School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Annual Report 2013 Never Stand Still
Faculty of Engineering
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
©2013 School of Civil and Environmental Engineering UNSW AUSTRALIA 2052 Address School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (H20) The University of New South Wales UNSW SYDNEY NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA Enquiries T +61 (0)2 9385 5033 F +61 (0)2 9385 6139 E Cven.enquiries@unsw.edu.au W http://www.civeng.unsw.edu.au/ Project Coordinator & Editor Mary O’Connell With thanks to providers of text, statistics, stories and images, in particular Julijana Baric, Anna Blacka, Sylvia Brohl, Kate Brown, Irene Calaizis, Anthony Dever, Kurt Douglas, Josh Farr, Mike Gal, Kristy Guia, Lam Ho, Coral Johnson, Maria Lee, Bill Peirson, Tamara Rouse and Tricia Tesoriero. Graphic Design Heléna Brusic´ UNSW P3 Design Studio www.p3.unsw.edu.au Ref: 55656 Photography Cover: Emeritus Professor Mike Gal Professional photography: Emeritus Professor Mike Gal Grateful thanks also to Kurt Douglas Cricos Provider Number: 00098G
OOAbout Us............................................. 4 OOMessage from HoS ............................ 6 OOManagement Team............................. 7 OOARC Grants......................................... 8 OOIndustry Research Forum.................... 9 OOGrowing School................................... 10 OOTeaching Initiative Grants.................... 11 OO CIRI..................................................... 12 OO SEI....................................................... 13 OOCVEN welcomes SAGE....................... 14
OOAcademic Staff 2013.......................... 16 OOARC Funded Researchers.................. 19 OOPromotions and Farewell..................... 19 OOBusiness Manager Report ................. 20 OOProfessional Staff ................................ 21 OOOther Academic Staff ......................... 22 OOAwards and Prizes.............................. 23 OOVale..................................................... 24
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THE BIG PICTURE
15
OUR PEOPLE
25
OUR RESEARCH
OOTeaching & Learning .......................... 46 OOSchool Teaching Initiatives.................. 48 OOTeaching Initiatives Postgrad Coursework......................................... 50 OOPostgraduate Coursework / Leighton. 51 OOCEVSOC / Year 1 camp...................... 52 OODeans Awards / Student Prizes.......... 54 OOYear 4 Dinner....................................... 56
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OUR TEACHING
OOIAC Committee ................................... 58 OOExternal Relations Report ................. 60 OOIndustry Partners and Supporters...... 62 OOAlumni................................................. 62 OOYear 10 Work Experience.................... 63 OOMaths Prize List................................... 64
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OOACCARNSI.......................................... 66 OOCIES.................................................... 67 OOCWI..................................................... 72 OOrCITI.................................................... 74 OOWRC.................................................... 76
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OOResearch Management Report........... 26 OOARC Grants......................................... 28 OOSAGE Research.................................. 30 OOResearch Grants Funding................... 31 OOWorkplace Safety Committee.............. 37 OOCERSA................................................ 38 OOCVEN Research Students................... 39 OOPhD Graduates 2013.......................... 44
INDUSTRY/COMMUNITY
OUR CENTRES
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About Us The School of Civil & Environmental Engineering is the largest and most successful School of its kind in Australasia and is ranked in the top 20 in the world (QS World University Rankings 2012-2014). We are the largest School in the UNSW Faculty of Engineering, itself the pre-eminent centre for engineering studies and research in Australia, and the first University of choice for NSW’s top students. From our foundation in 1949, the School has pursued excellence and innovation in education and research. Our alumni are to be found as leaders and decision makers in industry, government and the community. With over 2,300 current students, we play a leading role in the delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs -with a focus on sustainability as well as core engineering knowledge, preparing our students to confidently face the challenges of contemporary global society. We believe that civil and environmental engineers are uniquely placed to understand, meet and solve those challenges.
School Statistics 2013
4
Academic Staff
45
Professional & Technical Staff (School)
27
Research Centre Academic Staff
70
Postgraduate Research Students
195
Postgraduate Coursework Students
519
Undergraduates
1608
Equivalent Full-time Students (EFTSU)
1595
Doctoral Graduates
20
Postgraduate Coursework Graduates
243
BE Graduates
364
Grant Funding
15.91 mil
Research Publications Refereed
513
Recurrent Income
16.6 mil
2013 CVEN ANNUAL REPORT
We are at the forefront of fundamental and applied research across the breadth of civil and environmental engineering with three internationally acclaimed research centres – in infrastructure (CIES), water (WRC) and transport (rCITI). Our academic staff are recognised world leaders in their fields, supported by over 70 full time researchers. Each year we work with or on behalf of over 100 industry and government organisations on specific industry related projects and have won millions of dollars in federal funds in order to pursue investigations into issues of national importance. We continue to forge new links with industry and community partners to ensure a continuing real-world focus for both our teaching and our research.
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Message from HoS
Head of School: Professor Stephen James Foster
As you will see from this Report, the School has had yet another stellar year in teaching, in research and in community outreach. We are once again ranked in the global top 20 by QS World University Rankings. Starting the year with the Industry Innovation Research Forum, we then saw the introduction of the Sustainable Engineering Research (SER) and Construction Innovation and Research Initiatives (CIRI). These two new initiatives combine with our strengths in Transport Engineering through rCITI, in Infrastructure Engineering through CIES, in Geospatial Engineering through the SAGE group, and in Water and Environmental Engineering through WRC, CWI and ACCARNSI. Our Centres, Initiatives and discipline groups provide focal points for our researchers to lead in their fields and contribute to the efforts across the world in innovative Civil, Environmental and Geospatial Engineering. Our strengths in research are evidenced by our successes in grants funding with nearly $16 million
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awarded in 2013 to our research centres, including more than $4 million won in prestigious national research grants from the Australian Research Council. While we are naturally proud of our research grant successes, it is only one part of our story. As engineers ourselves we see it as vital that this research impacts both within the framework of our teaching and with delivery of quality outcomes to the community through the development of new codes and standards, both nationally and internationally. With our excellence in research we ensure that our teaching delivers not just the latest developments in engineering models and methods but those that will be utilised by our next generation of leaders - the tools not now available in the profession, but ones which our graduates will use to push the boundaries of national innovation and leadership. To this end, and from strong foundations in mathematics and core engineering sciences, our courses - both undergraduate and graduate - are designed to be at the
THE BIG PICTURE
cutting edge of the profession and to produce leaders and thinkers. The year 2013 saw the seamless union between the Schools of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Surveying and Geospatial Engineering. I look forward with quite some excitement towards the new pathways opened up by this closer collaboration, and with keen anticipation of the new areas in teaching and research in infrastructure engineering and the environment that this partnership will lead to. This Report provides a small insight only into our year and into the quality and resourcefulness of our staff; academic, research, professional and technical. A strong School does not happen without the hard efforts and collegiality of its staff; I thank them all for their endeavours which have led to the wonderful achievements reported within, and for their never failing support throughout the year. ď Ź
Management Team
School Management Committee: l- r Chris Rizos, Ron Cox, Bill Peirson, Chongmin Song, Travis Waller, Stephen Foster (HoS), Mario Attard, Anthony Dever, Betty Wong, Brian Uy, Steve Davis. Absent: Martin Andersen, Julijana Baric, David Carmichael, Nasser Khalili, Richard Stuetz
The School Management Committee represents the peak decision-making body in the School with all key decisions relating to finances, staffing and overall direction debated and ratified by this group. The SMC is chaired by the Head of School and is made up of the Chairs of the School’s major committees, the Associate Head (Academic), the School Business Manager, the Student Admin Manager, the Directors of UNSW Centres based within the School, and other discipline group leaders.
The School Executive Committee meets monthly to provide advice to the Head of School on key and current issues on matters of strategy, planning and policy directions for the School.
School Executive Committee Members Stephen James Foster, HoS Mario Attard David Carmichael Anthony Dever Nasser Khalili Richard Stuetz Travis Waller ď Ź
2013 School Management Committee Members Head of School: Professor Stephen James Foster Associate Head (Academic): Associate Professor Mario Attard
School Committee Chairs Research Management Committee (RMC): Evans and Peck Professor S Travis Waller Computing, IT and Educational Technology Committee (CC): Professor Chongmin Song Teaching and Learning Committee (TLC): Dr Steven Davis Technical Services Committee (TSC): Professor Richard Stuetz External Relations Committee (ERC): Associate Professor Ron Cox
School Centre Directors rCITI: Evans and Peck Professor S Travis Waller WRC: Associate Professor William Peirson and Professor Richard Stuetz CIES: Professor Brian Uy CWI: Dr Martin Andersen ACCARNSI: Associate Professor Ron Cox Discipline Group Leaders: Professors David Carmichael; Nasser Khalili; Chris Rizos Business Manager: Anthony Dever Student Centre Manager: Julijana Baric
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Australian Research Council Grants – A Stellar Year
The School has had a stellar year for ARC Grants, winning a total of $4.3 Million in 5 Linkage, 4 Discovery and 1 Early Career Researcher Grants announced in 2013. In particular, the funding of over $2.1M in Linkage Project grants made CVEN the strongest performing School at UNSW, itself the highest performing university in the state. The School was successful in six Linkage projects, with one being in collaboration with the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES). The projects involve research into improvements in water treatment systems, streamflow prediction systems, innovative pre-treatment strategies for remote community groundwater supplies; transport planning methodologies; and multi-criteria optimisation of car share systems. The four successful Discovery Projects totalling $1.9M, which were announced in November include a paradigm shift in the way flood forecasting, warning and evacuation
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proceeds; innovative connections to promote the reduction and reuse of structural steel in steel-concrete framed buildings; closing the knowledge gap of how shallow foundations perform in variably saturated soils; and assessing the safety of large spatially curved-complex structures for design and rehabilitation purposes. Dr Huu-Tai Thai was awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA $333K) – his work will evaluate the system reliability of concrete-filled steel tubular frames designed by advanced analysis. ‘This year has seen another series of great results for the School and our research staff and industry linkage partners are to be congratulated,’ said Professor Stephen Foster, Head of School. ‘The School has a proven track record of effective partnership with industry as educators and researchers, and we look forward to continuing to build on these relationships.’
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UNSW Goldstar Grants also went to Mario Attard for ‘Orthotropic Hyperelastic Modelling for the Analysis of Composites’; and Linlin Ge for ‘Mapping decadal change of the Australian landscape from space’. Lauren Gardner was a co-CI on a Goldstar Grant with Raina MacIntyre and Anita Heywood in the School of Medicine on ‘Models to inform prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases in real time’. For further details on the Projects please see the Research Section of this Report. L-R: Dr Vinayak Dixit, A/Prof Ian Turner, Prof Nasser Khalili, Prof David Waite, Dr Lucy Marshall, Dr Martin Andersen, Prof Travis Waller (obscured), Prof Yong Lin Pi, Prof Ashish Sharma, Dr Lauren Gardner, A/Prof Arnaud Castel, A/Prof Mario Attard, Dr Huu-Tai Thai, Prof Richard Stuetz, Dr Wei Gao, Dr Taha H Rashidi, Prof Brian Uy.
Innovative Industry Research Forum
In February the School hosted an Innovative Industry Research Forum at UNSW’s CBD campus in O’Connell St. The Forum provided an opportunity for the School to share its most innovative research with industry, as well as increase our own understanding of current industry issues and needs – through facilitated conversations and discussions with industry practitioners. Over fifty industry representatives from thirty engineering organisations from the public and private sectors attended the Forum, meeting with senior School academics and listening to presentations from academic leaders in the fields of engineering construction and management, geotechnical engineering, structures, sustainability, transport and water engineering. The Forum was insightfully introduced by Ian McIntyre, Principal of Evans & Peck, and Chair of the School’s Industry Advisory Committee (IAC).
Other industry colleagues chaired sessions including Angus Gordon, Principal Consultant in coastal zone management and planning, Col Nicholson, General Manager, Operations at Sydney Water, and Gareth Swarbrick, Principal, Pells Sullivan Meynink. The sheer breadth and depth of research at the School impressed industry participants and the disciplinespecific panel discussions between industry and academics were of mutual benefit. The Forum is part of the School’s vision of better communication between the leaders of industry practice and those at the cutting edge of engineering research and education. As Head of School, Professor Stephen Foster noted, “The importance we place on the movement of our research to practice cannot be overstated. It is fundamental to whom we are, and what the School is about.”
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Growing School CVEN Students 1800 Total EFTSU
1600
BE
Student Numbers
1400
Postgrad Coursework
1200
Higher Degrees
1000 800 600 400 200 0
Year
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
1172
1312
1410
1595
STUDENT NUMBERS
CVEN Graduates
Total 450EFTSU BE
985
1307
1430
1509
1608
Postgrad Coursework 375 Postgrad coursework
398
426
510
519
BE All Higher Degrees
65
90
105
124
195
250 Degrees Higher
15
19
16
14
20
Postgrad coursework 200
128
192
198
309
243
BE 150 All
122
142
201
382
364
30.5
28
32
36
45
Technical ( School)
12
9
12
12
12
0 Administration
10
9
12
12
15
41
39.2
35.44
400
1173 Higher Degrees
Student Numbers
350 300
GRADUATES
STAFF (Full-time, tenured) 100
Academic 50
(School)
STUDENT/STAFF RATIO EFTSU/ACADEMIC
32.3 Year 39.01
RESEARCH GROWTH Publications CVEN Research Income 50 45 40 Saff Numbers
35
Staff 248
267 357 368 513 13.6M 15.1M 17.4M 15.6M 15.9M
Academic Technical (School) Administration (School)
30
While most School undergraduate lectures by academic staff must now be given in the larger UNSW teaching theatres, the student to tutor ratio is kept at less than 1:20 to preserve quality teaching outcomes. Meanwhile since 2012, CEVSOC - the undergraduate student organisation - has organised a Year 1 weekend camp, where Year 3, 4 & 5 students support and mentor over a hundred first years - who are in their turn encouraged to build and support School community. The School has also seen a sharp rise in PhD student numbers in the last three years as we expand our research capacities, invest in major research infrastructure and equipment and build on our grant-winning successes. Our higher degree students are required to make a significant and original contribution to knowledge in their field of study. In the process they acquire advanced specialist research training and expert knowledge of the discipline in the international context. ď Ź
25 20 15 10 5 0 Year
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The School has experienced strong and continued growth in its undergraduate student population over the last seven years – at the same time as its ATAR has also risen. In 2013 the ATAR was 91.0 for entry to the BE Surveying, and BE Geoinformation systems, 92.05 for entry to the BE Civil engineering, 93.25 for BE Environmental engineering, and 95.9 for the BE Civil engineering with architecture.
THE BIG PICTURE
The School Teaching Initiative Grant Scheme (STIGS)
The School Teaching Initiative Grant Scheme (STIGS) was introduced in 2013 as a strategic investment to enable our teachers and the School to continue to provide the cutting edge of local, national and international teaching. In early 2013 five CVEN Teaching Initiatives grants were awarded to academic staff for the following five projects: Innovators: Dr Kurt Douglas and Prof Stephen Foster HSC Engineering Studies Resource Kit.
Innovator: Dr Carolin Birk Blended teaching delivery of Structural Dynamics – fourth year course – concurrent recording of lectures with extensive slides and more student-centred tutorial delivery. Innovator: Associate Professor Bill Peirson. Maintaining consistency and quality of printed materials across School postgraduate teaching programmes. Establish a centralised electronic database of all existing postgraduate teaching materials - edit and reformat to compact and appropriately branded hard copy.
Innovator: Associate Professor Linlin Ge Development and implementation of a new one week course for summer session – in satellite remote sensing and applications (SaReSA). Bringing together leading remote sensing scientists from the United States, Germany and Japan as guest lecturers, exploring multimedia teaching techniques and integrating extensive remote sensing teaching materials. Fuller details of these projects are in the Teaching Section of this report.
Innovators: Dr Steven Davis, Associate Professor Leonhard Bernold, Dr Johnson Shen. Improved online assessment of graphical and sketching problems for postgraduate courses – Project Planning & Control and Management of Risk.
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New Research Initiatives at the School CIRI - Construction Innovation and Research Initiative Construction is the world’s largest industry and its efficiency is of obvious importance. The UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering is a world resource centre for academic research in this field. The School’s Construction Innovation and Research Initiative (CIRI) is engaged in industrial research on major construction projects in the region and has research partnerships with some of the industry’s most successful organisations. Led by Professor David Carmichael the aims of the Construction Innovation and Research Initiative are to: OOtrain elite level professionals in the field through specially-designed undergraduate, Master’s and PhD programs in construction engineering and management
OOwork on theoretical and practical research projects that will advance the current practice of the construction industry OOcreate a culture of creative curiosity in a new generation of construction professionals OOoperate world-class research laboratories, including an automation laboratory, sustainable materials laboratory and sustainable design studio, and OOoffer independent expert consultancies to address critical issues in various areas, such as resource management and information technology in construction. CIRI undertakes basic and applied research in four broad areas:
Sustainable Construction Construction Automation Sustainable Materials Engineering and Construction Management CIRI’s success is underpinned by a first class group of faculty within the UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with crossdisciplinary competencies unique in present day Australia. http://www.engineering.unsw.edu.au/ civil-engineering/construction-innovation-and-research-initiative-ciri
L-R: Dr Steven Davis, Dr Ali Akbarnezhad, Dr Johnson Shen and Professor David Carmichael.
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THE BIG PICTURE
SEI - Sustainable Engineering Research Initiative In response to the challenges of climate change, financial uncertainty, urban population growth and endangered ecologies, a group of academic researchers and educators at the UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering have formed the Sustainable Engineering Research Initiative. Sustainability means living well, within the limits of a finite planet. There is abundant scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably. More than ever engineers need to find holistic and effective solutions to protect our vital life support systems and meet the social and economic needs of a growing human population at the same time. The big challenge is to find the right balance between social, environmental and economic sustainability. The aims of the Sustainable Engineering Initiative are to: OOexplore, research, define, assess and resolve issues of
sustainability in engineering problems, in particular the implications and implementation of sustainability concepts and practices for civil infrastructure – buildings, roads and transport, water supply, waste disposal – in the areas of planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance OOconsider the interactions between technical, ecological, social and economic systems and avoid shifting problems from one area to the other. This means adopting concepts such as life cycle thinking, industrial ecology and sustainable systems engineering as important elements in research, education and work practice OOlead awareness and practice of sustainability principles within the civil and environmental engineering community of students, researchers, government and industry practitioners
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OOlead industry into a sustainability direction and inform and support corporate sustainability initiatives, asserting that sustainability practices are not an added cost for engineering professionals, but a business opportunity. Led by Associate Professor Tommy Wiedmann, the SEI involves staff working across the School’s research genres including the Sustainability Assessment Program and other groups within the Water Research Centre, the Sustainable Construction Program, the Centre for Infrastructure and Safety (CIES), the Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI), and the Australian Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Settlements and Infrastructure (ACCARNSI) http://www.engineering.unsw.edu.au/ civil-engineering/sustainable-engineering-initiative-sei Contact: t.wiedmann@unsw.edu.au
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CVEN welcomes SAGE
In 2013, after more than 40 years as an independent school, the School of Surveying and Geospatial Engineering (SAGE) reunited with its alma mater, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CVEN). CVEN Head of School, Professor Stephen Foster, welcomed the SAGE team to the School. Bringing together the related disciplines of surveying/ geospatial and civil/environmental engineering within one School will facilitate interdisciplinary teaching and research activities relating to natural and engineered systems. As Prof Chris Rizos, research leader of SAGE, noted, the image of the surveyor on the road with the tripod has evolved significantly with huge advances in electronic instruments for survey applications, greater use of IT, and new career options. Nowadays surveyors provide critical engineering
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services for all construction, mining, land development, and mapping projects. They help shape our landscape and their services underpin a broad range of economic activities. In fact UNSW graduates are driving advances in high precision positioning infrastructure which underpins many construction, mining, precision agriculture machine automation activities, environmental applications and emergency services. There is currently a surveying skills shortage and many graduates receive numerous attractive job offers even while still undertaking their studies. According to a new report by BIS Shrapnel, Australia’s ambitious 2020 industry and infrastructure development goals are at risk if the growing shortage of surveyors and geospatial professionals is not addressed. CVEN can play an important role in
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recruiting and educating Australia’s future surveying and geospatial engineering professionals. Most SAGE academic, research and technical support staff joined the team at CVEN. Professor Andrew Dempster and the research staff and students associated with the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) joined the School of Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications. Image is of Professor Chris Rizos, Dr Binghao Li & Associate Professor Samsung Lim at work in the School. Other new academic staff from SAGE are A/Prof Linlin Ge, Dr Bruce Harvey, Dr Craig Roberts, A/Prof Jinling Wang, and Professional Officer Dr Yincai Zhou
OUR PEOPLE
CVEN Academics 2013 Acworth, R. Ian Director, Connected Waters Initiative Gary Johnston Professor of Water Management BSc Leeds, MSc PhD Birm, FGS Research Interests: Investigation of groundwater dynamics & hydrochemical processes in the coastal zone: Development of field instrumentation & analysis methods in groundwater studies: Electrical methods in the investigation of groundwater & salinity: Relationship between Palaeoclimate & dryland salinity.
Akbarnezhad, Ali Lecturer BE Amirkbar, Tehran, PhD NUS
Research Interests: Sustainable Construction: Sustainability Assessment: Information Modelling: Construction Technology: Non-Destructive Tests: Health Monitoring: Concrete Technology: Design for Deconstruction Andersen, Martin Senior Lecturer MSc in Engineering, PhD DTU, Denmark
Research Interests: Investigations of physical & geochemical processes at the surface water groundwater interface; groundwater dynamics in the coastal zone; reactive flow & transport modelling; developing methodologies for using heat as a tracer of groundwater flow; karst hydrology. Attard, Mario Associate Professor Associate Head – Academic Chair, Teaching & Learning Committee BE PhD MHEd UNSW, MIEAust, CPEng
Research Interests: Finite Strain Isotropic & Anisotropic Hyperelastic Modelling: Fracture in Concrete & Masonry: Crack Propagation due to Creep: Ductility of High Strength Concrete Columns: Buckling of Sandwich Columns: Lateral Buckling of Thin-Walled Beams.
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Bernold, Leonhard Associate Professor Dip Civ Eng, NIT, Switzerland: PhD Georgia IT, MBA St Gall, USA, MASCE Research Interests: Quantitative Assessment of (Equipment Operator) Skill. Real Time Automated Process Control in Construction: Development of prototype hardware tested & evaluated for their impact on safety, quality, productivity, & carbon. Engineering Education: Testing of constructivist teaching & learning, formative assessment, & engineering sketching considering personal learning preferences. Technology Adoption in Construction: Study of decision making & internal dissemination procedures of a new technology: Lunar Mining & Construction.
Birk, Carolin Lecturer BEng DEng Dresden
Research Interests: Numerical modelling of wave propagation in unbounded domains: Soil-structure interaction, fluid-structure interaction: Longitudinal railway trackstructure interaction: Artificial boundary conditions for diffusion: Fractional calculus.
