OPTIMISING ROAD NETWORKS THROUGH ASSET ASSESSMENT

Road assets such as bridges and culverts are vital to keeping Australia moving, from ensuring products reach supermarket shelves to connecting families with loved ones. However these assets, like all infrastructure, carry an expiry date due to ageing and weather events, and need regular review and maintenance.

Significant assets, such as bridges, need consistent assessment – however for councils, sourcing and using external engineering consultants to do this is costly and time consuming.

Because of this, assets can be left to age; increasing the likelihood of an accident, and the asset needing to be rebuilt – instead of the sustainable option of maintaining it for years to come.

The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator’s (NHVR) Strategic Local Government Asset Assessment Project (SLGAAP) provides funding for external engineering consultants to provide a consistent assessment of these types of assets in local council areas.

The SLGAAP aims to bridge the information gap for councils where the capability of the asset may have been unknown, and heavy vehicle access was limited.

Engineering reports detail the assessment results and support councils in making more efficient, safe and productive access decisions.

The Federal Government provided initial funding of $7.96 million in 2019 for Phase One of the project, with the SLGAAP receiving an additional $12 million to extend the project until 2024.

To date, the SLGAAP has completed 465 asset assessments across 74 councils nationwide.

WHAT IS THE SLGAAP DELIVERING?

Undertaking heavy vehicle assessments of bridges and culverts is a key deliverable for the SLGAAP. In a recent NHVR survey, one of the main concerns for road managers was making heavy vehicle access decisions when the route includes unknown or ageing road assets.

Chief Structural Engineer at the NHVR, Dr Neal Lake, explains that while an asset assessment is important in deciding an asset’s ability to carry certain vehicle loads safely, other inputs are needed to form an entire picture of an asset’s condition.

“Assessments of assets are an important consideration when determining the capability of bridges and culverts, however, aspects such as condition of the asset, historical use patterns and realistic site-specific considerations are also important in access decision-making,” Dr Lake said.

“Over time, the type of heavy vehicles used has changed considerably in an attempt to optimise freight movements, and the gross vehicle mass is no longer an appropriate measure of the maximum capability of a bridge.”

Dr Lake said that the spread of weight across multiple axles at varying spacing must be considered and optimised to allow bridges to carry higher vehicle masses to meet the growing freight task. In the past, the current bridge formula was used to optimise Performance Based Standards (PBS) vehicles, accounting for axle masses and spread of axles, however, the bridge formula has limited scope to tap into any reserves in bridge capability over and above what the bridge formula was designed to reflect.

“Minor changes to bridge capability estimates can make a major difference to heavy vehicle access outcomes. This is why we are committed to providing tools and training for road managers to better understand their assets and enable them to make fast and accurate heavy vehicle access assessments that take into account the true capability of an asset,” Dr Lake said.

Dr Lake explained that, in Phase Two of the SLGAAP, the concept of ‘bridge families’ will be introduced; which is where similar families of assets that have detailed assessments can provide a basis to better estimate bridge capability for assets that have not yet been assessed.

“This will be particularly helpful where there is limited asset data or when the original design drawings are lost or destroyed,” Dr Lake said.

Phase Two of the SLGAAP will focus on:

STRATEGIC ROUTES AND ASSETS ∞ Identifying assets on key routes for whole-of-journey network improvement

ASSET ASSESSMENTS ∞ Undertaking targeted asset assessments, from those nominated by local councils

BRIDGE FAMILIES ∞ Developing a framework for ‘bridge family’ assessments, where

‘like’ assets are used to support decision-making

CAPABILITY UPLIFT ∞ Further development of resources for road managers, including frameworks and methodologies to understand bridge capability and make streamlined access decisions ∞ Delivering additional road manager education and training, particularly around sourcing bridge capability assessments, understanding and accounting for plausibility gaps and holistic decision-making that considers risk

SYSTEMS AND TOOLS ∞ Increasing functionality in the centralised asset information system in the NHVR Portal, within the

Asset Module ∞ A staged release of the Asset Rapid

Assessment Tool, a self-serve tool for preparing fast and accurate

Tier 1 vehicle comparison asset assessments in the NHVR Portal

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BEING INVOLVED?

The SLGAAP aims to deliver several benefits for local government road managers, including: ∞ Increased road asset data, with key information publicly available to inform route planning for both road managers and operators ∞ Improved understanding of asset capability to inform streamlined heavy vehicle access decisionmaking across a range of vehicle configurations ∞ Improved confidence in asset assessments and interpreting engineering reports ∞ Optimised local government network access and connection to state routes, providing productivity and safety outcomes ∞ Identification of assets for remediation or replacement in a national Annual Bridge

Strengthening Report

HOW CAN I NOMINATE ASSETS FOR AN ASSESSMENT?

