water Recycling Scheme

The Sydney Society of Sustainable and Environmental Engineering extends an invitation to join us for a field tour of Rouse Hill, Australia’s largest community water recycling scheme.

Over 19,000 homes use 1.7 billion litres of recycled water each year for flushing toilets, watering gardens, washing cars and other outdoor uses.

On average the Rouse Hill scheme has reduced demand for drinking water by about 40%. Eventually the scheme will serve 36,000 homes.

The area includes parts of Acacia Gardens, Beaumont Hills, Castle Hill, Glenwood, Kellyville, Kellyville Ridge, Parklea, Quakers Hill, Stanhope Gardens, The Ponds and, of course, Rouse Hill.

The Rouse Hill Water Recycling Plant treats about 4.7 billion litres of wastewater each year for residential use.

A PDF Invitation is available.

Date: Thursday, 7 April 2011
Time: 5:00pm for networking. 5:30 – 7.30pm for tour
Venue: Rouse Hill Town. Details to be sent to attendees.
Cost: Free, but you must RSVP.
RSVP: Register by Thursday 24 March 2011 to Sydneyssee@engineersaustralia.org.au. Please include your name, contact number, and email in the RSVP.

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 ann@eeaust.com.au

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 arr_admin@arr.org.au 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

Notification of AGM

Further to the email a while ago this is a reminder that the Panel’s AGM will be held next Tuesday at restaurant Venuto. As we need numbers for a booking, please RSVP ASAP to Seth Westra (s.westra@unsw.edu.au).

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