Carmichael, D G Professor BE MEngSc USyd, PhD Cant, CPEng, FIEAust, MASC Research Interests: Management, systems applications of optimisation, synthesis: Identification & analysis: Contracts & disputes: Project delivery: Construction operations: Project management & management functional areas including risk, economics, finances, people resources & scope: Construction management: Problem solving & decision making. Castel, Arnaud Associate Professor BE, MEngSc, PhD Toulouse
Research Interests: Durability of construction materials - Steel corrosion in concrete, concrete pathologies, SCM’s: Concrete construction in chloride environment -Performance & service life design of reinforced/prestressed concrete affected by steel corrosion: Repair & Strengthening using CFRP - Failure analysis & modelling of CFRP strengthened beams including reinforcing steel corrosion. Cox, Ron Associate Professor Co-Chair, External Relations Convenor, ACCARNSI BE PhD UNSW, CPEng, FIEAust
Blenkinsopp, Christopher Lecturer MEng(Hons) Nottingham, PhD Southampton Research Interests: swash zone sediment transport & hydrodynamics: wave breaking: LIDAR measurements of coastal hydrodynamics: aeration & splash in breaking waves.
Research Interests: Climate change adaptation for settlements & infrastructure: Coastal engineering & coastal zone management: Stability, design & safety of coastal structures: Application of sand filled geocontainers in coastal protection: Environmental monitoring & modelling: Desalination plant brine disposal: Hydraulics of water & wastewater treatment plants: Flood hydraulics & floodplain management: Life safety, emergency warning & evacuation.
OUR PEOPLE
Davis, Steve Lecturer BE PhD UNSW
Research Interests: Stochastic Systems: Evolutionary Programming: Parallel Computing Applications to Civil Engineering Dixit, Vinayak Senior Lecturer MT Institute of Technology, Delhi, PhD University of Central Florida Research Interests: Behaviour under Risk & Uncertainty in Transportation Systems: Transportation Modelling & Simulation: Traffic Flow Theory: Traffic Safety: Workzone Management Strategies: Experimental Economics. Douglas, Kurt Pells Sullivan Meynink Senior Lecturer of Rock Mechanics, Co–Chair External Relations BE (Hons1)USyd, PhD UNSW My main interests lie in the field of rock mechanics. Predicting strengths of large-scale rock masses (hundreds of meters) continues to be a major challenge. I am attempting to improve our understanding using laboratory tests, field studies & numerical methods. I am also currently involved in an ARC & Industry sponsored project researching erosion of rock spillways & backward erosion of embankment dams.
Foster, Stephen Professor Director, CIES BE NSWIT, MEngSc PhD UNSW, MIEAustdf Research Interests: I research the behaviour of structural systems (buildings and bridges) constructed of reinforced and prestressed concrete. I’m particularly interested in bringing new and advanced materials technologies to the engineering of structures. My interests are in the use of high and ultrahigh performance concretes, fibre-reinforced concretes and geopolymer concretes and in use of carbon fibre technologies for strengthening and repair of structures and structural systems. I develop physical-mechanical models for use in advanced computational and numerical tools such as FEM and for their use in the study of behaviour of concrete structures that are subjected to extreme events such as overload, fire, impact and blast loading. Gao, Wei Senior Lecturer BE HDU, ME PhD Xidian, MIIAV, MAAS
Research Interests: Uncertain modelling & uncertain methods: Vehicle-bridge interaction dynamics: Wind and/or seismic induced random vibration: Train-rail-sleeper-foundationtunnel/bridge system: Stochastic nonlinear system: Vehicle dynamics & vehicle rollover: Structural optimization & control: Smart structures: Stability & reliability analysis. Gardner, Lauren Lecturer BS ArchE, MSE, PhD University of Texas at Austin Research Interests: Network modelling for multi-domain integrated systems: congestion pricing models accounting for uncertainty, the role of realtime information & adaptive pricing: Sustainability models integrating transportation & electricity systems: developing network-based optimization models to predict the role of global transport systems in the spread of contagious disease.
Ge, Linlin Lecturer Associate Professor BE, MSc Wuhan, PhD UNSW
Research Interests: I combine remote sensing with GPS & GIS to produce cost-effective & highly reliable maps. Integrating radar & optical remote sensing with GPS & GIS, we measure the subtle change on the surface of the Earth with minimum latency using data collected from satellite, airborne & UAV platforms. Hamed, Ehab Senior Lecturer BSc MSc PhD Technion
Research Interests: Viscoelasticity of concrete & composite materials, Creep buckling of concrete domes & shells, Strengthening of concrete & masonry structures with composite materials (FRP), Nonlinear dynamics of concrete structures. Harvey, Bruce Senior Lecturer BSurv (Hons 1), GradDip Higher Ed, PhD UNSW Research Interests: Least Squares analysis of surveying measurements is my main interest, but I also investigate alternative analysis methods & the latest measurement technologies. Are there better ways to analyse surveying measurements & can we improve Least Squares, L1 norm & topological grid searches? Hossein Rashidi, Taha Lecturer BSc MSc Sharif UT Tehran; PhD UI Chicago Research Interests: Travel Behaviour Analysis: Transportation Planning: Activity-Based Travel Demand Modeling: Housing Search & Land Use Modelling: Integrated LandUse & Transportation Models: Goods Movement Modelling: Microsimulation Modeling Methods for Urban Activities.
Johnson, Fiona Lecturer BE, PhD UNSW
Research Interests: statistical hydrology & modelling; climate change impacts on water resources systems; bias correction methods that can be applied to climate model simulations; models for design rainfalls & flooding; models for regionalisation of rainfall data, questions on stationarity of large to extreme rainfalls & the impacts of climate change on these events & the resulting implications for engineering design. Khalili, Nasser Professor Associate Dean, Research BSc Teh, MSc Birm, PhD UNSW Research Interests: Mechanics of unsaturated soils: Flow & deformation in double porosity media: Numerical methods applied to geotechnical engineering: Pavement engineering. Khan, Stuart Associate Professor BSc (Hons 1) USyd, PhD UNSW, MIEAust.
Research Interests: Advanced Water & Wastewater Treatment & Analysis: Trace Chemical Contaminants in Water: Chemical Risk Assessment: Probabilistic Chemical Exposure Assessment: Water Recycling & Seawater Desalination: Sustainability Assessment & Risk Assessment: Environmental Fate Modelling: Water Quality Impacts of Extreme Weather Conditions. Khoshghalb, Arman Lecturer BEng, MEng, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, PhD UNSW
Lim, Samsung Associate Professor BA, MA (mathematics) Seoul, PhD U Texas at Austin
Research Interests: I conduct geospatial information science & research that allow us to improve the way we view, understand, design, plan, manage, analyse, interpret, & extract spatio-temporal information such as patterns & trends of geospatial data. I investigate spatial information extraction from lidar (known as light detection & ranging) & aerial/satellite data e.g. data segmentation & classification, digital elevation modelling, feature extraction, building edge detection, & change detection. Mariethoz, Gregoire Senior Lecturer MSc, MAS, PhD University of Neuchatel, Switzerland Research Interests: geostatistics applied to surface & subsurface problems, uncertainty modelling, stochastic hydrogeology, paleoclimate data analysis, high-order statistics, characterization of complex spatial structures, subsurface flow & transport modelling, inverse problems, hydrology, processing of remote sensing & climatic data, parallel computing. Moore, Stephen Senior Lecturer Chair, Teaching & Learning Committee BE UNSW, MEngSc Adel., CPEng, MIEAust Research Interests: Development of environmental material accounting techniques, such as Material Flux Analysis, for regional & corporate environmental management systems; Simulation & decision analysis applied to waste management systems.
Research Interests: large deformation analysis in geomechanics, advanced numerical methods in geomechanics, mechanics of unsaturated soils & coupled analysis of porous media.
OUR PEOPLE
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Peirson, William Associate Professor Director, Water Research Laboratory Co-Director, Water Research Centre BE BSc MEngSc PhD UNSW Bill is an international expert in Civil & Environmental Engineering fluid mechanics & undertakes specialist research in the fields of coastal engineering, air-sea & air-water interaction & exchange, fluvial hydraulics, estuarine processes & the hydraulics & mechanical behaviour of turbomachines. Rizos, Chris Professor BSurv (Hons), PhD UNSW
Research Interests: Investigate how geospatial technology such as GPS & digital mapping is used for science, & by society in general. Investigate the technology & applications of satellite-, wireless- & inertial-based sensors for high accuracy positioning. I am interested in positioning technologies, especially GNSS, & their applications across the whole spectrum of uses in Navigation (lowest accuracy) to Geodesy (highest accuracy). Roberts, Craig Senior Lecturer BSurv, University of South Australia, PhD UNSW Research Interests: I use satellite & ground based instruments to measure the geometrical positions of the natural & built environment for lots of allied professionals. I use GPS, lasers & imagery to provide high precision positioning products for engineers & scientists. I examine new & innovative forms of positioning infrastructure & investigate new ways to map the natural & built environment & how it changes over time. Russell, Adrian Associate Professor Chair, Technical Services BE, PhD UNSW, PGCert Bristol Research Interests: Unsaturated soils: Fibre reinforced soils: Particle crushing in granular media: In situ testing of soils: Constitutive modelling of soils: Wind turbine foundations.
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Shen, Johnson Xuesong Lecturer BEng, MSc Nanjing, PhD Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research interests: Constructionsurveying Integration & Automation -Construction machine control & guidance; automated field data collection; advanced computing & visualization; proactive quality control & safety assurance: Intelligent Resources Management in Construction - Real-time tracking of materials production, delivery & consumption; equipment modelling; environmental sensing & operations monitoring: Sustainable Development of Urban Underground Space -Trenchless techniques for underground tunnel/pipeline construction; utility surveying & as-built modelling; 3D underground information system: Data-driven Operations Modelling & Closed-loop Project Control -Integrating real-time operations data with construction simulation, estimating, planning & control. Song, Chongmin Professor Chair, Computing Services BE ME Tsinghua, DEng Tokyo Research Interests: Scaled Boundary Finite-Element Method: Dynamic Soil-Structure Interaction: Structural Dynamics & Earthquake Engineering: Wave Propagation: Fracture Mechanics: Elasto-PlasticDamage Constitutive Modelling: Finite Element Method, Boundary Element Method. Stuetz, Richard Professor Co-Director, Water Research Centre BSc, PhD UNSW Research Interests: On-line instrumentation for monitoring water & wastewater quality: Biological monitoring for process control: Biotreatment of odours & volatile emissions: Bioprocesses for water & wastewater treatment: Biodegradation of micropollutants.
Taiebat, Hossein Senior Lecturer PhD USyd
Research Interests: Caisson foundations: Vertically loaded anchors: Shallow foundations under combined loading: Numerical modelling & liquefaction analysis. Tangaramvong, Sawekchai (Ball) Lecturer BEng, Chulalongkorn, MEngSc, PhD UNSW, Grad Cert (Ed) RMIT Research interests: the development of advanced computational models & analyses of practically-motivated inelastic structures, also optimal design of new structures & cost-effective rehabilitation of damaged ones. I adopt the integrated (complementarity) mathematical programming & nonlinear engineering mechanics concept to map out the complete responses of structures in the presence of challenging yet important factors as elastoplastic strainsoftening materials, high-order geometric nonlinearity, limited ductility, nonassociativity, contact, high-impact loading & uncertainty. Turner, Ian Associate Professor BSc (Hons) USyd, MEnvEngSc UNSW, PhD USyd, MIEAust, MAGU Research Interests: Coastal Engineering & Coastal Management; Innovative coastal measurement & monitoring techniques; Sediment transport at the beachface; Modelling of coastline variability & change spanning storm, seasonal, annual & decadal time-scales; Assessment of coastline adjustment to a changing climate. Uy, Brian Professor & Director of CIES BE (Hons 1), PhD UNSW Research Interests: Composite steel-concrete structures, critical infrastructure protection systems, deconstruction techniques, rehabilitation & strengthening techniques, steel structures, structural health monitoring, structural systems, sustainable construction materials.
OUR PEOPLE
Valipour, Hamid Senior Lecturer BE, MEngSc, PhD UNSW
Research Interests: Structural Mechanics: Behaviour modelling of structural components & materials including reinforced concrete & steel, steel-concrete, timber & timber-concrete composite materials, membrane action in framed structures: Mechanics of Materials - Continuum mechanics, damage & fracture mechanics, theory of plasticity, quasi-brittle materials & localisation limiters: Earthquake Engineering -Dynamics response of structures subjected to impact & earthquake, ductile design of structure: Numerical modelling -Non-linear finite element modelling of structures, forcebased formulations of frame elements, 3D finite element modelling of reinforced concrete structures. Vandebona, Upali Senior Lecturer BSc (Eng) Ceylon, MEng AIT, PhD Monash
Research Interests: Modelling of Transport Systems: Development of simulation & animation models for light rail train systems & bus services. Facility Location: Environmental considerations related to transport facility location: Demand Modelling: Analysis of public awareness & attitudes related to transport systems: Air Transport: Intelligent Transport Systems: Signage systems. Waite, T David Scientia Professor Head of School BSc Tas, GradDip RMIT, MAppSc Monash, PhD MIT, FRACI Research Interests: Separation processes involving colloids & particles in water & wastewater treatment; redox chemistry at the solid-solution interface; photochemistry in aquatic systems; hydrogeochemistry; theoretical & experimental studies on the fate & effects of chemical pollutants; interactions between trace elements & microbiota in aquatic systems.
Waller, S Travis Evans & Peck Professor of Transport Innovation BSc Ohio State, MSc, PhD Northwestern Research Interests: Transportation network modelling, particularly systems characterized by dynamics, uncertainty & information; large-scale integrated transport optimization & planning. Specific applications or problem domains include Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA), routing algorithm development, network equilibrium, stochastic optimization, integrated demand/supply modelling, network design, adaptive equilibrium, system analysis of public-private partnerships, & bi-level optimization of transport networks. Wang, Jinling Associate Professor BSc, MSc Wuhan, PhD Curtin
Research Interests: Global Navigation Satellite Systems - GNSS (GPS, Glonass, Galileo, BeiDou SystemBDS) & Their Integration: Multi-Sensor Integration for Positioning, Mapping & Navigation: Statistical Theory & Its Applications in Positioning, Mapping & Navigation. Wiedmann, Tommy Associate Professor MSc, PhD Ulm
My main research question is how to achieve human wellbeing without increasing environmental impacts. My expertise is in integrated sustainability assessment & environmental footprint analysis. I develop & apply environmental input-output analysis as part of a holistic concept to life cycle assessment, industrial ecology & sustainable consumption & production research.
ARC Laureate Bradford, Mark ARC Laureate Fellow UNSW Scientia Professor BSc BE PhD USyd, DSc UNSW, CPEng, CEng, MASCE, FIEAust, MIStructE Research Interests: Structures subjected to elevated temperatures, curved members, arches, steel structures, composite steel-concrete structures, concrete structures, numerical methods, stability, viscoelastic effects, nondiscretisation techniques, design codes, structural retrofit.
ARC Future Fellows
Marshall, Lucy Senior Lecturer & ARC Future Fellow BE, MEngSc, PhD UNSW
Research Interests: I use computer models to simulate rainfall & runoff processes in catchments, working to improve hydrologic forecasts through improved catchment model structures & methods for model calibration & uncertainty assessment. I quantify new conceptualizations of hydrologic processes & develop methods for model diagnostics & uncertainty analysis (especially via Bayesian statistics & multimodel methods). Sharma, Ashish Professor ARC Future Fellow BE Roorkee, MTech IIT Delhi, PhD Utah State
Bellie, Sivakumar Associate Professor ARC Future Fellow UNSW Water Research Centre
Research Interests: Water resources assessment, planning, and management. Sivakumar’s research focuses on simplification and generalization in hydrologic modeling, especially using nonlinear dynamic and scaling theories. Collins, Richard ARC Future Fellow UNSW Water Research Centre
Research Interests: Stochastic hydrology: Synthetic generation of seasonal streamflow; Medium to long-term probabilistic forecasting: Stochastic downscaling of hydrologic variables under climate change scenarios: Radar rainfall estimation: Rainfall runoff model & parameter uncertainty assessment in a Bayesian framework: Water Resources Management: new developments in statistics to solve water problems.
ARC DECRA and Post Doctural Fellows Garg, Shikha Senior Research Associate UNSW Water Research Centre
Henderson, Rita Senior Research Associate UNSW Water Research Centre
Murphy, Kathleen Senior Research Associate UNSW Water Research Centre
Thai, Huu-Tai Research Fellow Centre for Infrastructure, Engineering & Safety (CIES)
Zhao, Gaofeng DECRA Fellow Centre for Infrastructure, Engineering & Safety (CIES)
Research Interests: Environmental Molecular Geochemistry of trace elements (metals, metalloids and actinides) in both natural and engineered systems. Richard’s research covers aspects related to metal(loid) bioavailability and speciation, redox chemistry and biogeochemical transformations assessed through field/laboratory studies, computational approaches (e.g. DFT) and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy.
OUR PEOPLE
19
Our People: Changes
Student and Business Centres
Continuing expansion of student numbers, as well as the integration of the School of Surveying and Geospatial Engineering within the School saw several new academic staff join us in 2013.
Welcome In 2013 we welcomed Associate Professor Linlin Ge, Dr Bruce Harvey, Associate Professor Samsung Lim, Dr Taha Hossein Rashidi, Professor Chris Rizos, Dr Craig Roberts, Dr Xuesong (Johnson) Shen, Dr Sawekchai (Ball) Tangaramvong, Professor Brian Uy, Associate Professor Jinling Wang and Associate Professor Tommy Wiedmann to the academic staff. We also welcomed Dr Lucy Marshall, a hydrologist, who joined us as an ARC Future Fellow. The prestigious Future Fellowships are for four years and are designed to attract and retain talented mid-career researchers in Australia. This year, the ARC had received 1234 proposals and awarded 201 fellowships across the country, 14 to UNSW. Anthony Dever also joined us as School Business Manager, and Lekana Kim as Financial Administrative Officer.
Farewell We farewelled hydraulics lecturer Dr Chris Blenkinsopp who returned to England to take up a position at the University of Bath. Three long serving professional staff retired in 2013. School Manager Karenne Irvine, Finance Officer Angie Spano, and School Office Administrator Alice Yau had provided 114 years of service to UNSW between them.
Promotions Congratulations to our two new Associate Professors Stuart Khan and Adrian Russell, who received well deserved promotions in 2013.
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The School’s administration area undertook some major changes and restructuring in 2013. The main changes were the separation of the Student Centre and the Business Centre areas and a number of new staff joining the team. The new structure created the positions of Student Centre Manager and Business Manager with both positions reporting directly to the Head of School. We also completed office renovations on Level 4 which has created numerous efficiencies and a great working relationship between the two teams. In the Student Centre we saw the retirement of Alice Yau after 40 years of service and Kristy Guia join the team. The Student Centre continued to provide support and advice to both undergraduate and post graduate students with student numbers reaching record levels. In the Business Centre, Karenne Irvine and Angie Spano retired after 35 and 39 years of service respectively while Lekana Toubia joined the team to replace Angie. The School’s IT staff were relocated to Level 4 and now report to the Business Manager. The Surveying and Geotechnical Engineering School joined the School during 2013. This added new challenges for our teams in areas such
OUR PEOPLE
as student records, course information, timetabling, budgeting, financial processes, office accommodation, OH&S, systems integration and hardware needs. Our IT staff had many achievements in 2013. The major achievement was the launch of the School’s new website in November 2013 making it much more intuitive and easy to navigate. Other achievements included the migration of all course information for 2014 from the Blackboard System to the new Moodle System, the online equipment booking system went live, as well as the sign in application for laboratories. A new smart board was installed in the School’s major meeting room providing the latest AV technology, while work continued on the automation of Industrial Training data collection. The IT staff continued to provide support for all staff and research students computer needs. The team has a number of ongoing projects as we continue to look for process improvement and efficiencies across all areas of the business, with our ultimate aim of providing a high level of service to staff and students. Julijana Baric, Student Centre Manager Anthony Dever, Business Manager
Professional Staff Student Centre Manager
Business Manager
Anthony Dever
Julijana Baric
Paul Gwynne Manager
Rudino Salleh
Hugh McMullen OHS & Facilities Officer
William Terry
Administrative Staff Technical Officers
Angela Spano Administrative Officer - Finance
Flora Fan Administrative Officer
Lekana Toubia Administrative Officer - Finance
Patricia McLaughlin Administrative Officer
Dr Yincai Zhou Professional Officer SAGE
Richard Berndt
Centre Managers
Sylvia Brohl rCITI
Ron Moncay
Web/IT Staff Les Brown Administrative Assistant
Alice Yau Administrative Assistant
Kristy Guia Student Services Officer
External Relations Manager
Dr Mary O’Connell
Kate Brown Web/IT Coordinator
Patrick Vuong Computer Systems Officer
Tamara Rouse ACCARNSI
Xiaobo Ni Web Developer
Grantley Smith WRL
Kelvin Chun H Ong
Larry Paice
Greg Worthing
EA to Head of School
Robert Steel WRC Kensington
Betty Wong
Professional Officers Tricia Tesoriero External Relations Projects
Irene Calaizis CIES
John Gilbert
Senior Technical Officers
Dr Gautam Chattopadhyay Laboratory Manager
OUR PEOPLE
Anthony Macken
Rob Jenkins Water Research Laboratory
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Research, Adjunct and Visiting Academic Staff (School) Emeritus Professors
Senior Visiting Fellows
John Black
Mark Davidson
Robin Fell
Ian Cordery
Ian Gilbert
Jean Rueger
Francis Tin-Loi
Tieding Lu
David Pilgrim
Jianghan Zhu
John Trinder Somasundaram Valliappan
Visiting Fellows Mohammad Ahmadi
Research Fellows
Bruce Cathers
Huiyong Ban
Alan Forghani
David Kellermann
Jing Guan
Yong Li
Peter Hidas
VC’s Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Alfredo Anceno Tongxu Liu
ANSTO’s Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Atsushi Ikeda
Senior Research Associate Eamonn Glennon
Research Associates Alex Ng
Atsuko Ikeda Tao Li Xiaolei Li Frank Scharfe Gareth Swarbrick Gongmin Yan
Adjunct Professors Scott Hensley Petrus Teunissen
Adjunct Associate Professor James Aldred
Mazher Choudhury
Adjunct Senior Lecturer
Sanchayan Sriskandarajah
Ramesh Govind
Post Doctoral Teaching Fellows
Adjunct Lecturer
Xavier Barthelemy
NB: Staff employed by the Research Centres are not included on this page, see Centre Section from page 65.
Samaneh Mohammadi Ali Khajeh Samani
Christopher Blenkinsopp
Visiting Professorial Fellows Nicholas Ashbolt Bruce Forster Bill Kearsley Kourosh Kayvani 2
OUR PEOPLE
Several School academic positions are currently funded through the generosity of industry including: The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) - a public research organisation - provides funding support for a Senior Research Fellow (currently Dr Atsushi Ikeda) at the School’s Water Research Centre whose work on trace element (metal, metalloid and actinide) environmental chemistry – aims for aquatic and soil remediation.
Evans & Peck - an international infrastructurebased advisory company – established a new Chair in 2010 - the Evans & Peck Professor for Transport Innovation. Professor Travis Waller now leads a new and expanding Faculty–wide Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (RCITI) based in the School. Gary Johnston provides funding support for the Gary Johnston Professor of Water Management, a joint Chair between the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Biology, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) in the Faculty of Science, which is held by the School’s groundwater expert Professor Ian Acworth. Pells Sullivan Meynink Pty Ltd, a high profile firm of specialist geotechnical consultants, provide funding support for the position of Pells Sullivan Meynink Senior Lecturer of Rock Mechanics, Dr Kurt Douglas.