Councils will be invited to nominate assets for assessment at multiple stages during the three-year delivery of Phase Two, and are encouraged to register their interest in the project by visiting the NHVR website. If a council’s nominated asset is selected, the assessment is funded under the SLGAAP and there is no additional monetary contribution.

The council will be required to participate in collaborative meetings with the SLGAAP team and the appointed engineering supplier, including onboarding, progress and post-assessment sessions.

WHAT IS THE ASSET RAPID ASSESSMENT TOOL, AND HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE IN THE EARLY RELEASE?

For many local governments, assessments are often undertaken by engineering providers and cost considerations may limit the number of assessments possible in a given period.

Time, cost and availability of appropriate information make individual detailed engineering assessments of every council asset unachievable.

To manage the volume of assets, the SLGAAP is developing an Asset Rapid Assessment Tool (ARAT) that will provide self-serve functionality for Tier 1 assessments to local government road managers.

After developing and testing the prototype in 2021, a staged release is planned for 2022-2023. Coupling the ARAT with ‘bridge family’ research will provide a solid basis for understanding bridge capability across the network and facilitating streamlined access decision-making.

RECENT CASE STUDIES

The SLGAAP is already helping councils to accurately assess their assets and keep communities safe. Coastal New South Wales region, Bega Valley Shire Council, worked with the SLGAAP to gather an assessment report for the region, providing information to help nominate Meringola Gully Bridge for renewal to the New South Wales Government's Fixing Country Bridges program.

Bega Valley Shire Council Recreation Assets Coordinator, Richard Cunningham, said, “The level of service provided by the original timber bridge could not be improved; therefore, the report provided the necessary information to demonstrate the need to renew the bridge, which has now been completed.

“The revised assessment for Candelo Creek Bridge, West Kameruka Road, was timely and provided an alternate route for heavy vehicles due to a load limit being imposed on the nearby Mozilla Road caused by embankment instability.

“Previously, special purpose vehicles such as all-terrain cranes were subjected to speed restrictions due to uncertainties in capacity. These restrictions have now been confirmed as unnecessary.”

Mr Cunningham also said that the assessments provided Council with the confidence to allow heavy vehicle access on the network, where previously no reliable assessment data was available.

“Where substandard results have been received, the assessment work completed will allow traffic to be managed safely in the short term while supporting the case for renewal and upgrade in the longer term.”

Glenelg Shire Council (GSC) in South Australia was nominated through the SLGAAP to receive funded engineering reports and Asset Improvement Reports, since many of the region’s assets were of an unknown capacity and design.

GSC Team Leader Design and Assets, Ricky Luke, said, “The reports have allowed GSC to better understand the assets and focus our funds towards structures that will benefit the most from repairs and strengthening. GSC has now budgeted for works in the 2022-23 financial year to address the most urgent issues. “This initiative has certainly helped GSC to improve our knowledge of our assets and how heavy vehicles impact them.”

“This initiative has certainly helped GSC to improve our knowledge of our assets and how heavy vehicles impact them.”

Local governments can register their BOX interest in the project by visiting:Local governments can register their interest in the project by visiting: www.nhvr.engagementhub.com.au/ www.nhvr.engagementhub.com.au/slgaap-future-rounds slgaap-future-rounds Sign up for testing or being a part of the early product release in the NHVR Portal: www.nhvr.engagementhub.com.au/slgaap-early-arat

Sign up for testing or being a part of the early product release in the NHVR Portal: www.nhvr.engagementhub.com. au/slgaap-early-arat View more details on the nomination process here: below next to box)

View more details on the nomination BOX process here:

Australia’s tourism hotspot PIONEERING SMART CITY innovation

by Holly Tancredi, Assistant Editor, Council Magazine

Hillcrest Christian college students, City of Gold Coast employees and the Australian Computer Society members deploy a water quality environmental sensor in a joint initiative. Image: City of Gold Coast.

A classic family holiday destination, quintessential golden Australian beaches and crystal blue waves is usually the imagery the Gold Coast evokes for many. But for those in the local government space, the region is becoming known for something a bit different; its adaptation of digital technology. City of Gold Coast continues to set the standard for smart city innovation, with Tanya Lipus, Executive Coordinator for the Council’s Smart City initiatives, sharing her unique insight at this year’s Smart Cities 2022 event.

In recent years, the City of Gold Coast has focused on creating a smart and connected city to adapt, change and account for high resident expectations – while leading the way in Australia's future smart technology endeavours.

The creation and focus of the Council’s adaptive digital city program and its significant collaborations are set to digitally transform the City and benefit the community.

The City is currently aiming to double the connections on its IoT network, and continue to create and connect services such as Wi-Fi points, salinity monitors, and safety mechanisms to its fibre optic network, which is the largest council-run network in the country.

