Posts in "Surface Water" tag

Darcy Lecture Confirmed for 21st September

In conjunction with the IAH NSW Branch the Panel is pleased to announce that the prestigious Darcy Lecture will again be held in Sydney. The Lecture will be given by Dr Tim Scheibe at the new UTS Aerial Function Centre on the 21st September 2010, 5:30pm for 6:00pm. The Lecture will be followed by light refreshments and beverages to allow for a chance to interact with Tim.

More details on the topic of the Lecture will be posted shortly.

The event is free but RSVP (peter.brady@eng.uts.edu.au) is requested for catering.

Venue Details:
UTS Aerial Function Centre
Level 7, Building 10
Access via Jones Street off Broadway
Five minutes walk from Central.


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PRCC: Final Call For Abstracts

The final call for abstracts for the inaugural Practical Responses to Climate Change National Conference has just been made. If you are interested, please contact the organisers as soon as possible at: http://www.climatechange2010.org.

Second Call for Practical Responses to Climate Change Conference

The second call for abstracts has just been release for the PRCCC to be held in Melbourne over 29 September 2010 – 1 October 2010. I’ve reproduced it below and full details are available on their website: www.climatechange2010.org.

Continue Reading…

32nd Presentation Of EEA 2-Day Stormwater Management Workshop: Sydney, 2010

A 2-day Workshop entitled “Stormwater Management (source control)” has been organised by EEA (Engineering Education, Australia) for Thursday/Friday 18/19 March, 2010 in Sydney. The Notes provided in the course are based on the 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, recently, by Dept of Water, Western Australia. The Notes were updated in February, 2009.

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 Federal Government’s goal 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 the government’s goals 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 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 of high-performing filter-bioretention systems enhanced by treatment taking place 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

Novatech 2010 Conference News

Novatech 2010: 7th International Conference on Sustainable Techniques and Strategies for Urban Water Management

June 27, July 1st, 2010, Lyon France

For more information, visit the website or contact Ms. Lucie Dupouy: novatech@graie.org.

Water and Climate Change: An Overview from the UN World Water Development Report

The UN World Water Assessment Program would like to share a number of new publications addressing Water and Climate Change, produced in anticipation of the COP 15 discussions. These new publications draw from the findings of the UN World Water Development Report: Water in a Changing World (2009).

Additionally, UN-Water presented its key messages on water and climate change as a contribution to COP 15 in the following document:

  • UN-Water Key Messages on Climate Change and Water [PDF 314 KB]

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Lastly, over the past year a number of publications addressing water and climate change have been released through WWAP’s Side Publications series:

For more information on the UN World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) or the UN World Water Development Report: Water in a Changing World (2009), please visit us at our website: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap

Birdsall Dreiss Lecture With the IAH

The Water Panel is pleased to announce that it is co-hosting this year’s Birdsall Dreiss Lecture with the IAH.  This year’s lecture is titled: Understanding Solute Transport in Extremely Heterogenous Porous Media and will be given by Dr. Chunmiao Zheng, Professor of hydrogeology at University of Alabama.  The presentation will be given on Wednesday 11th November 2009, 6 to 8 pm, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway Campus, Tower Building (CB02), 15 Broadway Street Level 4 (Tower entrance level), Room 411 (CB02.04.11) – see map on our events page.

Drinks and nibbles will be available

The abstract for the presentation, which is available on the information flier,  is:

Field studies at well-instrumented sites have played a pre-eminent role in our efforts to better understand and predict contaminant transport in geologic media. In particular, field tracer tests have provided new insights and extensive data sets essential to development and testing of transport theories and mathematical models. In addition to the investigation at field site at the Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, much recent research on contaminant transport in heterogeneous media has been motivated by findings at the MADE site. In particular, results from field investigations have suggested the existence of small- scale preferential flow paths and relative flow barriers, which together exert a dominating control on contaminant transport and remediation. This presentation will provide an overview of the field campaigns at the MADE site over the past 25 years and discuss how the findings from these field studies have inspired various theories and models to accommodate the non-ideal transport observed in the field. The MADE site has proven to be a valuable natural observatory where continuing research efforts will lead to a stronger theoretical framework and practical tools for modelling solute transport and evaluating remedial measures in extremely heterogeneous aquifers.