Awards and Prizes School researchers continue to receive positive recognition from their peers. In 2013 ARC Laureate and Scientia
Professor Mark Bradford
was named a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) - the Society’s highest accolade, and only the second Australian to receive that honour. Mark was also invited to be part of the 2013 EA Eminent Speaker Series touring all major Australian cities from March to May 2013. Scientia Professor Mark Bradford and Professor Yong-Lin Pi were awarded Best Paper at the prestigious International Symposium on Environmental Vibration held in Shanghai in November. The paper, co-authored with Profs YL Guo and C Dou of Tsinghua University was titled ‘Dynamic buckling analysis of an arch model.’ Professor David Carmichael won a Highly Commended from the Smart and Sustainable Built Environment journal for his 2013 paper ‘A review of building/infrastructure sustainability reporting tools (SRTs). He also won a Highly Commended Award at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2013 for his paper ‘The likelihood of subcontractor payment: Downstream progression via the owner and contractor’, published in Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction in 2012.
Professor Stephen Foster, Head of School, was awarded the distinguished honour of being elected as a Fellow of Engineers Australia (Fellow of IEAust) which recognises those individuals who are true leaders of the industry and profession. Dr William Glamore was awarded a Peter Cullen Fellowship in 2013. The Peter Cullen Trust awards annual Fellowships via their ‘Science to Policy Leadership Program’. He, along with Duncan Rayner and Jamie Ruprecht of the School’s Water Research Laboratory – were also part of the Tomago Wetland Restoration Project which won the prestigious 2013 National Trust of Australia’s Award for Conservation (Natural Heritage). In 2013, Professor Nasser Khalili, Dr
Mohammad Pournaghiazar and Dr Adrian Russell, featured in Editor’s choice
(IAMG) as the winner of the 2013 Andrei Borisovich Vistelius Research Award. Emeritus Professor
John Trinder
(BSurv UNSW, MSc ITC, PhD UNSW, RegSurv NSW, Hon Member, ISPRS; Hon FSSSI) was made an Honorary Fellow of the University in June 2013 in recognition of his conspicuous and continued involvement in support of the interests and welfare of the University, and of the photogrammetric and remote sensing community, in Australia and abroad. John, along with colleagues Dr Ali Shamsoddini and Dr Russell Turner also won the award for Best Research and Review Paper in 2013 for the Journal of Spatial Science for ‘Improving Lidar-based Forest Structure Mapping with Crownlevel Pit Removal’. Scientia Professor
T. David Waite
was invited to join the Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) of the journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) - the top-ranked environmental science and technology journal in the world. Ms Pattie
honours for best papers in Geotechnique Letters in 2012. Dr Gregoire
Mariethoz
was selected by the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences
OUR PEOPLE
McLaughlin,
Administrative Officer, was highly commended in the Vice Chancellor’s 2013 Excellence in Professional Services award. This is a well-deserved tribute to her exceptional contribution to the School over many years.
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Vale
John Allman, AM,
who died in April 2013 began his UNSW career as a lecturer in the school of Civil Engineering in 1964, where he was awarded his PhD in 1968 on the topic of ‘An analysis of the reliability of barometric elevations’ and retired as an Associate Professor from the School of Surveying in 1989. Before his retirement, John had singlehandedly performed the computational adjustment of all precise terrestrial observations, VLBI observations and Satellite Doppler observations across Australia since the 1860s. The adjustment was known as AGD84 and was carried out on a classically defined geodetic datum and was accepted as the foundation for all mapping in Australia. John Allman’s work literally ‘put Australia on the map’ and was recognised in 1984 when he was invested as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to Science specifically Surveying and Mapping.
Associate Professor David Howell taught at the School from 1954 – 1990. He was a founding staff member of the Water Research Laboratory and worked with our first Head of School, the larger than life Crawford Munro, in early School studies of flood mitigation and irrigation. David’s own area of expertise was in irrigation and engineering economics, with a depth of knowledge in water resources optimisation admired by past and current School staff. Colleagues remembered him as a kind and generous colleague. Em Prof Bob Warner recalled, ‘I worked very closely with David many years ago when we two were allowed to start up a new subject we called systems engineering, with applications in structural engineering (my contribution) and in water engineering (David’s contribution). It was a bold experiment, and at least David and I got a lot of benefit from it! I always enjoyed spending time with David, it was always intellectually stimulating.’
Founding School academic Jack Jenkins passed away in April 2013 at the age of 94. Jack taught a variety of courses – fluid mechanics, soil mechanics, surveying, structural analysis and design – over a period of thirty years, from 1949 to 1979. Jack recalled the very early days when the new university was based at Ultimo and operating on a shoestring budget. As well as lecturing in fluid mechanics, surveying and structures, he was also called on to be the storeman for the fledging school of civil engineering, handing out pens, pencils and rubbers and ordering from the Government Stores to keep up supplies. He also had to make sure to keep the Ultimo foraging rats out of the storeoom. Jack - a daily swimmer – was a life member and former President of the Manly Swimming Club
Alumni throughout the decades recalled him as a good teacher and a ‘thoroughly nice person.’
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OUR PEOPLE
Frederick Adrian John Stein 1925 – 2013 Fred Stein was still at school in Sydney when WWII broke out, and joined the 2nd AIF in 1943. After the war he studied civil engineering at UNSW (then the NSW University of Technology). While still studying he joined the Eastern Command Band and worked at Victoria Barracks where he met Betty Emma Smith. They married in 1950 and lived at Bankstown. After his graduation in 1956 Fred was recruited to the School as a Professional Officer by Professor Crawford Munro. Over a thirty year period he worked in the Hydrology Department, Hydraulics Lab and Department of Construction and Management until poor health led to his retirement in 1986. During this time, his on-going military commitments saw him posted to the Vietnam War in 1967. He later rose to the rank of Lt Colonel and became the Commanding Officer at Chowder Bay, in charge of Army Light Craft on Sydney Harbour. In retirement Fred lived at Killcare on the NSW Central Coast. He became a widower in 2003 and after a long illness died on 31st July, 2013. He is survived by his sons John and Michael and grandchildren Patrick and Sarah.
OUR RESEARCH
Research Management Report Continuing Growth in Research Publications
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Books
3
4
5
5
2
6
5
5
4
3
2
Chapters in Books
3
3
7
8
11
12
4
11
9
9
9
Refereed Journal Articles
74
76
90
98
113
128
125
183
196
241
334
Refereed Conference
81
94
83
87
100
88
114
68
148
115
168
Total Publications
161
177
185
198
226
234
248
267
357
368
513
ARC Grants (year announced)
$1.94M
$3.33M
$2.13M
$1.53M
$1.74M
$3.06M
$4.32M
$1.75M
$3.26M
$1.38M
$4.3M
Total Research Income pa
$6.0M
$6.3M
$6.9M
$7.7M
$8.0M
$10.7M
$13.6M
$15.1M
$17.35M
$15.56M
$15.91M
Higher Degree Student Numbers
77
99
90
90
76
77
65
90
105
124
195
The School’s Research Management Committee (RMC) manages and supports research activities within the School, including research undertaken by both the staff and the School’s postgraduate research students, and liaises with and contributes directly to the Faculty’s Research Management Committee. In 2013, the RMC met every month to oversee and progress all research related aspects of the School’s operation.
RMC Committee Membership Prof Travis Waller Chair, rCITI Director A/Prof Ian Turner Deputy Chair, Postgrad Research Student Coordinator, WRL Deputy Director (Research) Prof Mark Bradford CIES Research Director Prof Richard Stuetz WRC Co-Director Prof Brian Uy CIES Director Dr Martin Andersen CWI Deputy Director Dr Vinayak Dixit RCITI Representative A/Prof Adrian Russell Prof Ashish Sharma Prof David Carmichael Dr Wei Gao Taste of Research Coordinator Ms Patricia McLaughlin Administrator
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Postgraduate Research Student Management An important aspect of the Committee’s work involves the management of the School’s postgraduate research student’s program. In 2013, the School had 195 postgraduate research students enrolled in either ME or PhD programs. This huge increase in numbers (from 124 in 2012) was only partly due to the integration of the School of Surveying and Geospatial, which brought 36 new higher degree research students in to the School. Management of this vital research activity within the School involves the assessment of applications to undertake higher degrees within the School, the formulation of specific research plans for each student accepted into the program, the nomination of a suitable supervisor, reviewing the progress of students at regular intervals, making recommendations on progress to the Faculty’s Higher Degree Committee, and finally nominating examiners when the thesis is completed and, where necessary, following up on the examination process. Each student is assigned a review committee of three academic staff chaired by a member of the RMC.
OUR RESEARCH
The review committee meets to interview the student and supervisor(s) at 6 or 12 monthly intervals, depending on the student’s progress, and, at these reviews, the student is invited to present a brief seminar outlining progress since the last review. Most academic staff and several research only staff participated in the student review panels in 2013. Much of the heavy work load in this area is carried by the School’s Postgraduate Coordinator Associate Professor Ian Turner and the Postgraduate Research Student Administrator Ms Pattie McLaughlin.
Research Grants The RMC also provides input to the preparation and coordination of research grant applications. This includes ranking the School’s applications for internal Faculty Research Grants (FRGs) and UNSW Major Research Equipment and Infrastructure Initiative (MREIIs) and reviewing applications for competitive external grants such as the Australian Research Council (ARC) Grants and from industry. 2013 saw the School continue on its ARC success story – winning a total of $4.3 million in 4 Discovery, 5 Linkage and 1 Early Career Researcher Grant – with over 20 of our academic and research staff involved.
Research Student Forum In December 2013 a Research Student Forum showcased the practical and cutting edge research within the School. Held in School Industry partner AECOM’s foyer in the city, which was generously donated for our use, the evening provided a chance for industry colleagues to more closely interact with our research students and academic staff. Approximately 30 posters summarizing the research outcomes of our postgraduate students across numerous fields including Water Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Structural Engineering, Construction Management, Transport Engineering and Surveying and Geospatial Engineering were displayed – providing information on our emerging and exciting research, and inspiring lively discussions. Prizes were awarded in the following categories: OOEnvironmental Prize – Yulia Shutova OOGeotechnical Prize – Jianjun Ma OOIndustry Prize – Jingwan Li OOInfrastructure Prize - Melissa Duell OOStructural Design Prize -
Abdolreza Ataei OOStructural Analysis Prize – Irene Chiong OOWater Prize – Daniel Howe OOOverall Prize for Research Excellence was shared by Melissa Duell and Yulia Shutova.
Best PhD thesis
Yulia’s topic (pictured left of Professor Stephen Foster below) was Monitoring of organic matter during drinking water treatment using fluorescence spectroscopy. Her supervisors are Prof Andy Baker and Dr Rita Henderson.
Dr Liu completed his PhD degree on the topic of “using satellite based microwave observations to characterize land surface hydrology”. Yi is the third recipient of this prestigious award for the School in the last 5 years. Given that this award represents the best PhD thesis across the entire Engineering faculty, it is an apt testimony to the quality of research that is being accomplished in the School.
Melissa’s topic (pictured right below) was Strategic road pricing with travel demand uncertainty. Her supervisors are Prof S Travis Waller and Dr Lauren Gardner.
OUR RESEARCH
Yi Liu was awarded the Malcolm Chaikin Prize for the best PhD thesis in 2013 in the UNSW Faculty of Engineering. The prize carries with it a Medal and $10,000.
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Successful Discovery and Linkage Projects - 2013
CVEN ARC Discovery Grants 2013: DP140101887: Dr Wei Gao, Prof Yong-Lin Pi, Em/Prof Francis TinLoi: Total : $395,000 Project Title: Stochastic geometrically nonlinear elasto-plastic buckling and behaviour of curved grid-like structures. Project Summary: It is vital to assess the safety of large spatially curvedcomplex structures for design and rehabilitation purposes when the inevitable uncertainties in structural parameters and loads are addressed. This project aims to develop an advanced stochastic framework for three-dimensional nonlinear elastoplastic behaviour and buckling analysis of curved grid-like structures. A rational and powerful stochastic nonlinear elasto-plastic finite element model will be proposed to account for the random high-order geometric nonlinearity and material elasto-plasticity. Novel formulations and effective algorithms will also be devised for stochastic nonlinear analytical analysis. An efficient tool will be developed for reliability assessment of the class of structures. DP140103142: Dr Adrian R Russell, Prof Nasser Khalili: Total: $420,000 Project Title: Shallow foundations in unsaturated soils: understanding mechanistic behaviour through numerical modelling, analysis and experimental investigation. Project Summary: This project will close the knowledge gap of how shallow foundations perform in variably saturated soils. It will integrate expertise in unsaturated soil mechanics, theory of elasto-plasticity, numerical modelling, limit analysis
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and experimental investigation. It will achieve a rigorous understanding of footings founded on unsaturated soils subjected to monotonic loading using a recently developed experimental testing facility, and analyses using finite elements, the method of characteristics and zero extension line theory. Impact and adoption in industry will be direct through world first design tools which incorporate the influence of suction on bearing capacity, settlement and safety. DP140102394: Prof Ashish Sharma, Dr Fiona Johnson, Dr Yi Liu, Dr Lucy A Marshall, A/Prof Hamid Moradkhani, A/Prof Sekhar Muddu, Dr Quan J Wang, Dr David E Robertson: Total: $550,000 Project Summary: Floods are the biggest and severest natural disaster we face year after year. Furthermore, there has been little improvement in our capability to prevent flood damage over past decades. This research proposes a paradigm shift in the way flood forecasting, warning and evacuation proceeds, using 21st century technologies for collecting and incorporating flood related data into existing modelling platforms. It is argued that assimilating real-time satellite soil moisture data into flood models can increase accuracy manifold, even if the images are uncertain. The understanding gained in course of the proposed project has the potential to significantly reduce the damage caused year after year, especially in the data poor regions of the world. DP140102134: Prof Brian Uy: Total $530,000 Project Title: The behaviour and design of innovative connections to promote the reduction and reuse of structural steel in steel-concrete composite buildings.
OUR RESEARCH
Project Summary: This proposal will study the behaviour of innovative connections to promote the reduction and reuse of structural steel in steel-concrete framed buildings. Steel is one of the most recycled materials on earth, however it is the reduction and reuse rather than recycling which can provide significant benefits to building construction. Economic and technical issues have impeded the widespread application of the reuse of steel. These technical impediments can be addressed through the development of connections that promote dismantling of structures at the end of a building’s life. This project will address this issue by developing innovative structural connections through experimental and analytical studies and design code provisions. Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE140100747: Dr Huu-Tai Thai: Total $333,157 Project: Concrete-filled steel tubular structures have been increasingly used in high-rise buildings, bridges and other infrastructure due to their enhanced properties such as high strength, high ductility and large energy absorption capability. This project will evaluate the system reliability of concrete-filled steel tubular frames designed by advanced analysis. The influences of inherent uncertainties in loads, strength capacities, material properties and geometric properties on the system reliability of such frames will be studied. The outcomes of this project will be used to develop reliability-based provisions to achieve a target reliability range in the design of concrete-filled steel tubular structures. School staff are also involved in the following successful Discovery Projects administered elsewhere:
DP140101302: Prof Tom E Baldock, Dr Dave P Callaghan, A/Prof Peter Nielsen, Dr Chris Blenkinsopp, A/Prof Ian L Turner, Dr Roshanka J Ranasinghe: Total: $465,000.00 Project Summary: Accurate forecasting of coastal recession due to sea level rise is required for planning and the design of coastal defences, but the existing method is widely disputed. With collaboration with world leading research partners, this study will perform unique laboratory experiments to determine the vulnerability of Australian beaches to sea level rise and to test environmentally sustainable measures to increase their resilience. The research will address longstanding uncertainties and significantly enhance the ability of communities to plan for a changing climate. The project will deliver new data and models of immediate benefit to professional engineers to enable robust engineering decisions which enhance the safety of coastal communities. DP140100529: A/Prof Gianluca Ranzi, A/Prof Arnaud Castel, Em/ Prof Raymond I Gilbert, Dr Daniel Dias-da-Costa: Total: $300,000.00 Project Summary: Corrosion of steel reinforcement is the major cause of deterioration of reinforced concrete structures exposed to coastal and marine environments. In Australia, corrosion-related repair and rehabilitation costs about $13 billion annually. Research carried out to date on the effects of corrosion in concrete structures has not considered the effects of sustained loads and shrinkage on corrosion and the deterioration of member stiffness with time. This project will develop a new theoretical basis to characterise corrosion effects on the in-service behaviour of concrete structures, essential for
adequate assessment of durability of existing structures and for the safe design of new structures.
CVEN ARC Linkage Grants 2013: LP130100033 Dr Rita K Henderson, Prof Richard M Stuetz, Dr Gayle Newcombe, Adj/Prof Christopher W Chow, Dr Peter P Hobson, Prof Tsairfuh Lin, Dr Lee C Bowling, Ms Annalie Roux, Dr Bala Vigneswaran, Dr Judy R Blackbeard, Dr David J Halliwell: $390,000 Project Title: On-line monitoring of cyanobacteria to predict coagulant doses and powdered activated carbon application in water treatment. Linkage Partners: SA Water Corporation, South East Queensland Water, NSW Office of Water, Melbourne Water Corporation, Sydney Catchment Authority, Water Quality Research Australia Ltd. LP130100072 Prof Ashish Sharma, A/Prof Jason P Evans, Dr Francis H Chiew, Dr Amit Chanan, Dr Mohammed A Bari, Prof Lawrence E Band, Dr Alexander R Sen Gupta, Mr Gurmeet Singh, Dr Jing-Jia Luo: $375,000 Project Title: A decadal to inter-decadal streamflow prediction system. Linkage Partners: State Water Corporation, Bureau of Meteorology LP130101107 Prof T David Waite, A/ Prof Gregory L Leslie, Dr Jing Guan, Dr Simon J Wilson, Ms Nadine Riethmuller, Dr Xiaomao Wang, Mr Peter C Spencer: $395,000 Project Title: Innovative hybrid membrane-based pretreatment strategies for remote community groundwater supplies.
OUR RESEARCH
Linkage Partners: Beijing Origin Water Technology, Water Quality Research Australia Ltd, Water Corporation of WA, NT Power and Water Corporation. LP130100983 Prof Steven Travis Waller, Dr Vinayak V Dixit, Dr Lauren M Gardner, Mr Bruce M Jeffreys, Dr Taha Hossein Rashidi: $347,000 Project Title: Integrating network modelling with observed choice data for multi-criteria optimisation of complex car share systems: cost, mobility and transit usage. Linkage Partners: GoGet CarShare LP130101048 Prof Steven Travis Waller, Prof Dr Michiel Bliemer, Dr Vinayak V Dixit, Prof Michael G Bell, Dr Alexandre Torday: $546,000 Project Title: Methodologies for the incorporation of congestion propagation and system reliability into transport network models for consistent multi-scale planning. Linkage Partners: TSS -Transport Simulation Systems Australia Shared Linkage Project: UNSW Schools of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. LP 130100177 Prof Andrew Baker, Mr Stephen F Meehan, Dr Pauline C Treble, Prof Ian Fairchild, Dr Martin S Andersen, Mr Mark Tozer, Mr Andrew P Spate: $193,000 Project Title: To what extent does fire affect karst processes? Burning questions for fire management. Linkage Partners: NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), Optimal Karst Management, University of Birmingham. ď Ź
29
Profile on SAGE research Research staff: Professor Chris Rizos, Associate Professor Samsung Lim, Associate Professor Jinling Wang, Associate Professor Linlin Ge, Dr Craig Roberts, Dr Bruce Harvey, Dr Yong Li, Dr Yincai Zhou The Surveying and Geospatial Engineering (SAGE) Research Group has been conducting world class research in the subdisciplines of geodesy, photogrammetry, positioning measurement and remote sensing since the 1960s. It is now one of the world’s top satellite and wireless positioning research groups, and one of Australia’s premier Earth observation research teams. The Group’s academics and graduate students are Australia’s most productive, innovative and influential researchers in the fields of navigation, precise positioning and remote sensing. SAGE research has been funded primarily by the Australian Research Council and the CRC for Spatial Information, with some industry consultancies. SAGE research focuses on the following:
Multi-GNSS studies Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GNSSs) such as the USA’s GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, Europe’s Galileo and China’s BeiDou have wide applicability and are spawning a rich field of research topics on receiver instrumentation, infrastructure, operational procedures, measurement processing algorithms, and professional and mass market applications.
Satellite navigation receiver design and signal processing algorithms Receiver design is a challenge as the number of GNSS constellations launched into orbit expand and new navigation signals are broadcast.
30
SAGE research is conducted in a new research laboratory for satellite navigation technology in conjunction with the UNSW School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications and takes advantage of the unique SAGE-developed GNSS receiver.
Multisensor integration systems, algorithms and applications The combination of GNSS with an Inertial Navigation System provides user positioning and orientation in all environments. SAGE is investigating the use of such systems for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and terrestrial platforms, extended to include vision/image sensors and terrestrial positioning technologies.
Personal and indoor positioning/navigation Applications include support for emergency service personnel inside buildings and for the blind and visually impaired, using a range of sensor/positioning technologies (WiFi-based, RFID, vision and inertial sensors and mobile phone-based systems). SAGE has helped develop the Locata technology – a new high accuracy positioning technology that can be used on its own or in combination with GNSS.
Precise GNSS positioning technology and applications These include a wide range of precise positioning applications such as surveying, geodesy, structural monitoring, geo-referencing of moving platforms, robotics and machine guidance, and cooperative positioning in support of advanced vehicle control applications.
Geodetic infrastructure and analysis Geodesy defines and maintains critical reference frames such as the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). Geodetic GNSS is
OUR RESEARCH
critical to the definition of ITRF, as well as providing the means of connecting to it using special GNSS techniques.
Precise surveys for deformation and construction Surveying instrumentation such as Total Stations (TS – high accuracy angle and distance measuring devices), digital levels, digital photogrammetry and Terrestrial Laser Scanners (TLS) have many uses in construction, mapping and surveying.
Earth Observation science Earth Observation (EO) is amongst the fastest growing geospatial technology fields, utilising a variety of imaging sensors (radar, optical, multi- and hyper-spectral) and remote measurement systems (laser scanning, radar altimetry, etc) installed on satellites, aircraft or road vehicles to remotely sense many aspects of the natural and built environment.
Remote sensing technologies and applications Radar remote sensing is a satellite EO technique for monitoring vegetation and land use, biomass and soil moisture, water surfaces and flooding, pollution at sea, ship detection, terrain mapping and ground deformation measurement. SAGE works closely with the UNSW School of Mining Engineering in the Laboratory for Imaging in the Mining Environment (LIME) joint initiative.
Lidar, mapping and geoinformation management systems Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) is a geospatial technology that generates massive volumes of ‘point cloud’ data – 3D coordinates of points together with information on the ground reflected laser signals. The combination of digital imaging and Lidar is revolutionising the way data is acquired for rapid mapping of transport corridors, the urban landscape and inside buildings.