With a new smart roadmap being approved, the Council will continue to create innovative digital technologies that utilise data, and use its myriad of partnerships to better support the community.

SHARING THE SUNSHINE STATE’S VALUED EXPERIENCE

Executive Coordinator of City of Gold Coast’s Smart City team, Tanya Lipus, spoke during Council’s Smart Cities 2022 event panel, ‘Digital Connectivity’.

Boasting 18 years of experience within local government, Ms Lipus has a clear understanding on how councils can embrace digitisation for the benefit of their community and future.

Smart Cities 2022 brought together local government leaders who have pioneered technologies, to share and exchange information to work on the critical challenges facing Australian smart cities and community sectors. The free summit featured three unique panels across 10-12 May.

Ms Lipus has worked within the Council’s team since the beginning of its Digital City Program in 2016. The program was then restructured into the City Economy Branch in 2021 and rebranded to Smart City.

Ms Lipus also developed and pioneered the Council’s Smart City Roadmap.

During her presentation, Ms Lipus explained that understanding and utilising technology, data and people are the goals for the Gold Coast’s smart city initiatives.

“Technology doesn't necessarily solve a challenge without you really understanding the foundation of what the actual problem is you're trying to solve,” Ms Lipus said.

MAPPING THE FUTURE

Ms Lipus developed the Smart City Roadmap in November 2021, and it was endorsed by Council in March 2022.

The Roadmap, a two year strategic plan, supports longterm goals for digitising the City, as well as a six month, simultaneous focus on presenting a cohesive, connected Smart City message to the wider community.

For the small Smart City team of five, expanding project partners allowed them to have a wider scope of projects that could be completed.

The Roadmap’s three main strategies form guidelines for the future of the Gold Coast; showcasing how Council can progress its community to be better connected on a local and global level, and be fully supported by smart technologies and partnerships.

The Smart City Roadmap’s key strategic goals are: ∞ Increasing the use of the City’s IoT network ∞ Facilitating the use of data in a meaningful way ∞ Connecting locally, nationally, and globally

CONNECTING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

Furthering on the smart initiatives, there has been a plethora of uses across the region to come from the City’s 864-core carrier-grade fibre optic network.

The network, installed across the council area, has become an important component of Gold Coast’s smart city outlook and supports the largest free Wi-Fi network in the country.

The Gold Coast’s optical fibre ring has several interface points along the region’s Light Rail corridor, with multiple telecommunications equipment rooms, fibre access nodes and access joints, including a total of 406 Wi-Fi access points.

The network also allows Council to save $1 million on telecommunication costs as it is able to offer broadband powered by the fibre optic network to carrier and wholesale telecommunications companies.

Services provided by the fibre cable include: ∞ The largest area of free public Wi-Fi in Australia, provided through a secure connection ∞ Dark Fibre services offering some of the fastest internet speeds in Australia under a carrier licence agreement granted by the Australian Communications and

Media Authority ∞ Managed Services (currently up to 10Gbps Metro Ethernet) ∞ Metro Ethernet is an Ethernet transport network that provides point-to-point or multipoint connectivity services over the Gold Coast metropolitan area network ∞ Asset Leasing Agreement with telecommunications carriers for telecommunications facilities (for example, mobile phone towers and associated infrastructure) on

Council-owned or controlled land

UNIFYING THE DIGITAL APPROACH

The Gold Coast also boasts its own open data platform, and IoT network , based on LoRaWAN® technology. LoRaWAN®, which is a low-power wide-area network protocol, has a myriad of benefits such as lower power needs, stronger indoor presence and deep penetrations for multi-floor buildings by use of geolocations, as well as stronger bandwidths and ranges than what can be provided by standard cellular and Wi-Fi.

The IoT network provides a unified, cohesive way of connecting devices through a cloud system which extracts and utilises data, whilst simultaneously creating a more secure network for users.

Through its IoT network Council can further support not only its own projects, but offer gateway connections to partners and collaborators. "We have around 5500 devices on the network, and that's just happened in the last 12 months, and then we're expecting that to double over the next 12 months,” Ms Lipus said.

“Our ultimate goal is to increase the devices on the network, but really, increasing the number of use cases that we have on the network as well, in addition to building the skills and capability around IoT and educating people about the IoT capability – and the benefit that that can bring to councils.”

Building and maintaining the City’s LoRaWAN®-based network cost less than $1.5 million over a five year period, with Ms Lipus explaining there was a focus on finding market partners to turn the initial financial cost into an long-term economic benefit through the commercialisation of the network.

One of the City of Gold Coast’s smart water meters in action. Image: City of Gold Coast.

Ms Lipus’ IoT team currently works with the National Narrow Band Network Communications Company in deploying and managing the IoT network.