CVEN Grants 2013
TOTAL $15,909,945
Surveying and Geospatial Engineering SAGE Researcher(s)
C.Rizos
C.Rizos, C.Roberts C.Rizos, B.Li C.Rizos, S.Lim L.Ge, X.J.Li
Research Topic
Granting Organisation
High Accuracy Real-time Positioning Utilising the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) Augmentation System: A CRCSI and JAXA Joint Experiment 1.11 Next Generation Australian and New Zealand Datum Mobility and Location Information providing Social Equality for Blind and Vision Impaired persons Project Platform Technologies for Space, Atmosphere and Climate Advanced techniques for imaging radar interferometry
2013 Income
Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information 36,000
Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information 118,000 ARC Linkage
11,833
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology / DIISR Australian Space Research Program
34,279
Australian Research Council Discovery
110,000
L.Ge, X.J.Li
Satellite Radar Monitoring of the Hazelwood Mine, Hazelwood Power Victoria
70,000
L.Ge, X.J.Li
Radar Satellite Monitoring
87,031
L.Ge, X.J.Li
INSAR Mapping of Otway and Iona sites
L.Ge, X.J.Li
Monitoring Subsidence in Gippsland with InSAR
State Administration of Work Safety (China) Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technology Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment
L.Ge, X.J.Li
Monitoring Mining Environment with Satellite Remote Sensing
Australia-China Group Mission
45,000
Jinling Wang
New carrier phase processing strategies for achieving precise and reliable multi-satellite, multi-frequency GNSS/RNSS positioning in Australia;
Jinling Wang
GNSS Signal Quality Control for Positioning and Timing Applications,
42,476 90,000
CRC-SI Project 1.01 Co-operative Research Centre for Spatial Information National Time Service Center (NTSC), Chinese Academy of Sciences
Total
36,000
35,000 $715,619
CWI Researchers
Granting Organisation
 2013 Income
Andy Baker
NCGRT
$1,245,176
Ian Acworth / Tony Woo
GEIF
$123,979
Ian Acworth / Tony Woo
GIROS / CRIS
$402,521
Andy Baker
MREII 2013
$100,707
Andy Baker
ARC LP130100177 Baker,Andrew
$50,963
Bryce Kelly
CDRC
$98,000
Andy Baker / Tony Woo
CWI Commercial
$31,153
Andy Baker
Univ of Birmingham/LP130100177
$7,500
Andy Baker
ARC DP110102124 PROJ Baker, A
$109,541
Andy Baker
ANSTO/ARC LP130100177
$20,000
Ian Acworth / Andy Baker
ENG Gary Johnston Chair
$119,649
Gabriel Rau
AINSE - Honours Scholarship
$5000
Comeron Holly / Tony Woo
NSW Science Leverageing Fund
$20000
TOTAL
$2,334,189
OUR RESEARCH
31
CIES Researcher(s)
Research Topic
MA Bradford
An Innovative and Advanced Systems Approach for Full Life-Cycle, Low-Emissions Composite and Hybrid Building Infrastructure
C Song RI Gilbert N Khalili L Ge MA Bradford B Uy; Z Tao; F Mashiri
Chongmin Song, Francis Tin-Loi, Wilfried Becker Ehab Hamed; Stephen Foster S Foster; Hamid Valipour B Uy; X Xhu; O Mirza RI Gilbert
A high-performance stochastic scaled boundary finiteelement framework for safety assessment of structures susceptible to fracture Control of cracking caused by early-age contraction of concrete Dynamics analysis of unsaturated porous media subject to damage due to cracking Advanced techniques for imaging radar interferometry Thermal-induced unilateral plate buckling of concrete pavements: design and evaluation The behaviour and design of composite columns coupling the benefits of high strength steel and high strength concrete for large scale infrastructure Scaled boundary finite-element approach for safety assessment of plates and shells under monotonic and shakedown loadings Nonlinear long-term behaviour and analysis of high strength concrete panels Progressive collapse resistance of reinforced concrete framed structures with membrane action The use of innovative anchors for the achievement of composite action for rehabilitating existing and deployment of demountable steel structures Time-dependent stiffness of cracked reinforced concrete
Gaofeng Zhao
Dynamic fracturing in shale rock through coupled continuum-discontinuum modelling
MA Bradford
Climate adaptation technology and engineering for extreme events.
H M Goldsworthy, E Gad, B Uy, S Fernando
Behaviour of lifting inserts for precast concrete construction Partner/Collaborating Organisation: Universal Concrete Lifting Systems Markus Oeser, Alan Pearson, Nasser Permeable Pavements with Concrete Surface LayersKhalili, Brian Shackel Experimental and Theoretical Basis for Analysis and Design G Ranzi; B Uy; S Gowripalan; P Behaviour of post-tensioned composite steel-concrete slabs Gabor Innovative Retrofitting Techniques for the Protection of PA Mendis; B Samali; B Uy Anchorage Zones in Cable-Stayed Bridges Subjected to Blast Loads  Collaborating/Partner Organisation: Road Traffic Authority (RTA) MA Bradford; B Uy; G Ranzi; A Time-Dependent Response and Deformations of Composite Filonov Beams with Innovative Deep Trapezoidal Decks. Collaborating /Partner Organisation: BlueScope Lysaght The University of Queensland/ UNSW/ The University of Western Performance Level Structural Testing Facility (PLSTF). Australia/ Queensland University Partner Organisation: Queensland Department of Transport of Technology/ The University of and Main Roads Adelaide UNSW/ Uni. of Western Sydney/ Uni. of Wollongong/Uni. of Western National Facility for Physical Blast Simulation (NFPBS) Australia Queensland Uni. of Partner Organisation: Defence Science and Technology Technology/Uni. of Newcastle/Uni. Organisation of Adelaide/Uni. of Melbourne
32
ARC Discovery DP130102934 ARC Discovery DP130102966 ARC Discovery DP130104918 ARC Discovery DP130101694 ARC Discovery DP120104554
Advanced Composite Structures
OUR RESEARCH
2013 Income
521,911
114,232 124,617 103,847 114,232 185,581
ARC Discovery DP120101944
232,967
ARC Discovery DP120100742
107,843
ARC Discovery DP120102762 ARC Discovery DP120103328 ARC Discovery DP110101328 ARC Discovery DP110103028 ARC DECRA DE130100457 CSIRO / Flagship Collaborative Research Program
Development of efficient, robust and architecturally-flexible ARC Linkage structural systems using innovative blind-bolted connections LP110200511
Gianluca Ranzi (USYD), Raymond I Gilbert, Rodney Mackay-Sim
S Foster; E Hamed; Z Vrcelj
Granting Organisation ARC Laureate Fellowship including Faculty of Engineering & UNSW support ARC FL100100063
ARC Linkage LP110100008 ARC Linkage LP100100806 ARC Linkage LP0990190
118,627 50,343 103,350 31,450 130,387 263,000
15,000
26,389 3,750 2,701
ARC Linkage LP0883942
27,755
ARC Linkage LP0882929
55,497
ARC LIEF LE130100089
23,500
ARC LIEF LE1301100133
700,000
Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures Ltd (CRC-ACS)
125,410
Researcher(s)
Research Topic Performance based Criteria for Concretes: Creating S Foster Pathways for Low Carbon Concrete Manufacture with Existing Standards C Birk FRG Grant A Castel FRG Grant A Khoshghalb FRG Grant Mechanistic design tools for shallow foundations in A Russell unsaturated soils derived through numerical modelling, analysis and experimental investigation Various Industry funded research undertaken by the CIES Projects team TOTAL
Granting Organisation Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living Ltd (CRC LCL) Faculty of Engineering Faculty of Engineering Faculty of Engineering UNSW Goldstar Awards DP130104497
2013 Income 31,250 25,000 30,000 39,844 37,246 88,551 $3,434,280
ACCARNSI Researcher(s)
R Cox
R Cox, P Booth, T Rouse R Cox, P Booth
Research Topic
Granting Organisation Commonwealth Department Nationwide network to support the coordination of the of Innovation, Climate Australian research community in the field of Climate Change, Science, Research Change Adaptation – supporting multi-disciplinary research, and Tertiary Education building research capacity, and promoting and supporting (DICCSRTE) through the information exchange relating to coastal settlements, urban National Climate Change planning, the built environment and infrastructure. Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) Climate Change Adaptation Good Practice Project DICCSRTE through NCCARF Peron Naturaliste Community Coastal Plan Partnership, WA
TOTAL
2013 Income
20,000
63,875 18,500 $102,375
rCITI Researcher(s)
Research Topic
Prof. S. Travis Waller, Dr. Vinayak Dixit, Prof. Dennis Del Favero, TRACSLab Prof. Michiel Bliemer Prof. S. Travis Waller Dr. Lauren Gardner Prof. S. Travis Waller Prof. S. Travis Waller, Dr. Vinayak Dixit, Prof. Michiel Bliemer, Prof. Michael Bell, Dr Alexandre Torday Prof. S. Travis Waller, Dr. Vinayak Dixit, Dr. Lauren Gardner, Dr. Taha Hossein Rashidi, Mr. Bruce Jeffreys TOTAL
Granting Organisation
2013 Income
ARC LIEF
$680,000
US DOT, Booz Allen $270,000 Hamilton Faculty Research Grant Program / Early Career $20,000 Researcher Grants Program
Federal Highway
Quantifying the Spatiotemporal Energy Consumption Patterns and of Electric Vehicles in Regional Transport Networks Develop and Deploy Novel Integrated Network Techniques to Transport for NSW Enhance the NSW Transport System Methodologies for the Incorporation of Congestion Propagation and System Reliability into Transport Network Models for Consistent Multi-Scale Planning
$1,500,000
ARC Linkage Project
$545,604
Integrating Network Modelling with Observed Choice Data for Multi-Criteria Optimization of Complex Carshare Systems: ARC Linkage Project Cost, Mobility and Transit Usage
$347,488 $3,363,092
OUR RESEARCH
33
Water Research Laboratory Projects, Industry, Income Researcher(s)
Research Topic
Granting Organisation
Brett Miller, Bruce Cathers, Grantley Smith, Bill Peirson, Nathan Guerry, Francois Floccard
Civil Engineering Hydraulics
2013 Income
NSW Primary Industries- Fisheries, Aurecon Pty Ltd, Hunter Water Corporation, Veolia Water Australia, Sydney Catchment Authority, Cardno Pty Ltd Cook Islands Government, Geoscience Australia, US Army Corps of Engineers, Tweed Shire Council, Moyne Shire Council, Manly Council, Clarence City Council, Eurobodalla James Carley, Matt Blacka, Ian Turner, Shire Council, Nambucca Shire Council, Byron Shire Ron Cox, Francois Floccard, Ian Coastal Engineering Council, Warringah Council, NSW Office of Environment Coghlan, Alessio Mariani, Erica Davey, and Climate Change and Heritage, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Kristen Splinter, Jamie Ruprecht, Duncan Department of Sustainability and Environment Victoria Rayner, Chris Drummond Australia, Sydney Institute of Marine Science, Umwelt Pty Ltd, Aurecon Pty Lty, GHD Pty Ltd, Water Technology Pty Ltd NSW Parks and Wildlife Service, Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority, NSW Department of Industry and Will Glamore, Duncan Rayner, Jamie Estuary Restoration Investment, NSW Office of Water, NSW Department of Ruprecht, Martin Anderson, Eria Davey, Studies Planning and Infrastructure, Port Waratah Coal Services, Priom Rahman, Ian Coghlan Greater Taree City Council, Wyong Shire Council, Hornsby Shire Council, Wetland Care Australia Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, Grantley Smith, Erica Davey, Priom Floodplain NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure, Engineers Rahman, Bill Peirson, Ian Coghlan, Brett management Australia, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Miller, Nathan Guerry Toowoomba Regional Council, Manly Council Australian Government, Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water Population and Communities, Manly, Doug Anderson, Martin Anderson, Groundwater Mosman, Pittwater and Warringah Councils, NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure, Sydney Water, William Glamore, Brett Miller, Grantley Resources and Office of the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer, Australian Smith, Ian Acworth, Priom Rahman, Erica Environmental Interactions National University, Southern Highlands Coal Action Davey, Alexandra Badenhop Group, SKM Pty Ltd, QLD Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment Australian Institute of Marine Science, Shoalhaven City Brett Miller, William Glamore, Bill Peirson, Water Quality in Council, Sydney Water Corporation, Queensland Nickel Duncan Rayner, Jamie Ruprecht, Priom Rivers, Estuaries and Pty Ltd, Newcastle City Council, Sydney Institute of Marine Rahman, Ian Coghlan, Grantley Smith. Coastal Waters Science, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Energy Resources of Australia. TOTAL
$135,838
$1,375,954
$212,128
$140,910
$353,372
$270,445
$2,488,647
WRL - Australian Research Council Income Researcher(s)
Granting Organisation
Value at
Michael Banner (UNSW Mathematics), Transitions in wave breaking from deep to shallow Bill Peirson, Frederic Dias (ENS Cachan, water France)
Australian Research Council – Discovery DP120101701
$129,411
Chris Blenkinsopp, Ian Turner, Tom Baldock (Queensland), Hocine Oumeraci
Bed shear stress on beach sediment and coastal structures under wave run-up
Australian Research Council – Discovery DP110101176
$76,697
Erosion of embankment dams and dam spillways
Australian Research Council – Linkage LP110100389
$268,996
Australian Coastal Observation Network: Monitoring and Forecasting Coastal Erosion in a Changing Climate
Australian Research Council – Linkage LP100200348
$106,498
Robin Fell, Chongmin Song, Bill Peirson, Kurt Douglas Ian Turner, Ian Goodwin (Macquarie), Mark Davidson (Plymouth), Andrew Short
Research Topic
TOTAL
34
$581,602
OUR RESEARCH
Water Research Centre - Kensington Investigators
Research Topic
Granting Organisation
R. Stuetz, Z. Yuan, J. Keller, R.E Melchers, P.L Bond, M. Valix, J. R Optimal Management of Corrosion and Odour Witherspoon, W. Verstraete, Problems in Sewer Systems P.A Vanrolleghe, J. Steyer, H.A Bustamante, I. H Suffet
ARC Linkage Project LP0882016 through U.Q, Brisbane City Council (Brisbane Water is a business unit with BCC), CH2M HILL, Gold Coast Water, SA Water, South East Water Limited, Sydney Water Corporation, United Water, Water Corporation ARC Linkage Project LP0989365 , APAI, Mid Coast Water, Bega Valley Shire Council, NSW Department of Health, Hunter Water Corporation ARC Linkage Project Grant 2009 Round 2 LP0990189, APAI, APDI, Melbourne Water Corporation, United Water, SEQWater, South Australia Water Company ARC Linkage project LP0989441 Shared Grant / Subcontract , University of Melbourne, Department of Primary Industries, Victoria ARC Discovery Project DP1096691, APDI ARC Linkage Project, APAI, South Australia Water, Sydney Water Corporation, Melbourne Water, Yarra Valley Water, Water Corporation, Gold Coast City Council
2013 Income
105,240
R. Stuetz, H. M Coleman, S. J Khan, P. Le-Clech, J. E Drewes, K. N Power
Optimising Decentralised Membrane Bioreactors for Water Reuse
R. Henderson, R. Stuetz, W. Peirson, G. Newcombe, B. Jefferson, V. Bulmus
Optimising dissolved air flotation (DAF) for algae removal by bubble modification in drinking water and advanced wastewater systems
M. McCabe, J. P Walker, R. C Pipunic, M. Abuzar, D. M Whitfield
A new paradigm for improved water resource management using innovative water modelling techniques
R. Stuetz, K. R Murphy, R. Bro
Olfactory Characterisation of Odours for Optimising Impact Assessment
S. Moore, M. Short
Sustainability of water and wastewater treatment chemicals
R. Henderson
Optimising dissolved air flotation (DAF) for algae removal by bubble modification in drinking water and advanced wastewater systems - Scholarship for Russell Yap
WQRA
7,828
D. Waite, R. N Collins, B. A Neilan, G. Sinclair, R. J Ring
BioGeoChemical Controls on efficacy and sustainability of uranium heap leaching
ARC Linkage Project LP100200792, APAI, Energy Resources of Australia
55,918
R. Henderson, A. Baker, J. Bridgeman
Monitoring organic matter in drinking water systems using fluorescence spectroscopy: improved early warning, process optimisation and water quality
ARC Linkage Project LP100200259, Hunter Water Corporation, Melbourne Water Corporation, Queensland Bulk Water Authority, Water Quality Research Australia Ltd, APAI,
59,989
D. Waite
Physico-chemical controls on growth, toxicity and succession of Microsystis and Anabaena species in water supply reservoirs. Scholarship for Anna Yeung
WQRA
9,226
R. Stuetz
Fate of Volatile Organo-Sulfur Compounds (VOSCs) in CRC for Poultry Odour Assessment - Scholarship for Mr Hung Viet Le
R. Collins
Exploiting natural processes to effectively remediate acidified coastal environments
A. Sharma S. Khan R. Henderson
Representing low-frequency variability in hydroclimatic simulations for water resources planning and management in a changing climate Process robustness and impact of hazardous events on membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment performance. Scholarship for Thi Thanh Trang Trinh Monitoring organic matter removal in drinking water systems using fluorescence spectroscopy Postgraduate Scholarship for - Yulia Shutova
14,358
20,939
9,752
84,083
14,358
27,500
ARC Linkage Project LP110100480, Tweed Shire, NSW Cane Growers, NSW Sugar Milling Co-Op Scholarship
198,763
ARC FT100100197
204,406
WQRA
7,978
WQRA
10,007
R. Henderson, C. A Joll, J.W Charrois, K. L Linge, S. E Hrudey
Advanced water treatment technologies to minimise nitrogenous disinfection by-products in drinking water: understanding the role of organic nitrogen.
ARC Linkage Project LP110100548 through Curtin University, Water Corporation of WA, Water Quality Research Australia Ltd
9,000
S. Khan, G. Peters, N. J Ashbolt
Deeper and broader life cycle risk assessment extending the frontier for hybrid methodologies
ARC Linkage Project LP110200594, Environmental Protection Authority (EPA)Victoria, APAI
48,330
R. Collins
Aluminium mobility and geochemistry in Acid Sulfate Soils using novel exchange techniques and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. Student Ms Yliane Yvanes-Giuliani
AINSE
11,667
OUR RESEARCH
35
Investigators
Research Topic
Granting Organisation
2013 Income
D. Waite
Reactive oxygen species generation by zerovalent silver nanoparticles; implications to toxicity and contaminant degradation
Australian Research Council / Discovery Project - DP120103222
124,019
Australian Research Council / Discovery Project - DP120103234
100,980
Australian Research Council / Discovery Project - DP120100338
81,127
D. Waite A. Sharma M. McCabe
Closing the water cycle using land surface modelling, Australian Research Council / remote sensing and an Australian hydrological Discovery Project - DP120104718 observatory
140,196
R. Collins
Iron- A solution for uranium resource recovery and pollutions response
Australian Research Council / Future Fellowships FT110100067
164,210
B. Sivakumar
Development of generic catchment classification framework in hydrology
Australian Research Council / Future Fellowships FT110100328
176,822
S. Garg
Interaction between silver ions, silver nanoparticles and reactive oxygen species: implication to toxicity
Australian Research Council / (DECRA) - DE120102967
162,846
A. Sharma
Simulating persistence in future rainfall: correcting NSW Office of Water / 2012 Peter GCM bias in regional climate models - Scholarship for Cullen Postgraduate Scholarship Eytan Rocheta
20,000
R. Henderson
Advanced characterisation of organic matters in desalination pretreatment and its removal strategies Scholarship for Barun Karna
National Centre of Excellence in Desalination
10,000
T. Wiedmann (UNSW), University of Sydney, University of Ballarat, Intersect Australia, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Griffith University, University of South Australia, University of Queensland, University of Melbourne
Virtual Laboratory Program: The Industrial Ecology Lab - Integrating data and tools for powerful sustainability analysis
University of Sydney/VL201 Nectar
111,836
R. Stuetz
Litter management strategies to reduce odour emissions from poultry litter
Poultry CRC/Nutrition and Environment
78,494
R. Stuetz
Litter management strategies to reduce odour emissions from poultry litter
UNSW Strategic Support Grant
160,478
A. Anceno
Multi-functional reactor systems for liquid and gas phase treatment of agroindustrial and municipal effluents: toward pollution and odour abatement with energy cogeneration
UNSW - VC Post Doc Support
9,006
Innovative hybrid membrane-based pretreatment strategies for remote community groundwater supplies
ARC LP130101107, Beijing Origin Water, Water Research Australia, Water 170,097 Corporation of WA, Power and Water Corporation
Integrated ETWW demand forecasting and scenario planning for precincts
CRC for Low Carbon Living Ltd
8,986
R. Collins
XMCD study of the stabilisation of tetrahedral Feiii upon hydrolysis and precipitation
Australian Synchrotron
6,369
A. Kinsela
Uranium localisation and chemical speciation in acidAustralian Synchrotron tolerant filamentous fungi
1,042
G. Mariethoz, A. Sharma, S. Jha (UNSW), George Mathews, Suhinthan Maheswararajah, Nickens Okello, Dom De Re (NICTA)
Data centric groundwater modelling
NICTA (National ICT Australia)
58,407
F. Johnson
A review of application of Bayesian Generalised Least Squares Regression
Bureau of Meteorology
8,182
D. Waite, G. Leslie (UNSW), Xiaomao Wang (Tsinghua University), Jing Guan (Beijing Origin Water Technology), Claire McInnes (Water Research Australia), Peter Spencer (Water Corporation of WA), Nadine Riethmuller (Power and Water Corporation) T. Wiedmann (UNSW), Rocco Zito, Steffen Lehmann (UniSA), Adam Berry (CSIRO), Oleyssa Vitkovskaya, Jason Ting, Lindsay Oxlad (SA Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources), Phil Donaldson (Renewal SA), Karen Rouse (SA Water), Nicola Nelson (Sydney Water), Lester Partridge (AECOM)
36
New perspectives on iron oxide transformations in oxic and anoxic aqueous environments: Implications for iron bioavailability and contaminant mobility A new strategy for design flood estimation in a nonstationary climate
OUR RESEARCH
Investigators
Research Topic
Granting Organisation
2013 Income
S. Khan
Drinking Water through recycling: The benefits and costs of supplying direct to the distribution system
Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering/Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence
40,000
Background paper on produced water and solids in relation to CSG production “Australian-Tunisian Partnership to Strengthen the Global Competence of Students and Faculty in Wastewater Management “ (CAAR0122).
NSW Department of Trade & Investment
60,500
AIC & CAAR Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
20,000
E. Sivret, X Wang, N Le Minh, G. Parcsi
Assessments of odorants
Airepure Australia Pty Ltd
3,000
R. Henderson
LCOCD Analysis
Curtin University
1,800
S. Dever
Development of CFI methodology for passive landfill gas drainage and Biofiltration Systems
Ecotext Pty Ltd
4,375
Odour Assessment of the Taree Compost Trial
Greater Taree City Council
91,900
Boulder Bay Health Risk Assessment
Hunter Water Corporation Limited IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
15,750
S. Khan S. Khan
E. Sivret, X Wang, N Le Minh, G. Parcsi D. Roser S. Lundie
Review of the Xylem-IVL Reuse project
A. Sharma, R. Mehrotra
Impact of climate projections on water availability and NSW Trade & Investment adaptation
5,000
R. Henderson
LC-OCD Analysis
RMIT
12,760
S. Khan, J. McDonald
Validation of theoretically estimated rejection of chemicals which can be found in secondary treated wastewater through high rejection reverse osmosis membranes
SEQWATER
79,021
PARAFAC analysis of Alaska Arrivals dataset QMRA advice
Smithsonian Environmental Sydney Catchment Authority
15,660 9,860
Odour analysis
Sydney Water
26,660
E. Sivret, X Wang, N Le Minh, G. Parcsi
Odour Analysis
Sydney Water Odour Alliance Joint Venture
1,190
D. Roser
Water Quality Opinion
UNSW Global Pty Limited
K. Murphy D. Roser E. Sivret, X Wang, N Le Minh, G. Parcsi
TOTAL
5,526
4,700 $2,890,141
Level 3 Workplace Safety Committee 2013: The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering has a Workplace Safety Committee in accordance with the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. As required by the WHS Regulation 2011, the Committee representation covers all work groups within the school, including the Head of School, Academics, Laboratory Managers, IT, Administration, Postgraduates and Undergraduates. Membership also includes Centre Representatives, a First Aid Officer, and the Chief Warden (Emergency Control Organisation.) The School consults with all staff and students on WHS issues as they arise, through the School’s Level 3 Health and Safety Consultation Committee. Minutes of the meetings are posted on School noticeboards and on the School’s website.
Committee Chair: Paul Gwynne – Chair (Infrastructure Lab and First Aid),
Structures Lab), Patricia Karwan (WRC), Xabier Vazquez Campos (Postgraduate Rep.), Catrionia Tate (Undergraduate Rep.)
Secretary and Chief Warden:
Emergency Control Organisation and First Aid Officers: Richard Berndt, Gautam Chattopadhyay, John Gilbert, Kristy Guia, Paul Gwynne, Kelvin Ong.
Hugh McMullen – Secretary (HS and Facilities Officer), Members and Representation for 2013:
The provision of a safe work environment for all School staff and students remains the School’s highest priority.
Stephen Foster (HoS), Les Brown (Admin. and IT), Irene Calaizis (CIES), Larry Paice (WRL), Gautam Chattopadhyay/ Kelvin Ong (WQL and First Aid), Ali Akbarnezhad (Academic), Ron Moncay/John Gilbert (Heavy
OUR RESEARCH
37
CERSA
The Civil and Environmental Engineering Research Student Association (CERSA) is the official student body that represents postgraduate research students within the School. CERSA committee, which is elected by research students, is responsible for liaising between students and other managerial teams within the school (Research Management Committee and Health and Safety Committee) and university (ARC Student Organisation). Furthermore, the committee also organises many social, academic and industry-related events to ensure a well-rounded university experience for all research students within the school. In 2013, we welcomed 48 new students as well as merging 40 SAGE students at our bi-annual BBQs. With great turn out and positive feedbacks from students, CERSA had successfully organised in total 11 indoor and outdoor social events including Pizza & Board Game Nights, Blue
38
Mountains bushwalking event, Vivid Sydney, and Aroma Festival, creating numerous networking opportunities within the school. Academic writing workshop was introduced per students’ requests, aiming to improve general scientific communication skills. In addition, CERSA was pleased to bring back Post PhD Career Night, allowing opportunities to network with alumni speakers who had obtained PhD in relevant fields and their chosen career paths; as well as to learn valuable tips and tricks in job seeking process from UNSW career counsellor.
2013 CERSA Committee
Without constant support from the school and research students, CERSA would not have a successful 2013. With a steadily growing number of research students within the school, CERSA is aiming for a more exciting 2014 with a wider range of activities, so stay tuned!
General Committee Members: Anna Yeung Ali Kaboli Komeil Hashemiheidari
Lam Ho - President CERSA
OUR RESEARCH
Executives: President – Lam Ho Treasurer – Conrad Wasko Secretary – Renard Siew ARC Delegate - Yliane YvanesGiuliani Representatives: H&S Representative: Xabier Vazquez Campos Media Coordinator: Huijie Yu Teaching & Learning Representative: Chengwei Yang SAGE Representatives: Fadhillah Norzahari and Joseph Gauthier
L-R Back: Renard Siew, Conrad Wasko, Ali Kaboli, Yliane YvanesGiuliani, Komeil Hashemiheidari, Front: Xabier Vazquez Campos, Anna Yeung, Lam Ho, Huijie Yu, Chengwei Yang
Research Students
Cai, Yingzhe Mick Isotope hydrology, water resources Supervisor: McCabe, M / Evans, J Ataei, Abdolreza Steel and composite structures Supervisor: Bradford, M
Agarwal, Ankit Strengthening of tubular steel structures using CFRP Supervisors: Hamed, E; Foster, SJ
Aghighi, Hossein Machine Learning Approaches For Terrain Feature Extraction From Imagery And Lidar Data. Supervisor: Trinder, J
Ahmadian Fard Fini, Alireza Forecasting and minimising delay in construction Waller S; Akbarnezhad A; Hossein Rashidi, T.
Allan, Rebecca Jane Backward erosion piping of dams Supervisor: Douglas, K
Allis, Michael James Wave breaking onset, speed and strength for 3D deep water waves Supervisor: Peirson, W
Almohssen, Abdulaziz Saud Tracking Subcontractors Reputation Supervisor: Davis, S
Alqurashi, Muwaffaq Awadh O GNSS, INS And Vision Sensor Integration For 3D Mapping Supervisor: Wang, J Alsultan, Abdulmajeed Sulaiman M Urban Traffic Network Design Supervisors: Dixit, V / Waller, S Alvarez Gaitan, Juan Pablo Sustainability of water and wastewater treatment chemicals Supervisor: Moore, S/ Peters, G
Amin, Ali Steel fibre reinforced concrete Supervisor: Foster, S
Amini, Nima Solution Methods for Incorporation and Evaluation of Real Time Ramp Metering Strategies using Dynamic Traffic Assignment on Regional Networks Supervisors: Waller, S/ Gardner, L
Arbis, David Evaluation Of ITS In Improving Safety & Operations Of Cyclists At Unsignalised Intersections Supervisors: Hossein Rashidi, T/ Dixit, V Asadi Zarch, Mohammad Amin Hydroclimatology Supervisor: Bellie, S/ Sharma, A
Carvajal Ortega, Guido Trace chemical contaminants in water and wastewater treatment processes Supervisor: Khan, S Azcurra, Cecilia Isotopes in hydrology Supervisor: McCabe, M
Babaee, Seyed Mahdi The Durability of Geopolymer Concrete in Marine Environments Supervisors: Castel, A/ Akbarnezhad, A
Bai, Yun Coupled thermo-chemo-flow- deformation analysis of multiphase multi-porous media Supervisor: Khalili, N Bertuzzi, Robert Estimating rock mass strength and stiffness with particular interest in the load on a tunnel lining Supervisor: Douglas, K
Castilla Rho, Juan Carlos The effects of climate change on coastal aquifers Supervisor: Andersen, M/ Mariethoz, G
Chen, Guangwu The Carbon Footprint of Australian Cities Supervisor: Wiedmann, T
Chen, Xiaojun Computational Mechanisms Supervisor: Song, C/ Birk, C
Boland, Daniel Fate of metal contaminants during iron oxide crystallisation Supervisor: Waite, TD
Chiong, Irene A scaled boundary finite-element limit and shakedown approach Supervisor: Song, C
Bracs, Melissa Anne Monitoring and modelling scale coastal variability: implications for the establishment of a national coastal observing network Supervisor: Turner, I
Cholathat, Rattanasuda Land Surface Monitoring in Geo-sequestration using RADAR Remote Sensing Supervisor: Ge, L
OUR RESEARCH
Choudhury, Dipayan Hydroclimatology Supervisor: Sharma, A Chowdhury, Morsaleen Shehzad Structural Engineering Supervisor: Song, C Cooke, Jeffrey Thomas Integrated Water Demand Forecasting And Sustainability Assessment Supervisor: Wiedmann, T
Das Gupta, Monami Synthesis, Characterisation And Bactericidal Activity Of Novel Silver Nanoparticles On Silica Supports Supervisor: Waite, TD
de Burgh, James Matthew Practical modelling and analysis of concrete building and tunnel structures in fire Supervisor: Foster, S Do, Anh Tuan Stability Of Composite Steel Concrete T-Section Beams Continuous Over One Or More Supports. Supervisor: Bradford, M
Do, Duy Minh Structural safety assessment, non-deterministic analysis vehicle bridge interaction dynamics, numerical analysis Supervisor: Gao, W
Donnelly, Nicolas Ian Next Generation Datum For Australia And New Zealand: Accounting For Deformation Supervisor: Rizos, C
39
Fabiao Dionizio, Manuel LIDAR For Carbon Accounting Supervisor: Aboutanios
Duell, Melissa Strategic traffic assignment: methods of modelling day-to-day flow volatility Supervisor: Waller, ST / Gardner, L
Dunlop, Mark Wayne Odour Emissions From Poultry Litter Supervisor: Stuetz, R
Ebrahimi Nejad Rafsanjani, Meysam Projects and carbon Supervisor: Carmichael, DG
Eghdamirad, Sajjad Assessing the Impact of Uncertainty in Hydrology through Numerical Climate Modelling Supervisors: Sharma, A / Johnson, F Elhadayri, Farj Constitutive modelling of lightly cemented unsaturated soils Supervisor: Khalili, N
Ershadi Esmaeilabadi, Ali Remote sensing hydrology Supervisor: Evans, J/McCabe, M
Figueroa, Ligaya Leah Development of a GIS-based Model for Decentralised Education Resource Planning & Management in the Philippines Supervisor: Lim, S Foerster, Jean Natural resource projects Supervisor: Carmichael, DG
Gharib, Mohammad Mahdi Shear And Tensile Fracture Of Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete Supervisor: Foster, S Ghasrikhouzani, Milad Travel demand modelling and land use modelling Supervisors: Waller, S/ Hossein Rashidi, T
Gholamhoseini, Alireza The time-dependent behavior of composite concrete slabs with profiled steel decking Supervisor: Gilbert, RI Graham, Peter William Groundwater, hydrogeology Supervisor: McCabe, M Grinter, Thomas Anthony Implementing A PPP Service Within CORSnetNSW Supervisor: Roberts, C
Gui, Yilin Cracking in unsaturated soils Supervisor: Khalili, N
Haasdyk, Joel Edward Coordinate Dynamics and Deformation in Large Scale Geodetic Supervisor: Rizos, C
Haji Abdul Hamid, Nor Zetty Akhtar Geocoded address based on geographical information system to prepare a spatially enabling government Supervisor: Lim, S
He, Di Silver nanoparticlemediated generation of reactive oxygen species Supervisor: Waite, TD Halloran, Landon James Szasz Groundwater Supervisor: Andersen, M
Hammad, Ahmed Multi-objective Optimisation in Construction Supervisor: Akbarnezhad, A
He, Ke Blast loading on bridges Supervisors: Birk, C / Song, C He, Xudong Modelling of systems with discontinuities using the scaled boundary finite element method Supervisor: Birk, C Henderson, Ian Edward James Vibration assessment of composite structures using vibration methods Supervisor: Uy, B
Hasan, Mohammad Mahadi Hydrology Supervisor: Sharma, A
Hashemiheidari, Seyedkomeil Blast loading on bridges Supervisor: Bradford, M
Ho, Lam Synthesis of activated carbon supported zero valent iron nanoparticles and application for contaminant degradation in benthic sediments Supervisor: Waite, TD
Hossain, Sumaiya Bushra Rock Dynamics. Discrete element method; Stress wave progagation Supervisor: Zhao, G
Howe, Daniel Coastal engineering Supervisor: Blenkinsopp, C/Turner, I Huang, Yue Long-term behaviour of high-strength concrete panels Supervisor: Hamed, E Islam, Md Kamrul Modelling route choice behaviour under uncertainty Supervisor: Vandebona, U James, Edward Malcolm Payment systems for soft soils Supervisors: Oeser,M/ Russell, A
Jian, Sisi Transport Network Planning Supervisors: Dixit ,V / Waller, S
Jiang, Chao Mechanism and Kinetics of Ferrous Iron Oxidation and Ferric Iron Reduction in Photolysed Natural Waters Supervisor: Waite, TD
Jiang, Wei Locata/GNS Integration Challenges Supervisor: Rizos, C
Esfahani Kan, Mojtaba Seismic deformation analysis of earth and rockfill dams Supervisor: Taiebat, H
40
Hassan, Asif Departure time choice under uncertain travel time Supervisors: Dixit, V / Waller, S Hassan, M. Mahmudul Climate Change Adaptation Supervisor: Peirson, W Hayes, James Emerson Olfactory Analysis Of Ardorous Emissions Supervisor: Stuetz
OUR RESEARCH
Jiang, Yiping Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring For The Next Generation GNSS Supervisor: Wang, J
Kaboli, Seyed Alireza Lifecycle costs of steel petrochemical structures Supervisor: Carmichael, DG
Karki, Alex Parking Optimization Supervisor: Dixit, V Karna, Barun Lai Advanced characterisation of organic matters in desalination pre-treatment Supervisor: Henderson, R/Le Clech, P
Kearney, Edward Tah Dah Monitoring and Modelling of Storm Induced Beach Erosion Supervisor: Turner, I
Khajeh Samani Ali Ductility in reinforced concrete columns Supervisor: Attard, M Khan, Bilal Groundwater modelling, increase problems, parameters estimation Supervisor: Mariethoz, G Khan, Mahbub Hossain Behaviour and design of composite columns with high strength steel and high strength concrete Supervisor: Uy, B
Khan, Mohammad Zaved Kaiser Hydrology Supervisor: Sharma, A Khan, Mst Shakera Karim Development of a generic catchment classification framework in hydrology Supervisor: Bellie, S
Khan, Urooj Semi-distributed modeling Supervisor: Sharma, A
Khezei, Mani Buckling and postbuckling behaviour of composite laminated structures with material non-linearities Supervisor: Bradford, M
Kim, Seokhyeon Flood Forecasting Supervisors: Johnson, F / Sharma, A Kobayashi, Yumi Life cycle assessment and risk assessment Supervisors: Khan, S/ Peters, G
Le, Hung Viet Fate of volatile OrganoSulfur compounds in odour assessment Supervisor: Stuetz, R
Li, Chao Fracture analysis of piezoelectric composites by using scaled boundary finite element method Supervisor: Song, C Li, Jingwan Hydroclimatology Supervisors: Evans, J / Sharma, A
Li, Liyuan SAR and optical imagery registration Supervisor: Ge, L Li, Tao Real-Time Quality Control For Precise GNSS Positioning Supervisor: Wang, J Li, Xiang Advanced characterisation of dissolved organic nitrogen in drinking water sources Supervisor: Henderson, R/Khan, S Li, Xun Revenue Neutral Congestion Pricing Mechanism Supervisors: Dixit, V / Waller, S
Li, Zeyu Vision-Based Mapping And Navigation Supervisor: Wang, J
Liu, Li Automatic Road Extraction Based on LiDAR and Integrated Remote Sensing Data Supervisor: Lim, S
Liu, Nengguang Uncertain modeling and uncertain methods; Vehicle - bridge interaction dynamics; Wind and/or sersmic induced random vibration; structural stability and reliability analysis Supervisor: Gao, W
Liu, Youtian InSAR Technique for Earthquake Studies Supervisor: Ge, L Lui, Gough Yumu Photovoltaic powered UV diode disinfection of drinking, surface, and groundwater Supervisor: Corkish,R/ Roser, D
Ma, Tian Photochemistry of silver halides: implications to reactive oxygen species generation and water treatment Supervisor: Waite,TD
Ma, Xiaoming Application of nanoparticulate zero valent iron to remediation of contaminated benthic sediments Supervisor: Waite, TD
Mac, Thi Ngoc Time dependent behaviour of slope Supervisor: Khalili, N/ Zhao, G Luo, Kai Structural analysis and optimization, computational mechanics, structural safety and reliability Supervisors: Gao, W/ Pi, Y-L
Luu, Trung Kien Numerical simulation of the behaviour of composite frames at elevated temperatures Supervisor: Bradford, M
Maghrebi, Mojtaba Use Machine Learning To Automatically Plan Dispatching Supervisor: Sammut, C/ Waller, ST
Maheshwari, Pradeep Optimisation of coagulant addition to submerged membrane bioreactors using computational and experimental methods. Supervisor: Waite, TD
Ma, Jianjun Coupled flow deformation of fractured porous media subject to elastoplastic damage Supervisor: Khalili, N Mahmud, Kashif Groundwater modelling, heterogeneity, transport processes, contaminated sites Supervisor: Mariethoz, G
Lee, Sing Siu Michael Composite steel/concrete structures Supervisor: Bradford, M
OUR RESEARCH
41
Moutabsherkati, Shahrokh Dynamics Analysis of Unsaturated Porous Media Subject to Damage due to Cracking Supervisor: Khalili, N Mao, Tuo Transport Network Modelling And Optimisation Supervisors: Gardner, L / Dixit, V Mazumder, Maruful Hasan Anchorage of reinforcement in concrete structures subjected to loading and environmental extremes Supervisor: Gilbert,R I
Moalafhi, Ditiro Benson Regional Climate Reanalysis for Hydrological Applications Supervisors: Sharma , A / Evans, J Mohamad Abas, Fairul Zahri Strength of fibre reinforced concrete slabs with profiled steel decking Supervisor: Gilbert, RI
Mohd Zaki, Zaizatul Zafflina Binti The Effect of Group Wave on Wave Setup at Estuaries Supervisor: Peirson, W
Moon, Sungkon Process centered dynamic quality control in construction Supervisor: Bernold, L/ Davis, S
Moussavi Nadoushani, Zahra Sadat Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment of Construction Projects Using Information Technology Supervisor: Akbarnezhad, A
42
Musa, Idris Ahmed Buckling of thick plates Supervisor: Attard, M Mustapha, Azwan Dimension Reduction Supervisor: Sharma, A Nahar, Jannatun Bias Correction Of General Circulation Models Supervisor: Johnson, F
Naseem, Bushra Surface water hydrology Supervisor: Sharma, A Nikhoush, Arash Sustainability In Construction Supervisor: Akbarnezhad, A Norzahari, Nur Fadhillah Lidar Supervisors: Turner, R / Lim, S Park, Hong Joo Modeling Of Forestry Structure And Estimating Biomass Of Individual Tree Using Full-Waveform Lidar Data Supervisor: Lim, S
Parvez, Md. Ahsan Fibre reinforced concrete structures Supervisor: Foster, S Pells, Steven Edward Erosion of rock in spillways Supervisor: Douglas, K/ Peirson, W Peng, Yuan Cost contingency Supervisor: Davis, S Perera, Weebadda Arachchilage Salinda Study causes of defect occurrence and issues Supervisor: Davis, S
Shukla, Raghupati Laxmipati Use of locate technology for high precision application Supervisor: Rizos, C Peterson, Mark Aaron Ground water resources in fractured rock aquifers using geochemical and isotopic methods Supervisor: Andersen, M/Cendon, D Pflugrath, Brett Dean Passage of fish through hydraulic structures Supervisors: Peirson, W/ Cathers, B
Rahnamayie Zekavat, Payam Effect of information richness on project performance Supervisor: Bernold, L
Rana, Mohammad Masud Behaviour of posttensioned composite steel-concrete slabs Supervisor: Uy, B
Rancic, Aleksandra Sanja Groundwater levels in fractured rocks - climate and land use impacts Supervisor: Acworth, I
Rocheta, Eytan Simulating persistence in future rainfall: correcting GCM bias in regional climate models Supervisor: Sharma, A
Salimzadeh, Saeed Numerical modelling of two phase fluid flow through deformable fractured porous media Supervisor: Khalili, N Shutova, Yulia Water Quality Supervisor: Baker, A / Henderson, R
Saputra, Albert Artha Computational mechanics and structural analysis Supervisor: Birk, C/ Song, C Scaturro, Salvatore Fluid Mechanics Supervisors: Peirson, B/ Cathers, B Senthooran, Ilankaikone Transport Optimization Modelling Supervisor: Waller, S
Sepasgozar, Samad Technology adoption decision making in construction management Supervisor: Bernold, L
Shao,You Building Footprints Extraction for Complex Terrain using Lidar Data and Aerial Image Supervisor: Lim, S Shi, Xue Uncertain analysis of engineering structures, structural reliability analysis, structural dynamics Supervisor: Gao, W/ Pi, Y-L
Shirowzhan, Sara GIS And Lidar Supervisors: Lim, S / Turner I Saket, Arvin Ocean Energy Supervisor: Peirson, W
OUR RESEARCH
Siew, Yung Jhien Renard Sustainability analysis Supervisor: Carmichael, DG
Sriskandarajah, Sanchayan Reactive powder concrete subjected to high temperature and temperature cycles Supervisor: Foster, S
Stanaway, Richard Frank Development Geodetic Ref System Of Dynamic Transformation Parameters To Relate The ITRF To Static Regional Dynamic Datum Supervisor: Roberts, C
Su, Lijuan Lateral and post buckling with shear effects Supervisor: Attard, M
Sun,Yingying Iron and copper-mediated oxidant production in natural and engineered aquatic systems Supervisors: Waite, TD / Pham, A
Sun, Zhicheng Fracture analysis by using the scaled boundary finite element method Supervisor: Song, C
Vazquez Campos, Xabier Urabuyn heap leaching biogeochemistry Supervisor: Neilan, B/ Waite,TD
Tang, Yi Numerical modelling of installation and pullout capacity at caissons Supervisor: Taiebat, H Teh, Sek Yee Upheaval Buckling Of Pavements Supervisor: Bradford, M
Vo, Thanh Liem Soil-structure interaction Supervisor: Russell, A
Wang, Lili Using of Enantiomeric fraction to characterize the performance of biological waste water treatment processes Supervisor: Khan, S Wang, Xin Remote Sensing For Urban Planning Supervisor: Ge, L
Wasko, Conrad Dominic Hydro climatology Supervisor: Sharma, A Wang, Bei Treatability of odorants in abatement system Supervisor: Stuetz, R
Teo, Tiffany Li Lee Analysis of true chemical contaminants in water Supervisors: Coleman, H / Khan, S Torbaty, Mohammadali Computational hydraulics and computational fluid mechanics Supervisor: Cathers, B/ Yeoh, G
Tran, Thao Minh Fouling of anaerobic membrane bioreactors Supervisor: Stuetz, R/ LeClech, P
Tran, Trong Binh Project and organisational staffing – cultural issues Supervisor: Davis, S
Wang, Chen Hybrid probabilistic and non-probabilistic analysis of structures with uncertainties Supervisor: Gao, W Wang, Junchao Computational mechanics Supervisor: Song, C
Wang, Kai Implications Of Extracellular Electron Transfer Of Chattonella Marin Supervisor: Waite, TD
Wang, Ke (Isabella) Remote Sensing Applications Supervisor: Trinder, J
Watson, Phil John Application of modern time-series analysis to improve context of sealevel trend estimates Supervisor: Cox, RJ
Wen, Tao Transport Network Modelling Supervisors: Waller, S/ Gardner, L
Wijayaratna, Kasum Pradeepa Modelling the reliability of transport network Supervisor: Waller, ST/ Dixit, V Wijesiri Pathirana, Indika Sameera Topic TBA Supervisor: Uy, B
Woldemeskei, Fitsum Markos Hydrology Supervisor: Sharma, A Wu, Di Limit and shake down analysis, uncertain methods and non-deterministic analysis, structural analysis and optimization Supervisors: Gao, W/ Tin-Loi, F
Wu, Hao Optimisation of excess sludge dewatering and phosphorus recovery in submerged membrane bioreactors Supervisors: Waite, TD/ Wang, Y
Xiang, Tingsong Scaled boundary finite element analysis of plates and shells Supervisor: Song, C
Xiao, Wei Iron Oxides Transformations in Oxic and Anoxic Aqueous Environments Supervisor: Waite, TD
Xin, Yongija Membrane fouling control Supervisor: Waite,TD
Yang, Hongwei In-situ testing of unsaturated soils Supervisor: Russell, A
Yang, Ling Fault Detection And Isolation And Its Application In GNSS/Locata/INS Integrated Navigation System Supervisor: Rizos, C
Yap, Russell Kong Leng Water treatment Supervisors: Henderson, R / Peirson, W
Yeung, Anna Chi Ying Factors influencing the growth and toxicity of cyanobacteria in drinking water supplies Supervisor: Waite, TD / Neilan, B Yin, Peijie Micromechanics of unsaturated flow in fractured porous medium Supervisor: Zhao, G Yousefnia Pasha, Amin Numerical modeling of cone penetration in unsaturated soils Supervisor: Khalili, N/ Khoshghalb A
Yu, Huijie Contaminant degradation by supported Ag nanoparticles Supervisor: Waite, TD
Yang, Chengwei, Nondeterministic analysis of linear and nonlinear structures Supervisor: Gao, W
Tsarev, Sergey Biogeochemistry Supervisor: Collins, R
OUR RESEARCH
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Yuan, Fang Climate chance impacts on coastal shoreline processes Supervisor: Cox, R
Zhao, Kai The Development of Fingerprinting-based Indoor Positioning Method Supervisor: Dempster, A
Yuan, Xiu Light and free-radical mediated transformation kinetics of copper species in natural waters Supervisor: Waite, TD
Zhou, Peiyuan Ionosphere Modelling For Precise GNSS Positioning Supervisor: Wang, J Zhou, Yuening Research On ChinaAustralia Construction Supply Chain Supervisor: Davis, S
Yvanes-Giuliani, Yliane Auriane Morgan Effective remediation of acidified coastal environments using biogeochemical processes Supervisor: Collins, R / Waite, TD
Zainuddin, Nur Syahiza Sources and mobility of arsenic in alluvial river sediments Supervisor: Andersen, M Zhang, Xinlei Alternative project management practices Supervisor: Carmichael, DG
Zhang, Zhenghua Optimisation of hybrid coagulation/submerged membrane bioreactor treatment of wastewaters Supervisor: Waite, TD
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Zhu, Jianbei Elasto-plastic thermal lateral buckling analysis of submerged oil and gas pipelines curved in plan Supervisor: Attard, M
PhD Graduates 2013
Aljassmi, Hamad Abdulla Mohd Anatomy Of Construction Defects Supervisord: S Davis/L Bernold Almagbile, Ali Fu’ad Salim GNSS/INS Integration for Positioning and Navigation: Modelling and Quality Analysis Supervisors: J Wang/J Trinder Al-Shaery, Ali Mohammed Addressing Some Remaining Challenges of Integrated High Precision GPS/GLONASS Positioning Supervisor: C Rizos / S Lim Chu, Hai Tung Integration of multisource remote sensing data for improvement of landcover classification Supervisors: L Ge / C Rizos Farhan, Aulia Riza Assessment of integrated coastal zone management : a case study in the Seribu Islands, Indonesia Supervisors: S Lim / C Roberts
Hambly, Adam Christopher Fluorescence As A Tool For Detection Of Failures In Recycled Water Treatment Supervisors: R Stuetz/ S Khan
Hosseinian, Seyedmahdi The principal-agent problem and project delivery methods Supervisors: D Carmichael/ S Davis
OUR RESEARCH
Jeremiah, Erwin Joachim A Bayesian framework for reducing structural and parameter uncertainty in hydrological modelling Supervisor: A Sharma Jury, Karen Lilian Investigation Of The Role Of Antibacterial Drugs In Municipal Wastewater As A Selective Influence On The Spread Of Bacterial Resistance Supervisors: R Stuetz/N Ashbolt Li, Tao Real-Time Quality Control For Precise GNSS Positioning. Supervisors: J Wang /C Roberts