The partnership is working on building a commercial strategy and intends to launch the network commercially in late 2022, which will open it up for local universities and industries to utilise.

DIGITAL DECISIONS IN ACTION

To prove the usefulness and relevance of the IoT network, Ms Lipus explained how smart water meters have been implemented using the Council’s IoT network, to detect thousands of leaks that would have otherwise wasted valuable water.

“Across the Gold Coast, there's about 180,000 water meters. What we are doing is collaborating with our water and waste directorate in working with our top 5-10,000 commercial customers in terms of water consumption.

“There's about 4500 smart water meters deployed at the moment, and what we're getting is real-time water consumption. The biggest benefit from this particular project over the last 12 months is the fact that we've been able to identify leaks really early and save Council and the customer quite a bit of money through early leak detection.”

The Council and its smart meters have detected over 11,000 leaks since October 2020.

“Being that we own our own water infrastructure, we could see the return on investment, instead of expanding another system like SCADA, which is typically a little bit more expensive,” Ms Lipus said.

“We came to a position that we wanted an enterprise version of a network where we could reliably transmit data for some of our larger use cases.”

Other smart technologies being utilised under the IoT network include: ∞ Conversion of school speed signs from 2/3G to the City’s

IoT network to improve safety and reduce cellular costs ∞ Trial public bin fullness level monitoring with 1200 bin sensors from 2023-24 onwards ∞ Salinity monitors with sensors to improve longevity of sewerage networks ∞ Manhole cover movements to reduce road and pedestrian hazards ∞ Pressure Reduction Valve (PRV) monitoring to improve early detection of faults and pressure issues ∞ LoRaWAN® parking sensors ∞ People counters in areas to identify utilisation of assets

NETWORKING WITH COLLABORATORS

The aim of digital partnerships is not only to have advantageous digital technology, but expand the use outwards to external collaborators to find and solve problems for the City.

Partners for one of the IoT projects in the City include the Australian Computer Society and Hillcrest Christian College, a joint project conducted through the State Government-funded ICT Gateway to Industry School Program (ICT GISP). By offering the use of the City’s IoT network, Hillcrest Christian college deployed a water quality environmental sensor.

Through the monitoring of the pond, and the creation of digital solutions to improve water quality and biodiversity, students will be learning an array of concepts found in the Digital Technologies curriculum. The data obtained from the project can also be used in other subjects like Mathematics and Science.

The Council is also currently working with Bond University, where it funds a PhD student that looks specifically at predictive modelling around daily visitor patterns to the Gold Coast.

Another partnership is also in progress with the CSIRO to deploy new weather stations and sensors across the coast, which could potentially feed into its data platform. This would enable a use of machine learning and predictive analysis, specifically around microclimate weather patterns into the future.

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DATA

To further utilise insight streams, and facilitate the use of third-party data for the Council, it holds contracts with Visa and DSpark gaining access to aggregated and anonymised mobility and expenditure data, for evaluating things like events and subsequent investments, which can be converted into useful insights.

“The really rich data sets can be used to work with our external entities, like Destination Gold Coast and Major Events Gold Coast to analyse events and then make decisions on how we make investments in those certain areas as well,” Ms Lipus said.

The City of Gold Coast recently held a concert for musician Amy Shark at its cultural precinct, where Ms Lipus could gather data on the event’s foot traffic and visitor numbers across the sector, over multiple weekends.

The data showed a 55 per cent increase in visitors during the event, compared to previous weekends, which Ms Lipus used to discuss and justify the work with councillors.

The data highlighted how many visitors the City event had and where they came from, improving planning for future events and helping the Council to advocate for further funding.

“We're able to identify, who's a visitor, who's a worker and who's a resident within a particular zone,” Ms Lipus said.

“If it's just a local event or if it attracts people from out of region as well, and that then also links to the funding that some of our local organisations get from the State Government”

A WIDER COMMUNITY FOCUS

Council partnerships don’t have to necessarily be just with industry leaders, but can also involve the community –expanding the City’s vision outward, rather than from a singular internal focus.

“Predominantly, we've been very internally focused over the last couple of years, so we are really keen to start shifting our focus to how we're partnering externally,” Ms Lipus said.

“Our goal over the next two to three years is really starting to widen our scope and start working with our community a little bit better.

“We want to work with a range of stakeholders, schools, universities, but also local industry partners as well.

“We're relying on having really great relationships across the organisation, but our team is responsible for delivering and promoting one cohesive smart city message to the wider community, which we will see more of over the next six months.

“My advice to other councils is that things aren't going to happen overnight in terms of project implementation and outcomes for smart city projects. Be mindful that it does take time and to stick with it.

“It's an evolutionary process.”

Register for free to watch the presentation at Smart Cities 2022 on-demand, by visiting smart-cities.com.au