Li, Xun Vision-Based navigation with reality-based 3D maps Supervisors: J Wang / W Ding Masoumi, Hossein Experimental investigation into the mechanical behaviour of intact rock at different scales Supervisors: A Russell / K Douglas
McCallum, Andrew Murray River-aquifer interactions in stressed seni-arid environments Supervisors: I Acworth / M Andersen
Mohammadi, Samaneh Large Deformation Analysis Of Slopes. Supervisors: H Taiebat/N Khalili
Shamsoddini, Ali Retrieval of pine plantation structure using remotely sensed data fusion Supervisors: J Trinder/R Turner; A Milne; C Rizos
Singh, Sachin Fluorescence As An Online Monitoring Tool For Water Recycling. Supervisors: S Khan/R Stuetz, R Henderson Tran, Hanh Van Alternative formulations in project management Supervisors: DG Carmichael/S Davis
Trinh,Thi Thanh Trang Decentralized MBR for Water Reuse Supervisors: S Khan/R Stuetz, H Coleman
Yan, Xia On the enhancement of air-water constituent transfer by vorticity generated by non-breaking water waves Supervisors: W Peirson/I Turner ME Xing, Guowei Transformation Of Copper By Hydrogen Peroxide In Aqueous Solution Supervisors: TD Waite/A Pham
OUR TEACHING
Teaching and Learning Report
The Teaching and Learning Committee (TLC) of the School is responsible for all academic matters relating to all undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs; these involve:
Teaching and Learning Committee 2013 Dr Steven Davis
Chair
Stephen Moore
Deputy Chair & Environmental Eng Program Coordinator
OOproviding teaching aids to staff,
Associate Professor Mario Attard
OOmonitoring courses through student focus group surveys,
Associate Head (Academic) Civil Engineering & Civil with Architecture Programs Coordinator
Julijana Baric
Student Centre Manager
Dr Chris Blenkinsopp (S1)/ Dr Gregoire Mariethoz (S2)
Year 2 Coordinator
Dr Carolin Birk
Structures Representative
A/Prof Leonhard Bernold
CIT & ET Liaison
Dr Vinayak Dixit
Year 4 Coordinator
Dr Kurt Douglas
Geotechnical Representative
OOencouraging teaching quality,
OOinteraction with student representatives of CEVSOC and research student tutors through CERSA, OOsetting policy regarding academic aspects of undergraduate and postgraduate examinations and enrolments, OOproviding a focal point for student assistance in undergraduate and postgraduate coursework matters. The major drive behind the Committee’s agenda is to improve the learning experience of students. The members of the committee in 2013 were:
46
Dr Ehab Hamed, Dr Fiona Johnson (S1)/ Dr Johnson Shen Year 3 Coordinator (S2) A/Prof Bill Peirson
Water Representative
Dr Hossein Taiebat
Year 1 Coordinator Postgraduate Coursework Coordinator
Dr Upali Vandebona
Industrial Training Coordinator
OUR TEACHING
In 2013 the Committee administered the first year of the innovative School Teaching Initiative Grant Scheme (STIGS) which provided funding to support various teaching related initiatives – the aim being to develop and implement innovations in School teaching and learning, and to support the improvement of the student experience through teaching related activities. Five applications were successful, ranging from providing online resources for HSC engineering students, improved online learning for current project & construction management postgraduate courses, a blended delivery approach for the undergraduate structural dynamics course, a special summer course in satellite remote sensing and applications, and in improving the visual and print quality of our postgraduate distance course material. See accompanying story for fuller details. In December 2013 a further six teaching initiatives applications were successful in receiving funding commitments for 2014. These initiatives ranged from continuing with online
Undergraduate Student Enrolments in 2013 Degree
Admisssions in 2013
Total Enrolments
Graduations
Bachelor of Engineering, BE (Civil) 3620
190
715
222
Bachelor of Engineering, Civil Engineering with Architecture 3624
61
192
22
Bachelor of Engineering, BE (Environmental Engineering) 3625
22
71
10
Bachelor of Engineering/Arts, BE BA (Civil/Arts) 3621
n/a
10
7
Bachelor of Engineering/Arts, BE BA (Environmental/Arts) 3626
n/a
4
2
Bachelor of Engineering. BE BE (Civil & Environmental) 3631
66
95
36
Bachelor of Engineering, BE BE (Civil & Mining) 3146
44
131
8
Bachelor of Engineering/Science, BE BSc (Civil/Science) 3730
16
41
3
Bachelor of Engineering/Science, BE BSc (Environmental Engineering/Science) 3735
3
6
5
Bachelor of Engineering/Law, BE LLB (Civil/Environmental Law) 4775/4776/4777
3
18
0
Bachelor of Engineering/Commerce, BE BCom (Civil/Environmental Commerce) 3715
74
252
43
Bachelor of Engineering/Arts, BE BA (Engineering/Arts) 3703/3704
8
25
0
Bachelor of Engineering (Surveying/SIS Science), BE Surv 3741/3746 0
6
3
Bachelor of Engineering (Surveying/Geoinformation Systems) 3742
17
42
3
Total
504*
1608
364
*Does not include Flexible First Year entry students
teaching innovations and improvements within undergraduate and postgraduate courses, to providing a more hands-on approach in water quality laboratory classes, and to
supporting a fourth year student-industry showcase forum on sustainable infrastructure design.
Industrial Training Networking Evening Another new and successful TLC event in 2013 was in their support for the student organisation CEVSOC in hosting an Industrial Training Networking evening in May, where fourth year students shared their successful experiences of Industrial Training with hopeful third year students. School industry partners ARUP and Evans & Peck were also involved, as well as representatives from APESMA and UNSW Courses and Careers. Andrew Allen, Principal at Evans & Peck, gave an excellent talk on the employer’s perspective. Josh Farr, President of CEVSOC shared his experiences working on the M2 as part of his Industrial training. Nearly 200 students turned up for the event.
OUR TEACHING
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School Teaching Initiative Grants 2013
INNOVATOR: Carolin Birk – Blended teaching approach Dr Carolin Birk joined the School academic staff in 2011, having been a European Union Marie Curie Fellow - and Visiting Fellow at the School in 2009 and 2010. Her research interests are in computational mechanics and numerical modelling of time-dependent problems, with applications to structural dynamics, soil-structure interaction and non-destructive testing. As well as conducting first class research, Carolin is also passionately committed to inspiring young students in the field. One of her courses, structural dynamics is an elective for fourth year students. The course is quite a demanding one – with some challenging concepts. With the help of a Teaching Initiative Grant from the School in 2013, Carolin was able to instigate some key changes in course delivery and in learning practice. Carolin arranged for her lectures to be filmed live, and, with the installation of special software on her computer, her lecture slides were also incorporated into the same video. This meant that students could re-watch the lecture as many times as they 48
wished, review its content thoroughly and at their own pace. Only students enrolled in CVEN4308 could access the video through the University’s online teaching and learning system Moodle. For the lecture slides Carolin prints her original PowerPoint slides to Microsoft OneNote. Using her tablet in the lecture, she can write (sometimes long) derivations on the tablet screen, by hand, which is projected onto the screen in the lecture hall. Sometimes she presents complete solutions to example problems, step by step, by developing them on the tablet. The software captures all of that as lecture notes. The question in Carolin’s mind was – if students can watch the lecture online – will they still come to the classroom. Carolin is a strong supporter of teaching in real space/time, both for learning outcomes and for her own practice as teacher. “However” she is keen to point out, “this doesn’t mean that the new technologies can’t be effectively used for improving learning. A blended teaching approach is desirable. “ Another major change made was in the nature of assessment. Carolin OUR TEACHING
aimed to replace the three existing major tutorial submissions, which involved lengthy hand written calculations, with shorter - and more - online quizzes and tutorials. This would encourage students to revise and apply the weekly lecture content within a shorter turn- around time, and at the same time would test and encourage students’ understanding rather than just their capacity for lengthy handcalculations. Work on these online tutorials - using Smartsparrow - an adaptive eLearning platform which provides students with customised educational content and unique feedback - is still ongoing while the videoed lectures have already been uploaded to Moodle in her 2013 classes. The result? Carolin has received extremely positive feedback from students, and the class attendance was not affected. From this successful early trial, Carolin will be seeking to improve students’ learning experience in all her other classes, and also to share the fruits of her experience with her academic colleagues at the School.
INNOVATOR: Materials developed for new course on Satellite Remote Sensing and Applications: Innovator -Associate Professor Linlin Ge This teaching initiative project brought together leading remote sensing scientists from the United States, Germany and Japan as guest lecturers, exploring multimedia teaching techniques and integrating extensive remote sensing teaching materials from three universities (UNSW, Stanford and Germany’s Technical University of Munich (TUM). It also involved leading scientists from NASA, Germany’s Aerospace Centre (DLR) and Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) including remote sensing expert and space engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr Scott Hensley. Each visiting scholar gave presentations on their particular area of expertise. Videos of the scientists’ lectures were professionally edited and made for testing by CVEN students in current undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Feedback from students has since been used to improve the
contents. Tutorials and on-line quizzes have also been developed for a new course on Satellite Remote Sensing and Applications.
“Many engineering problems” Steven notes, “require that students be able to think in terms of graphic models in order to solve them.”
Presentations looked closely at remote sensing applications such as dam deformation under loading, ground settlement, slope stability, structural thermal deformation, soil moisture and water quality monitoring. As Associate Professor Linlin Ge explains, ‘the new course material will line up well with existing civil and environmental programs in the School.’
One example is the precedence diagram used to model the schedule of a construction project. Students need to be able to construct this network and be able to use it to solve the scheduling problem. Student understanding is most easily demonstrated through drawing a diagram of the appropriate model.
INNOVATOR: Dr Steven Davis, Chair of the School’s Teaching and Learning Committee, has been teaching project and construction management courses at the School for 15 years. His work for traditionally very large classes has always been at the cutting edge of online teaching and learning. In 2013 Steven won a grant from the School to pursue further advances in student learning, with continuing online assessment using graphical modelling programs in project management postgraduate courses.
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In 2013 under Steven’s guidance, the first JavaScript tool was created within current online assessment systems and used to assess students’ ability to solve problems using graphical models. It was a tool for assessment of decision trees. The next project is to create tools for assessment of precedence diagrams and development of fault trees. Results provided to the students from the computer will be immediate and detailed – with questions customised for each student. As Steven says, “students will be required to think at the modelling level and not just about how to apply mathematics to premade models.”
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INNOVATOR: Associate Professor Bill Peirson Postgraduate coursework Our postgraduate programme continues to be a longstanding, substantial teaching activity – and revenue earner - for our School. As Associate Professor Bill Peirson notes, its depth and scope sets us apart from any other engineering School in the country and would probably place us in the top ten internationally. As we look to further set ourselves apart from our competitors -including international universities we need to provide a clear, consistent, quality product that our students will appreciate and endorse to other leaders and would-be leaders in our industry. Bill won a 2013 School Teaching Initiative Grant in 2013 with the following agenda in mind: To establish a centralised electronic database of all existing postgraduate teaching materials.
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To edit and reformat these postgraduate teaching materials as School hard copy publications of consistent quality and format. These should be compact and appropriately branded to encourage students to keep these on display on their shelves in their offices. (Readings provided to students can be housed on Blackboard or Moodle or other facilities and would not be republished.) Drafting services would also be engaged to refresh and replace diagrams that have been sourced from external publications so that the School has unfettered use and publication rights of its teaching materials. As Bill notes, one of the most difficult aspect of postgraduate teaching is the time taken to develop worked examples. His plan is for the School to develop a much broader base of worked examples to be incorporated within the teaching materials.
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Bill’s grant focused on starting this important work on his area of expertise – with the postgraduate course CVEN9620 Channels, Rivers and Estuaries - with some input into the materials provided for CVEN9611 Urban Hydrology and Stormwater Management and CVEN9885 Environmental Engineers Science 2 Ultimately, Bill believes that all our postgraduate offerings could be made suitable for distance learning by either having quality printed notes and recorded lectures - or suitable academic access - so that students can work through the material independently; or by having quality printed notes to accompany our popular postgraduate short courses – preferably with video recorded lectures to enable students to revisit course content at their leisure.
MEngSc for Leighton 2013 In 2013 the School continued its delivery of a specialized Master of Engineering Science in Project Management specifically designed for Leighton Holdings, with over 90 staff enrolled from across the Group – Habtoor, John Holland, Leighton Asia, Leighton Contractors, Leighton Holdings and Thiess. We also celebrated the graduation of the first cohort. Congratulations to
trailblazers Nicola Abrahams, William Holden, Patrick Kwong, Brett Lumsdaine, Steve Merange, Mark Norris, Brett O’Leary, Paul Steendyk and Jordan Tomasel (pics of Nicola, Mark and Brett at UNSW ceremonies) The MEngSc provides Leighton staff with technical knowledge such as contracts, cost planning, design management, safety, tendering and estimating as well as developing their
professional skills such as leadership and team building, negotiation skills and people management. The program is taught by distance methods, with the School providing hard copy notes and facilitating online teaching and learning discussions. Leighton also organises a residential week where senior Leighton staff share their knowledge and experience with students.
Postgraduate coursework 2013 Postgraduate coursework teaching and learning has been one of the core activities and major strengths of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering for over fifty years, enabling local and international industry professionals to improve their performance and advance their careers. All our courses provide essential specialist knowledge, backed by cutting edge research and strong industry relationships. Since the program was first offered, we have graduated over four thousand MEngSc students, and with 519 coursework students enrolled in 2013 the School continued to be the leading and most experienced provider
of postgraduate engineering education in Australia. Commonwealth Support (HECS) in 2013 also made our MEngSc program financially very competitive for local students. Our Master of Engineering Science (MEngSc) educates students to the top level required nationally in eight specialisations: OOCivil Engineering OOEnvironmental Engineering OOGeotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology OOProject Management OOStructural Engineering OOTransport Engineering OOWater Resources OOWater, Wastewater and Waste Engineering OUR TEACHING
Courses in coastal engineering and construction management are also offered. The School offers nearly 40 postgraduate courses each year either as internal weekly courses, in short course mode or in a distance education format, making the program large even by international standards. For further details please visit the School website at http://www.engineering. unsw.edu.au/civil-engineering/coursework-degrees
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CEVSOC President’s Report 2013
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OUR TEACHING
In 2013, the Civil and Environmental Engineering Society (CEVSOC) built on the strong foundations of previous years and successfully expanded, most notably working alongside the Surveying Society (SURVSOC) to provide a range of exciting events to both student groups. CEVSOC’s first event of the year saw a new partnership with ARC club Engineers Without Borders (EWB), providing students the opportunity to explore alternative not-for-profit avenues of engineering, whilst aiding in the promotion of EWB. CEVSOC also invited a relatively new Arc club, Interior Architecture (INTASOC), to join CEVSOC on the annual Harbour Cruise, expanding the peer groups of both clubs, with over 250 people participating in the Sydney Harbour Cruise themed, ‘Barbarians, Librarians & Vegetarians.’ CEVSOC went from strength to strength, hosting their second annual First Year Camp, increasing participation to 100 first year students. The Club was consequently the recipient of the coveted Arc Student Community and Development Grant and the event established a strong first year student network, successfully helping integrate new students into university. This year also saw CEVSOC introduce several new industry sponsored
events, focussing on developing the relationship between the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the engineering industry, UNSW Alumni and students of varying years. CEVSOC ran events in conjunction with Northrop Consulting, as well as Evans & Peck, who sponsored a third year networking evening in which senior students volunteered to pass on the lessons they’d learned throughout their degrees to over 150 attending third year students.
currently over 1280 members. CEVSOC’s events all increased significantly in attendance and the numerous new initiatives helped ensure that the year was a huge success, and has provided a strong foundation for even further growth in the 2014 year.
This evening was succeeded by CEVSOC’s first Alumni event, providing fourth year students the opportunity to find out more about life after university. The relationship with Evans & Peck was further developed through their sponsorship and participation at the first ever ‘CEVSOC’s Got Talent’ evening. CEVSOC also built a stronger relationship with their affiliated school, the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering by introducing monthly meetings with the Head of School, Steve Foster, and assisted in the collection of student feedback through focus groups.
President: Josh Farr
A major aim for this year was to increase overall awareness and participation in events, which was successfully achieved and assisted by CEVSOC’s online Facebook membership increasing 69% from 2012 to
2nd Year Representative: Angus Lloyd
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Joshua Farr
CEVSOC President 2013
Vice President: Maritsa Kacopieros Treasurer: Joel Sercombe Secretary: Ivona Maric ARC Delegate: Han Zhang Sports Representative: Lisa Thom WHS Representative: Georgia Harmey ENGSOC Representative: Sam McCormick 3rd Year Representative: Jonathan Lustre
2nd Year Representative: Jessica Vorreiter 1st Year Representative: Christopher Mundy
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SurvSoc is the undergraduate student society for students enrolled in the BE Surveying and BE Geoinformation Systems. We organise social events such as barbecues at the start of each semester as well as at the end of semester. This gives students of all years the opportunity to meet, discuss and reminisce about their university experience over food and drink. It also gives students and staff the chance to get to know each other outside the classroom. 2012-2013 SurvSoc Office-Bearers OOPresident – Amanda Nicholas OOVice President - Alex Rowell OOTreasurer - Jacky Chan OOSecretary - Phillip Dao OOARC Delegate - Christina Lindop OOAUSIM/Industry Representative - Peter Boorer OO4th Year Representative - Jonathon Clancy OO3rd Year Representative - Geoffrey Ward OO2nd Year Representative - Henry Deng OO1st Year Representative - Belinda Serafin Above: SurvSoc President Amanda Nicholas
The Dean’s Awards are highly prestigious awards offered by the Faculty of Engineering, to recognise our high-achieving students – those who have a minimum High Distinction average - an overall cumulative UNSW WAM of 85. Twenty seven CVEN students received awards in 2014 for studies undertaken in 2013. Congratulations to all of the following: Ahmed Nashwan Abdul Matheen, Matthew John Bugden, Jonathan Jung
Him Chan, Timothy Cheung, Ming En Chin, Anh Duc, Jarrah Duckhs, Anthony Ignatius Ferraro, Alison Katrina Goddard, Nell Barbara Hardy, Alice Harrison, Sarah Elizabeth Hayes, Joanne Yun-Chiau Huang, Kyudong Kim, Jason Waihay Ko, Amanda Nicholas, Geeheon Jonathan Ngo, Kelvin Nguyen, Jeremy Ishwaran Rajendram, Daniel Christian Setioso, Karina Skye Siems, Rohan Taffy Stocker, Han Su, Nurinda Triwahyuni Suastha, Kelly Tang, Lennox Chun-Chai To, Camellia Wong.
2013 Student Prizes - School of Civil & Environmental Engineering University Medal - Civil Engineering Engineers Australia Rod McGee Medal 2013 Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) NSW award for Undergrad Student of the Year. Institute of Transportation Engineers Australia and New Zealand Undergraduate Student Prize The Alexander Wargon Prize The Jacob N Frenkel Prize The Welding Technology Institute of Australia Prize Engineers Australia Civil & Structural Engineering Prize The ASI Undergraduate Steel Design Award The R S Mather Memorial Prize The Class of ‘62 Full Time Civil and Surveying Engineering Alumni Prize The George Bennett Millenium Prize The JK Geotechnics Prize The Institution of Surveyors New South Wales Incorporated Prize The EGM Memorial Prize The Civil and Environmental Industry Prize The Consulting Surveyors’ NSW Prize in Land Development The CIVILCAD Prize The BOSSI Medal The Association of Public Authority Surveyors Prize The Crawford Munro Memorial Prize for CVEN3501 Water Resources Engineering
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OUR TEACHING
Tan, Xian Hui Neyland, Bryce MacGillicuddy, Ailesh Hargraves, Aaron Wu,Binhua Suastha,Nurinda Triwahyuni Chan,Jonathan Jung Him Berzins,Karl Cheung,Timothy Nicholas,Amanda Siems,Karina Skye Serafin,Belinda Ferraro,Anthony Ignatius Liu,Dichen Liu,Dichen Li,Jingwan McDonald,Timothy Alexander Boorer,Peter Aaron Clancy,Jonathan Serafin,Belinda Cheung,Timothy & Ferraro, Anthony I
Civil with Architecture Prize , sponsored by ARUP.
Thom, Lisa
Presented by Alex Edwards
Construction Management Prize sponsored by Brookfield Multiplex
Schmidt, Ryan
Presented by Darren Marshall (right)
Environmental Engineering Prize, sponsored by Thiess
Walker, Alice
Presented by Peta Olson
Geotechnical Engineering Prize sponsored by PSM
Jiang, Chao
Presented by Bernard Shen (right)
Structural Engineering Prize sponsored by Aurecon
Wu, Binhua
Presented by Tony Lavorato
Transport Engineering Prize sponsored by AECOM
Hargraves, Aaron
Presented by Wesley Rhode (right)
Water Engineering Prize sponsored by GHD
Cameron, Bronwyn
Presented by Neville Hutton
Civil Engineering Practice Prize sponsored by Cardno
Trieu, John
Presented by David Pitronaci
Environmental Engineering Practice Prize sponsored by Cardno
Maric, Ivona
Presented by Tanja Mackenzie (right)
Industrial Training Prize sponsored by URS
Cornell, Jennifer
Presented by Mark Foster
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Annual Year 4 Dinner 2013 The School’s annual Year 4 dinner was held at the Sheraton on the Park, and once again, a good time was had by all. 175 students and staff celebrated the end of four years of hard work, learning and achievement with dinner and dancing. Representatives from School industry partners AECOM, Arup, Aurecon, Brookfield Multiplex, Cardno, GHD,
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PSM, Thiess and URS attended to present their sponsored prizes to ten of our most outstanding students. The School wishes all our students the very best for their future plans and visions. And a big thank you to our generous industry sponsors for their continuing support.
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More photos of the dinner are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurt_ douglas/sets/72157638229986294/ ď Ź
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Industry Advisory Committee The Industry Advisory Committee is an important means by which links between the School and industry are maintained. Members of the IAC are drawn from private sector, government and consultant organisations. Its main function is that of “sounding board” for the School in regard to undergraduate and graduate programs, and research directions. The IAC membership represents a broad cross section of relevant industry sectors at a senior and influential level. This year, 2013, saw members of the IAC work very closely with the School in the successful organisation of the Industry Research Forum held at the UNSW CBD campus in February. The Forum provided an opportunity for the School to share its most innovative research with industry as well as further its understanding of current industry issues and needs through facilitated conversations and discussions with industry leaders. The IAC and the School have taken a long term approach to improving the standing of the School within the awareness and perception of possible future students, their parents, teachers and careers advisers. As a consequence, the School now reaches out to these groups in several practical ways: Presentation of maths prizes in primary schools; Year 10 visits to engineering projects and activities as an alternative form of “industry work experience” for high school students and sponsorship of attendance by school careers advisers at industry awards dinners for engineering excellence. Each of these means of outreach continues to receive very favourable feedback from participants. Finally our sincere and grateful thanks to retiring members Col Nicholson (General Manager, Operations, Sydney Water) and Les Wielinga (Director-General Transport NSW) for all their support and service. We wish them all the best in their busy retirements.
Ian McIntyre Principal, Evans and Peck
Ian McIntyre is the Group Contract Services Leader of Evans & Peck. As a consultant for the past 27 years, Ian has advised in relation to project delivery processes on a wide range of infrastructure, building and systems integration projects throughout Australia and South East Asia. His previous experience was in project management and construction engineering for a contractor on major civil engineering and multi disciplinary projects throughout Australia and in Hong Kong. He is frequently retained in “trouble shooting”, independent review and due diligence roles and has considerable experience in analysis of the reasons for project delivery problems, and of the factors which are typically associated with successful project delivery strategies leading to successful project outcomes. He is an experienced expert witness in relation to project performance issues.
Deirdre Agnew Student Careers Advisor St Aloysius Kirribilli Deirdre has worked in banking, insurance broking and market research in UK. She has also been employed in public relations/events management role for international conferences at the University of the Witwatersrand. She taught at Hornsby Girls’ High School, before moving into careers counselling. She spent fifteen years at St. Ignatius’ College, Riverview and has been at St. Aloysius College at Milsons Point since 2005. Deirdre is also a director of Australian Careers Advice, a professional careers consultancy.
Samantha Aston Senior Contracts Manager Leighton Contractors Samantha Aston has fifteen years experience in the construction industry in Australia and overseas and has a strong background in managing commercial matters on major building and civil engineering construction projects. Samantha held the positions of Commercial Manager for the Leighton Contractors project Botany B9 Paper Mill, ($110mill) (2010-2012); Divisional Commercial Manager in the Leighton Offshore Oil and Gas Division (2008–2010) ; Commercial Manager for Leighton Engineering & Construction (2007–2008). During 2013 she was Senior Contracts Manager at the Hansen Yuncken and Leighton Contractors Joint Venture in SA.
Ian McIntyre Chairman 58
INDUSTRY & COMMUNITY
Stephen Boss Regional Director NSW & QLD Construction + Development Brookfield Multiplex Limited Steve Boss has worked in the construction industry for the past two decades. Promoted to Regional Director of Brookfield Multiplex in December 2006, Steve oversees a number of current projects, is responsible for all Queensland projects, is involved in construction planning and feasibility for future projects, oversees allocation of staff to projects in NSW and Queensland and carries out peer reviews on a selection of current major projects.
Adrian Bull A/Deputy Project Director, Design and Engineering North West Rail Link Transport for NSW Adrian manages design activities of technical consultants working on major infrastructure projects in the Metropolitan Transport Plan as assigned by the NSW Government. He currently is working on the North West Rail Link for Transport for NSW, the State’s lead transport agency. Prior to that he managed Hyder Consulting’s structures function group in Sydney. He has directed design teams in the technical and commercial aspects of a number of building and rail sector projects, managed the design of a number of Sydney CBD high rise developments, industrial projects in the UK, tunnels for the Taiwan High Speed Rail, Dubai Metro rail stations and Sydney Metro concept design.
Eric de Rooy General Manager, Service Delivery - Sydney Water Eric was appointed General Manager, Service Delivery, Sydney Water in July 2012, prior to which he was General Manager, Maintenance from November 2008. Since joining Sydney Water in January 1975 as a trainee civil engineer, Eric has worked in many of the assetrelated areas, including construction, design, treatment operations/maintenance, capital projects and network operations. In 1998 Eric took up the role of Water Networks Manager and was later appointed as Manager Strategic Operations in 2004. He was appointed as the General Manager of the new Service Delivery Division in 2012, with responsibility for the planning, operation, maintenance and renewal of all of Sydney Water’s service related assets.
Mark Gordon Principal Surveyor - RMS NSW
In 2000 Mark won the Institution of Surveyors NSW Halloran Award for professionalism, meritorious service and leadership. In 2008 Mark was named the NSW Professional Surveyor of the Year. Mark was Chairman of the NSW Surveying & Mapping Industry Council from 1999 to 2013 and Chairman of UNSW Australia School of Surveying & Spatial Information Systems Advisory Board from 2008 to 2013. Mark was also the Assistant Congress Director for the World Surveying Congress held in Sydney in the year 2010, which attracted 2000 delegates and for which he received the Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute’s President’s Award. From 2011 to 2013, Mark was the convenor of the Standards Australia committee for the development of an Australian Standard in Subsurface Utility Information. The new Standard was published in May 2013. Mark is an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Surveyors and a Fellow of the Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute.
Ian Hosking Managing Director NSW/ACT AECOM Ian has more than 30 years of professional experience in ground engineering, geoenvironmental engineering, professional practice management and major project alliances. Previously Ian was the Industry Director – Infrastructure Services. In that role he assisted other business sector leaders in AECOM with the growth of their specialist teams across ANZ. Before joining AECOM, he held various senior technical and management positions, including Chief Operating Officer. He has a strong interest in developing people and teams, and at AECOM has enjoyed working with many talented graduates and managers in his role as Director for AECOM’s Growing Professional Skills (GPS) program.
Andrew Johnson Principal, ARUP
Andrew leads an integrated buildings design team in the Sydney Arup office delivering bespoke high level multi-disciplinary design to achieve better and more sustainable buildings. Andrew is a structural engineer with a passion for design philosophies combining innovation with efficiency in holistic building or structural solutions, and his experience designing and delivering projects in Australia, the UK, and around the world over 17 years includes collaboration with some of the world’s leading architects on commercial, education, sport & leisure, industrial, retail, residential, and marine projects for both private sector and government clients. His specific structural expertise includes tall buildings, hybrid structures, long-term serviceability of structures, seismic analysis and design, and long-span lightweight roof structures.
Dr Kourosh Kayvani Building Structures Leader and Head of Innovation Aurecon Dr Kourosh Kayvani is Aurecon’s global Head of Innovation. Over a 20+ year career, he played key roles in the design of many innovative and award-winning structures including Wembley National Stadium (Arch and Roof), London; the ANSTO OPAL Reactor Building, Lucas Height, NSW; and State Hockey Centre, Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney. Kourosh has been listed in Engineers Australia Top 100 most influential engineers in 2009 in recognition of his Engineering Expertise. He is also a Laureate of the IABSE Prize awarded by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering for his contribution to design of long span structures worldwide. Kourosh is a Fellow of Engineers Australia, a Director of Australian Steel Institute (ASI) and a Director of Association of Structural Engineers, NSW (ASCE).
Garry Mostyn Principal, PSM
Garry worked with the NSW Department of Public Works and with consulting geotechnical engineers from 1970 until 1986.He then joined the School of Civil Engineering at UNSW where he lectured in civil and environmental engineering practice and geotechnical engineering. He joined PSM in 1997 as a Principal Consultant. Garry’s fields of specialist expertise include slope engineering; foundation engineering; rock mechanics; geotechnical risk analysis; and forensic engineering. He has authored or coauthored over 60 journal and conference papers. He has worked on major projects throughout Australia and in Thailand and PNG. He has been an active member of several national and international code and practice committees and been involved at the highest levels of the Australian Geomechanics Society and the International Society for Rock Mechanics.
Bruce Munro Managing Director Thiess A civil engineer and School alumnus, with 36 years’ experience in the construction and mining industries in Australia, SouthEast Asia and India, Bruce has held a number of senior positions within Thiess. These have included President Director of PT Thiess Contractors Indonesia– a role he held for eight years after his appointment in 1999. He was appointed Executive General Manager Asia in August 2007 and in January 2010 he took on the role of Thiess’ Chief Executive Mining. Bruce has a long history with Thiess’ parent company, Leighton Holdings, having worked with both Leighton Asia and Leighton Contractors. Bruce is also on the Boards of the Minerals Council of Australia and Australian Constructors Association and Queensland Chair of the Australia Indonesia Business Council.
IAC School Members David Kinniburgh Global Market Leader – Transportation GHD David Kinniburgh is responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of GHD’s global transportation strategy. David has worked with GHD for more than 16 years and has strong experience ranging from concept development to detailed design and construction management, predominantly in the transportation sector. Previously, he was the Operating Centre Manager for GHD’s Sydney operations, responsible for business in Sydney, Wollongong, Dubbo and Orange.
INDUSTRY & COMMUNITY
Left to Right: Professor Stephen J Foster (Professor, Head of School); A/Prof Ron Cox (Co-Chair, External Relations Committee, Convenor, ACCARNSI); Dr Kurt Douglas (CoChair, External Relations Committee); Dr Mary O’Connell (Manager - External Relations)
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External Relations Report 2013
some of the publications from 2013
Associate Professor Ron Cox Co-Chair Dr Kurt Douglas Co-Chair Dr Mary O’Connell External Relations Manager Dr Lauren Gardner Dr Fiona Johnson Dr Craig Roberts Dr Kristen Splinter Dr Sawekchai Tangaramvong Scholarships Officer Ms Tricia Tesoriero Special Projects Administrator The strategic objectives of the External Relations Committee (ERC) of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering include the development of effective outreach and marketing programs, and the building and maintenance of good relationships with industry and alumni. The award winning Committee (UNSW Staff Excellence Award for Community Engagement, & UNSW Faculty of Engineering Professional Staff Excellence Award 2012) is made up of academic and administrative staff and liaises with the 60
School’s Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) which includes senior staff from major engineering companies and state bodies. ERC members represent and promote the School at many presentations and functions on and off campus. These include UNSW and Engineering Information days, High School visits, the Honeywell Engineering Summer School, Indigenous Australian Engineering Summer School, UNSW Nura Gili Winter School, UNSW Open Day and facilitating all-day school visits with engineering studies lectures and experiments in labs, a program which has been developed for use with the HSC Engineering Studies ‘Civil module’ Syllabus. The ERC also administers the Industry Partner Program and within that portfolio organises an annual Industry Partners Careers Market, Elite Student/Industry breakfast, Year 10 work experience week, Graduate Women Ambassadors program, and the Maths Primary Prize. To continue to raise the profile of the profession amongst high school students, the Industry Partner Program also sponsors INDUSTRY & COMMUNITY
careers advisors attendance at the gala night of Sydney EA Engineering Excellence Awards in September. As part of its mission to raise the profile (and therefore the participation) of women in engineering, the ERC successfully nominated alumnus Dr Mehreen Faruqi, an environmental engineer and Greens MLC, for the UNSW Judy Raper Award for Leadership in Engineering. In 2013 the ERC worked closely with the Head of School to coordinate the Industry Research Forum held in February at the UNSW CBD campus. One hundred senior staff and industry practitioners met to learn about current cutting edge School research and to share industry concerns and issues. Several connections between staff and industry were made on the day – resulting in further fruitful research partnerships. The ER Manager, in conjunction with the Student Services Manager also successfully managed the provision of an external MEngSc in project management specially developed
for staff within the Leighton Holdings group of companies - in Australia and overseas and delivered by the engineering construction and management group within the School. 2013 saw the merging of the School of Surveying and Geospatial Engineering with the School. The ERC assisted in the integration with production of new undergraduate brochures for SAGE, profiling staff in its Community Newsletter, creating a new About Us SAGE focused brochure to further raise the profile of the new group within the School. Work began on locating SAGE alumni for further and ongoing communications. The Year 10 work experience bus tour, which was held in June is another clear creative ERC success. Due to huge demand from schools, parents and students, the School expanded its activities in this area and in 2013 60 students from 49 high schools around NSW took part. The week’s activities included a visit to Sydney Opera House for a surveying exercise, a trip to the Seacliff bridge and RTA road tunnel M5, Barangaroo, a Lend Lease project, the Water
Research Laboratory, Centennial Park, Port Botany and the Kurnell coastal works and desalination plant as well as time at UNSW in the CVEN Design Studio working on bridge model constructions, and in the School’s computer labs working on their daily reports. 2013 saw the School revamp its website and explore videos as a significant method to tell its story. An About Us video was created and more videos are planned for 2014. A video about the Year 10 work experience was also commissioned – School researcher Ed Kearney accompanied the students and captured their experience.
The ERC continues to develop the School’s relationship with graduates through the Annual Report and the annual CVEN Alumni newsletter distributed through the University’s alumni magazine UNSWorld. Other School success stories reached all UNSW engineering alumni through UNSW Engineers magazine. The ERC works with Faculty and UNSW media offices to identify good research and teaching stories coming from the School. For further information on external relations, alumni, the IAC and School Industry Partnership Program contact Dr Mary O’Connell at m.oconnell@ unsw.edu.au
A total of 46 NSW primary schools participated in the CVEN Maths primary prizes efficiently run by Ms Tricia Tesoriero. Members of the School’s Industry Advisory Committee, School staff and some illustrious alumni presented 130 students with their awards at end of year ceremonies, further raising the profile of the profession to hundreds of young people, their families and community. See list of winners overleaf. INDUSTRY & COMMUNITY
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2013 Industry Partners and Supporters
Alumni Honours Congratulations to our alumni who were listed on Engineers Australia’s Top 100 in 2013. OORobert Care, AM, Chair Arup, UK, Middle East & Africa, (BE Hons ’73, PhD ’78), OOGrant King, Managing Director, Origin Energy (BE Civil), OOJamie Shelton, National President, Consult Australia (BE Civil ’88) , OOElizabeth Taylor, Chair, RedR International (BE ’78), OOLes Wielinga, Director General, Transport for NSW (BE ’77).
Thank you to our 2013 Industry Partners & Supporters: AECOM , ANSTO, ARUP, Aurecon, Brookfield Multiplex Ltd, Cardno, Evans & Peck, GHD, JK Gotechnics, Laing O’Rourke, Leighton Contractors, Leighton Holdings, NSW Water Solutions, NSW Public Works, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Pells Sullivan Meynink Pty Ltd, Permathene Australia, RMS, Sinclair Knight Merz Pty Ltd, SMEC Australia, Sydney Water, Taylor Thomson Whitting, URS Australia The School has strong active links with industry and is very committed to continuing and developing these strong ties. Our Industry Partnership Program (IPP) allows for the opportunity to further develop the productive relationship between the School, its staff, students and industry. Money raised through the IPP is administered by the School’s External Relations Committee and is used for the purpose of raising the profile of the School and the engineering profession - as well as developing ways for our current students to interact with industry partners.
representatives meet with Year 3 and Year 4 students. We also host the Elite Student Breakfast at Botanic Gardens where our top students engage with industry representatives in a more relaxed setting. For Industry Partners only, we can also directly email career information to all relevant undergraduate and postgraduate students. Raising their profile with the staff and students of the School is just one beneficial aspect of industry partnership. Industry Partners and Supporters are also invited to School research seminars, honours thesis seminars and postgraduate research poster forums. This provides industry with the opportunity to get current with the frontier of engineering knowledge. In recent years some industry partners have actively invested in extending the reaches and uses of engineering and scientific knowledge and research. Industry Partners are always very welcome to discuss new research projects with us. In 2013 our industry and government-related research income totaled over $15 million, involving over one hundred partnering organisations from private industry, public utilities, and all levels of government.
The annual Industry Partners Careers Market is therefore an important School activity, where industry
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In fact EA Magazine observed that if you were a civil engineer from UNSW you had the best chance of making it onto that list. Dr Robert Care AM, was also given a special international Alumni Award in 2013 by UNSW Chancellor Mr David Gonski for his outstanding achievements and leadership. School alumnus Dr Mehreen Faruqi, (MEngSc ’94, PhD 2000) Greens NSW MP, was awarded the prestigious Judy Raper Award for Leadership in Engineering. Mehreen was later listed as No 5 in Daily Life’s 20 Women of the Year – an acknowledgement of 20 Australian women who made a difference and inspired in 2013.
Year 10 Work Experience Week - Industry Partner Funded The CVEN Year 10 work experience week was a great success in 2013. 60 students from 49 NSW high schools were accepted into the School’s Year 10 Program, a doubling in numbers from previous years. Students came from all parts of Sydney and NSW, including Coffs Harbour, Cooma, Deniliquin, Gosford, Jindabyne, Newcastle, Wagga Wagga and Woolgoolga. Pleasingly, this year 25% of the group were girls. The five days were themed into the engineering disciplines of Water, wastewater and environment: Road, transport and underground engineering: Coastal and port infrastructure: Structures and design: Construction and project management.
Two buses per day rotated visits to different sites around Sydney, including site visits to Barangaroo, Malabar Sewerage treatment plant, Centennial Park filtration system, Circular Quay and the Opera House for a surveying exercise, Kurnell coastal works & desal tunnel, Leighton Intermodal Logistics Centre, Stanwell Tops/Seacliff Bridge, Sydney Airport, and the Water Research Lab in Manly Vale. All students were back on campus each afternoon to write a one page report on the day’s activities. The best reports were recorded daily and the end of the week saw 10 diligent students receive $30 gift vouchers for outstanding effort.
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On Friday, both groups were on campus for a full day and were involved in lectures including instruction on structures and design, before designing and making a bridge in groups of five. This year 3 bridges made it into the first round; alas in the second attempt only two bridges survived the test, and the 2 groups of 5 students were rewarded with $30 vouchers each for their conscientious hard work. This year a video was made of some of the highlights of the week: School researcher Ed Kearney accompanied the students and captured their experience.
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Maths Prize The UNSW Civil and Environmental Engineering Prize in Mathematics was an initiative of the School’s Industry Advisory Committee, developed and managed by the External Relations Committee, to help address the problem of falling numbers and interest in maths and science in the early high school years. We wanted to find a way of communicating the practical value of maths and science to students prior to their high school years. The key objective of the prize - to the value of $100 - is to encourage a lifelong interest in mathematics, as one of the key requirements for a rewarding, fulfilling and socially useful engineering career. Selection criteria emphasize applications and creativity as well as class projects and test results. Forty-six NSW schools participated in the School’s 2013 Maths Prize, and prizes were given to 130 students, of whom, pleasingly, nearly one quarter were girls. Our congratulations go to all the young winners. We hope to see them at UNSW one day. Top Left: two students from Cowra Public School Madeleine Mulligan and Samuel Long. Middle: Craig Roberts with a group of students at Daceyville Public School Right: Ron Cox with students from Wheeler Heights 64
Alexandria Park Community School Jonathan Chan Justin Nguyen Joseph Shao Kristoffer Stribling Lucy Zheng Annandale North Public School Finn McKendry Peter Sandbach William Smith Emily Wu Avondale School Gloria Rosenberg Brodie Shuttleworth Balgowlah North Public School Callan Brown Balmain Public School Eden Lin Kevin Shi Bankstown West Public School Danzl Chung Alan Do Christopher Le Jessica Nguyen Beauty Point Public School Xavier Foster Jack Marley Alina Rose Leonardo Tognetti Beecroft Public School Kevin Li Bellevue Hill Public School Jesse Koslowski Maxim Meck Belrose Public School Benjamin Berry Mitchell Cree Berowra Public School Ewan Bryant Genevieve Fernandez Eileen Lee Natalie Storrie Carlton South Public School Erica Athos James Weng Cammeray Public School Daniel Blyumin Eden Borrie Alessandro Eliot Braith Leung Chifley Public School Veron Singh Cowra Public School Samuel Long Madeleine Mulligan Croydon Public School Alan Au Raymond Cen Joli Doan
Allan Zhou Crescent Head Public School Kobi Morris Max Palise Daceyville Public School Carina He Nelson Roberts Andrew Sabishchykov Danniel Sebastian Double Bay Public School Quang Thang Nguyen Perry Tasker Eastlakes Public School Samirah Ali Dalila Mohd Khairudin Rafi Rahman Mayaz Rakib Epping Heights Public School Josie Loh Aaryan Pahwa Andrew Shan Daniel Xing Harbord Public School Lachlan Burnet Tom Kelsey Kate Meehan John Reilly Jasper Road Public School George Bao Bob Chen Tracy Dang Rachel Wong Kambora Public School Ella Cooper Daniel Ritsinias Courtney Rule Zachary Williams Kensington Public School Sarfaraz Ahmed Liana Cai Joon Kim Jack Lin Loquat Valley Anglican Preparatory School Tom Fountain Robyn Merrett Manly West Public School Casey Bolton James Ngai Flynn Sherry Andrew Zhao Mosman Public School JiWoo Kim Mount Colah Public School Lucas Hensen Matthew Hiebl Harold Lamey Minha Lee Narrabeen North public School Ethan Couch
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Nic Palmer-Davies Northmead Public School Samantha Gonzales Alex Horvath Lindsey Kim Robert Zheng North Haven Public School Daniel Johnson Tim O’Brien Pennant Hills Public School Sneha Arora Monica Curtis Olivia He Picnic Point Public School Vicky Ye Randwick Public School Anne Xu Roselea Public School Nor Ya Zhou St Christopher’s Catholic Primary Nathaniel Kopp Lachlan Pryde Stefan Stojanovski Jonathan Tran St Declan’s Primary School Harrison Brown Jeremy Lee St Joseph’s Primary School Declan Doherty Aiden Leigh Benjamin Tinker Tacking Point Public School Kieren Hill Damon Kipreotis Toongabbie West Public School Kevin Patel Thomas Pond Turramurra Public School Samuel Druce Andrew Taylor West Pennant Hills Public School Harrison Chudleigh Luke Middleton Aidan Ng Nicholas Posener Wheeler Heights Public School Anna Dahlstrom Kane Jackson Kai Turner Maya Turner Wollondilly Anglican college Damien Wright Helena Turner Woollahra Public School Anthony Hwang Farah Maudud Kevin Tong Marley Vigar
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ACCARNSI
AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION RESEARCH NETWORK FOR SETTLEMENTS AND INFRASTRUCTURE
In 2013, ACCARNSI celebrated its fifth year of adaptation research activities with research projects in Climate Change Adaptation Good Practice funded by DICCSRTE and Community Coastal Planning as part of the WA Peron Naturaliste Partnership. Additional funding for coastal adaptation research projects was secured through the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage as part of a coordinated NSW Climate Change Adaptation Research Hub. The funding agreement is $300,000 per year for a period of 3 years. With its partner, the Sydney Institute of Marine Science, ACCARNSI will inform NSW OEH on their coastal processes and responses program. ACCARNSI Network Convenor, Associate Professor Ron Cox will be the research program leader. ACCARNSI’s collaboration with OEH continued as co-sponsors of ‘Learning to Adapt 5’ alongside EIANZ NSW and as co-hosts of a one day interactive workshop on ‘Sharing Responsibility for Implementing the National Strategy Disaster Resilience’ alongside risk and safety experts from RMIT Melbourne and the Bushfire CRC. ACCARNSI’s much anticipated and final Early Career Researcher Forum was held in Sydney in mid-March with a strong field of adaptation research projects in coastal settlements, infrastructure, built environment, planning and emergency management. It has been an absolute pleasure to
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be involved with so many talented early career researchers who are testament to the growing strength of climate change adaptation research in Australia. This was also evident at NCCARF’s 2013 Climate Adaptation Conference in Sydney in June. Established and emerging researchers inspired, innovated and informed government, business and community interests on the latest climate adaptation research across Australia and abroad. As part of the conference activities ACCARNSI organised an Adaptation Good Practice field trip with the Sydney Coastal Councils Group and NCCARF. Exemplars of Adaptation Good Practice in Sydney included Port Botany, Sydney Airport and the revitalisation of South Sydney including Green Square and the Alexandria Canals. ACCARNSI’s four network nodes, Coastal Settlements at Griffith University, Urban Management, Transport and Social Inclusion located jointly at the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, Built Environment, Innovation and Institutional Reform based at the UNSW City Futures Research Centre and Infrastructure based at the UNSW Water Research Centre wrapped up their research projects in 2013. As hubs of climate change adaptation research activity in their respective fields, they contributed world class research, discussion papers, journal articles, project peer review, early career research nurture, technical advice to government and industry groups and innovative solutions to real world problems.
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ACCARNSI’s core competencies in coastal research has placed it in a key position to identify and respond to the challenges faced in protecting the New South Wales coastline and work with government to inform an integrated adaptation policy framework for the preservation of the coast and its natural assets. ACCARNSI will relocate to the School’s Water Research Laboratory at Manly Vale for the duration of this key government project. For further information, all ACCARNSI resources are available online including Discussion Papers, Honours and Masters Research Grant Reports, Local Government Initiative Reports, Early Career Researcher Forum Proceedings, the ACCARNSI Community Attitudes to Climate Change survey results, a Library Database of Climate Adaptation resources and a consolidated report of activities 2009-2013. ACCARNSI Network Contact: Associate Professor Ron Cox, r.cox@unsw.edu.au. ACCARNSI Staff Convenor: Associate Professor Ron Cox Coordinator: Tamara Rouse Research Associates: Dr Philip Booth Richard Cornwell Dr Kristen Splinter
CIES - Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety CIES About US The demands of new structures, and the use of new or advanced materials require advanced solutions, which challenge and unite creativity and scientific rigour.
We are the leading internationally recognised research centre in the region for investigating, understanding and predicting the safety and behaviour of engineering infrastructure under in-service and overload (or limit) conditions.
Providing solutions to all of the above is fundamental to CIES activities.
We aim to be the nexus of the various scientific disciplines in the broad fields of engineering infrastructure; its design, evaluation, performance and retrofit. We recognise that existing infrastructure in the developed world is aging, and strengthening and rehabilitating bridges, buildings, dams and other critical infrastructure is a demanding challenge to creative engineering solutions. We recognise the challenge of engineering for climate change and the need for advanced and high performance materials to meet the needs of society’s infrastructure within looming carbon constraints.
Specifically, we apply our skills to:
The Centre is focused on high-level research in: STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING PAVEMENT ENGINEERING ADVANCED ENGINEERED MATERIALS COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS
Development of new technologies and materials such as advanced fibre composites, high performance cementitious materials and geopolymers; for engineering and safety assessments and with the risk management of buildings, bridges, dams, roads and other infrastructure when subjected to both in-service conditions and overload (or limit) conditions, such as may occur in fire, earthquake, cyclone or blast situations, or when structures are exposed to hostile environments.
CIES MEMBER ACHIEVEMENTS / DISTINGUISHED HONOURS The current membership of the ASCE exceeds 140,000. The Society notes: “A Distinguished Member is a person who has attained acknowledged eminence in some branch of engineering or in the arts and sciences related thereto, including the fields of engineering education and construction.” Professor Mark Bradford named a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) - the Society’s highest accolade. At its meeting on 23 March 2013, the Board of Direction of the American Society of Civil Engineers elected CIES’ Mark Bradford and eleven other engineers worldwide to the grade of Distinguished Member of the ASCE.
The total number of Distinguished Members elected in any year does not exceed one for every 7,500 members, and in the 161 year history of the ASCE, only 626 other engineers have been similarly honoured, with Mark Bradford being the second Australian. Mark Bradford acknowledges the great honour attached to the award, noting “the Distinguished
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Membership is an acknowledgement of cutting-edge research being undertaken in structural engineering in Australia. The team with whom I work punches well above its weight in delivering research outcomes in a variety of ways on the international stage, making significant contributions in fundamental mechanics, structural and computational mechanics, experimental techniques and in influencing practice by the research being taken up in international design standards. To be listed in a relatively small cohort that contains legendary practitioners and researchers of the prominence of Theodore von Karman, Zdenek Bazant, Ted Galambos, Hardy Cross, Egor Popov, Richard Gallagher Sir Douglas Fox and T-Y Lin is humbling to say the least.”
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CIES RESEARCH SUCCESS Ten CIES Staff successful in Seven Australian Research Council (ARC) Grants for 2014 This year’s ARC success continues to add to the success of CIES in attracting Category 1 funding through the Australian Research Council. CIES staff currently hold over 30 ARC grants, including ARC Discovery and Linkage, LIEF and DECRA grants. CIES is also home to Australia’s only ARC Laureate Fellow in Structural Engineering, Professor Mark Bradford. Ten CIES staff have been successful in Seven ARC Grants totalling over $3.5 million for 2014. CIES staff were involved in the following four ARC Discovery Project Grants: OODP140101887, Dr Wei Gao, Professor YongLin Pi and Emeritus Professor Francis Tin Loi, $395,000 Project Title: Stochastic geometrically nonlinear elasto-plastic buckling and behaviour of curved grid-like structures
Professor Stephen Foster, past Centre Director for CIES and currently Head of School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, was recently awarded the distinguished honour of being elected as a Fellow of Engineers Australia (Fellow of IEAust) which recognises those individuals who are true leaders of the industry and profession.
OODP140102134, Professor Brian Uy, $530,000 Project Title: The behaviour and design of innovative connections to promote the reduction and reuse of structural steel in steel-concrete composite buildings
Through his research work in the area of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures and also in the writing of key texts in the same field, Stephen Foster has had direct involvement in the implementation of key changes to the 2009 Australian Concrete Structures Standard, AS3600. Internationally, he has engaged with the Federation of Structural Concrete (fib) that led to his works being incorporated into the fib 2010 Model Code. Professor Foster is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Structural Concrete. He was a member of the Civil and Structural Panel, IEAust Sydney Division, from 2010 to 2012.
OODP140103142, A/Professor Adrian Russell and Professor Nasser Khalili, $420,000 Project Title: Shallow foundations in unsaturated soils: understanding mechanistic behaviour through numerical modelling, analysis and experimental investigation OODP140100529, A/Professor Gianluca Ranzi, A/Professor Arnaud Castel, Emeritus Professor Ian Gilbert and Dr Daniel Dias-da-Costa, $300,000 Project Title: Stiffness degradation of concrete members induced by reinforcement corrosion Dr Huu-Tai Thai was also successful with an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA): DE140100747, $333,157. Project ID: RG133018 Title: Reliability assessment of concrete-filled steel tubular frames designed by advanced analysis
Fellows of The Institution of Engineers Australia have rendered conspicuous service to the profession of engineering, are eminent in engineering or an allied science, or a distinguished person whom the Council desires to honour, either for having rendered conspicuous service to the Australian people or in recognition of outstanding achievement.
CIES Staff were also involved in successful Linkage, Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grants. Associate Professor Ganga Prusty (School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering) led a bid from UNSW including Professor Brian Uy that received $500,000 for a National Facility for Robotic Composites. Furthermore, Professors Nasser Khalili, Brian Uy and Adrian Russell were also part of a successful LIEF bid led by Professor Buddhima Indraratna from the University of Wollongong for a National Testing Facility for High Speed Rail which received $900,000 from the ARC.
The criteria for this award include OOContribution to the knowledge-base of the profession through research and development activities; OOContributions to education through teaching and/or education support; and OOContributions to the profession through professional society activities. 68
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CIES RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS CIES welcomed into the group Associ- underpinning weather forecast, to ate Professor Linlin Ge and his team monitoring ground settlement, bushfires, floods and earthquakes, and to of researchers. assessing global climate change. Linlin’s core expertise is in remote sensing and he sees his research goals as making remote sensing more CIES teaming up with NASA timely, accurate, affordable and widely on earth observation applicable. Dr Scott Hensley - a remote sensing Remote sensing techniques play a central role in our daily life, from
of a $330,000 ARC Discovery project led by CIES Associate Professor Linlin Ge. The objective is to “develop advanced, cost-effective and accurate imaging radar techniques that can measure subtle surface changes frequently, in order to safeguard significant infrastructure”.
expert and space engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is part
CIES Researchers’ International Recognition – Award for Best Conference Paper at the prestigious Symposium on Environmental Vibration (ISEV) held in Shanghai, China, 8-10 November 2013 Scientia Professor Mark Bradford and Professor YongLin Pi and co authors Professors YL Guo and C Dou of Tsinghua University’s paper Dynamic buckling analysis of an arch model was awarded the best paper at the International Symposium on Environmental Vibration (ISEV) held in Shanghai, China, 8-10 November 2013. This is a highly regarded accolade from a field of International scholars and experts in structural engineering and reflects the international standing and recognition of the work currently being carried out by CIES members.
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CIES – AT THE FOREFRONT OF RESEARCH PROFILES Composite Construction VII Conference, Palm Cove, North Queensland: 28-31 July 2013
drawback can be eliminated with the use of bolted shear connectors that join precast concrete slab units to steel joists that are themselves connected to columns using deconstructable bolted joints. The presentation discussed a research programme currently being undertaken at CIES (Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety), underpinned by the Australian Laureate Fellowship scheme, that is investigating the use of bolted pre-tensioned shear connectors with precast geopolymer concrete slabs.
In July 2013 CIES hosted the International Conference on Composite Construction VII with Professors Mark Bradford and Brian Uy as co-Chairs. This conference series was run under the auspices of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The conference series began in 1987 at Henniker, New Hampshire and has been held every four years in a relaxed environment. Apart from the USA, it has also been held in Germany (1996), Canada (2000) South Africa (2004) and now in Australia. The conference provides opportunities for relaxed and in-depth scientific discussions into the behaviour and design of composite steel-concrete structures.
The pre-tension enables a frictional resistance to be mobilised at the steel/concrete interface that enables full shear interaction at service loading, thereby increasing the stiffness of the composite member, as well as allowing for the removal of the bolt in suitably proportioned clearance holes during the deconstruction phase. A simple mechanical model for representing the service-load behaviour is discussed. At overload, the performance of the shear connection is very ductile, allowing standard plastic design principles to be adopted. The use of deconstructable joints was also discussed, as well as various configurations of precast slabs in the negative moment region of a composite beam adjacent to an internal support.
CIES Geotechnical symposium
There was a total of 60 participants from 15 different nations, with 66 papers being delivered. CIES was heavily represented at the event by academic staff and PhD students, with 12 participants delivering a total of 13 papers.
Engineers Australia Eminent Speaker Tour - 2013: Professor Mark Bradford – CIES Research Director The Engineers Australia Eminent Speaker Series enables EA members to hear presentations by notable persons from Australia and overseas on key topics of interest to the profession across a range of disciplines. Professor Mark Bradford – CIES Research Director - was invited to be part of the 2013 Eminent Speaker Series during March, April, May 2013, touring all major cities in Australia including, Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, Brisbane, Mackay, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. The tours are organised by the National Discipline Colleges & Committees of EA.
Professor Bradford’s topic was “Designing Structures for End-of-Life Deconstructability”. An important aspect of designing sustainable building structures is that they should be deconstructable at the end of their service life, so as to enable the re-use of materials and to eliminate the energy associated with their demolition and disposal. In steel framed buildings with composite flooring systems attached with welded headed stud shear connectors, deconstruction is problematic because of the embedment of the headed studs in the concrete floor. This 70
Around 110 geotechnical engineers, including 80 from industry and 30 from universities, visited UNSW on 10 October 2013 to take part in the CIES Symposium titled ‘Geotechnical Modelling: Analytical Solutions for Practising Engineers’, chaired by Associate Professor Adrian Russell. The symposium showcased a range of analytical methods applied to give quick, low-cost information about geotechnical problems. A central theme was the development of models for analyses, which capture important complexities while being simple enough to be solved analytically and implemented easily. A take home message of the symposium was that there is always scope to use analytical methods in the problem solving process. Also, analytical methods and more advanced computational analyses are complementary. Leading modellers and analysts presented at the symposium including: International visitors from the UK (Professors Malcolm Bolton, University of Cambridge; Michael Davies,
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CIES Staff University of Sussex); the US (Professor Andrew Whittle, MIT). Leading Australian speakers included Professor Harry Poulos, Coffey Geotechnics and The University of Sydney; Professor Nasser Khalili, UNSW; Professor Mark Cassidy, The University of Western Australia; Professor Buddhima Indraratna, University of Wollongong; Professor Jayantha Kodikara, Monash University; Adjunct Associate Professor Garry Mostyn, Pells Sullivan Meynink; Dr Fernando Alonso-Marroquin, The University of Sydney and Associate Professor Adrian Russell, UNSW.
INTERNATIONAL PROFILE / “STAYING CONNECTED”
Director
Other Research Staff
Professor Brian Uy, BE PhD UNSW CPEng, CEng, PE, MIE Aust, MASCE, MIStructE, MICE, MAICD
Dr Zhen-Tian Chang, BE ME Hunan PhD UNSW
Research Director Scientia Professor Mark Bradford, BSc BE PhD Syd DSc UNSW FTSE PEng CPEng CEng Dist. MASCE, FIEAust, FIStructE, MAICD
Deputy Directors Emeritus Professor Ian Gilbert, BE PhD UNSW CPEng FIEAust MACI Professor Chongmin Song, BE ME Tsinghua, DEng Tokyo
Centre Management Centre Manager Irene Calaizis, BCom UNSW
Dr Jean Xiaojin Li, PhD UNSW, BEng WTUSM Dr Michael Man, BE PhD UNSW Dr Ghaofeng Zhao,BSc MSc CUMT, PhD EPFL Dr David Kellerman BE, PhD UNSW Dr Ean Tat Ooi, BE UTM, PhD NTU Dr Xinpei Liu BE SCUT, MEngSc MPhil PhD UNSW Dr Huiyong Ban BE PhD Tsinghua University, Beijing Dr Sundararajan Natarajan BE Mech Eng, PhD Cardiff
Administrative Officer Patricia Karwan
Dr Babak Shahbodaghkhan, BSc. IKIU, MSc. Univ. of Tehran, PhD Kyoto Univ.
Other Academics
Dr Guotao Yang, BE PhD Tongji
Professor Stephen Foster, BE NSWIT, MEngSc PhD UNSW, MIEAust
Dr Nima Khorsandnia, BSc MSc BIHE, PhD UTS
Professor Nasser Khalili, BSc Teh MSc Birm PhD UNSW
Dr Inamullah Khan, BE MEngSc PhD University of Toulouse
Professor Yong Lin Pi, BE Tongji ME Wuhan PhD UNSW CPEng MIEAust
Dr Saeed Salimzadeh, BSc MSc Sharif SU) PhD UNSW
Professor David Muir Wood - University of Dundee, Scotland
A/Professor Mario Attard BE PhD MHEd UNSW, MIEAust, CPEng
Dr Tai H. Thai, BE ME HCMUT, PhD Sejong
ˇ P. Bažant - McCorProfessor Zdenek mick Institute Professor and W.P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Northwestern University
A/Professor Arnaud Castel BE, MEngSc, PhD Toulouse
Dr Alex Hay-Man Ng, PhD UNSW, MEngSc UNSW, BE UNSW
A/Professor Linlin Ge, PhD UNSW, MSc Inst of Seismology, BEng WTUSM
Technical Team
Throughout 2013, CIES continued to attract senior academic visitors on collaborative visits and also a program of delivering seminars which draw on international excellence and expertise.
Visitors included: Dr. Andrew H.C. Chan - Professor of Civil Engineering - Deputy Dean, Information Technology & Engineering, University of Ballarat
Dr. Xiaochun Fan from Wuhan University of Technology awarded a scholarship from Chinese Government for him to undertake research in our centre for one year. Qing Jun Chen, an Associate Professor working in South China University of Technology Associate Professor Wei Gu, Department of Road & Bridge, Liaoning Provincial College of Communications, China Professor Dunja Peric – Kansas State Univ USA Dr Hauke Gravenkamp, Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Berlin, Germany.
Dr Kurt Douglas BE Syd. PhD UNSW, MIEAust Dr Wei Gao BE HDU, ME PhD Xidian, MIIAV, MAAS Dr Carolin Birk BE DEng Dresden Dr Adrian Russell BE, PhD UNSW, PGCert Bristol Dr Hossein Taiebat BSc Isfahan M.E.S. PhD Syd Dr Ehab Hamed, BSc MSc PhD Technion Dr Hamid Vali Pour Goudarzi BSc MSc Tehran, PhD UNSW Dr Arman Khoshghalb BE ME Sharif Uni of Tech, PhD UNSW CENTRES
John Gilbert Greg Worthing Ron Moncay
Emeritus Professors Somasundaram Valliappan BE Annam, MS Northeastern, PhD DSc Wales, CPEng, FASCE, FIACM Francis Tin-Loi BE PhD Monash, CPEng MIEAust
UNSW Members Professor Alan Crosky School of Materials Science & Engineering Professor Gangadhara Prusty School of Mechanical Engineering
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The Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre (CWI) is UNSW’s Groundwater Research Centre. The CWI is a crossfaculty research grouping, with staff based in the Schools of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences; Mining Engineering; Law and the Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre, and UNSW Law. As a cross-faculty centre, the CWI rotates between presiding faculties, and at the end of 2013 the Centre rotated from Engineering to Science Faculties. Our research highlight for 2013 was the successful completion of the Groundwater Education Investment Fund (GEIF) infrastructure program. Funded by the Federal Government through its Super Science initiative, the CWI managed the investment of $15M of groundwater infrastructure over the period 2010 to 2013 for the establishment of long term monitoring sites for groundwater research. These sites in four states monitor a range of environmental parameters relevant to groundwater, including river and ground water levels and automatic weather stations, a large-scale centrifuge facility at the Water Research Laboratory, as well as a range of state-of-art analytical facilities, mostly hosted here at UNSW. Within NSW, research infrastructure is concentrated at the UNSW Wellington and Fowlers Gap Field Stations and in the Namoi Valley. Within the latter, the Mountain Front Hydrological Observatory was made fully operational in 2013 by CWI staff coordinated by Dr Martin Andersen with the help of Marie Curie Fellow Dr Mark Cuthbert. The observatory, funded by the Groundwater Education Investment Fund, is remotely collecting stream and recharge data from flow events in the ephemeral Middle Creek. The data will establish the importance of stream recharge in semi-arid environments. Data from all sites can be accessed via the CWI website (click on Groundwater EIF). The successful completion of the GEIF was followed by the successful award of CRIS and NCRIS funding from the Federal Government to maintain the groundwater infrastructure. A further $750,000 of investment secures the maintenance of the infrastructure sites until the end of 2015. In 2013 the CWI continued to play a major role within the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, an Australian Research Council and National Water Commission co-funded Centre of Excellence. In 2013 we remained at full staffing capacity, and we focused on delivering conference presentations on our research, and the submission of
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research papers. Our NCGRT research was well represented at the International Association of Hydrogeology Annual Congress in Perth, with three keynotes presented by Gabriel Rau, Ian Acworth and Andy Baker, and many other presentations by the CWI team. An aquitard session was convened at IAH2013 with keynote by Prof Jim Hendry, our NCGRT international scholar, and showcasing many aspects of CWI aquitards research. The CWI team was also well represented at the world’s largest geoscience conference, the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco. In 2013, we celebrated the award of the 2013 Andrei Borisovich Vistelius Research Award of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences to Gregoire Mariethoz. Gregoire was invited to collect his award and give a keynote presentation at the IAMG conference. One paper published last year by CWI researchers Adam Hartland, Wendy Timms and Andy Baker was highlighted as Editor’s Choice in Environmental Research Letters. CWI media releases in 2013 include the use of heat as a tracer, on aquitards, and on caves as observatories. As 2013 came to an end, the CWI team were focussing on the commencement of several new major projects. Bryce Kelly is leading a major project to establish baseline water quality data in future coal seam gas development areas, funded by the Cotton RDC. Andy Baker and Martin Andersen held the first project meetings for their new ARC Linkage Project which investigates the effects of fire on karst landscapes. Andy Baker and Wendy Timms were commencing the procurement process for their ARC LIEF grant to support an organic isotope mass spectrometry facility to be housed at the Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre, and Cameron Holley was celebrating the successful award of an ARC DECRA.
CWI Staff Director Professor Andy Baker
Associate Director Dr Martin Andersen
Centre Manager Mr Antonio Woo
Academics Prof Ian Acworth, Dr Gregoire Mariethoz, Dr Wendy Timms, Dr Bryce Kelly, Dr Cameron Holley
Post-doctoral Researchers Hoori Ajami, Steve Bouzalakos, Alessandro Comunian, Richard Crane, Mark Cuthbert, Catherine Jex, Sanjeev Jha, Ander Guinea Maysounave, Andrew McCallum, Gabriel Rau, Hamid Roshan, Helen Rutlidge.
Professional Staff Peter Graham, Evan Jensen, Sam McCulloch, Dayna McGeeney, Mark Whelan,
Visiting Fellow Dr Denis O’Carroll
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rCITI – Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation a Masters Transport Specialization stream have been approved by the university on offer from 2014 onwards.
rCITI Overview – 2013 In its second year of full operation, rCITI has continued to expand and strengthen its network across campus and with relevant government and industry. Significant achievements for 2013 include two successful Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project Grants as well as a partnership with Transport for NSW (TfNSW) with a budget to rCITI of $1.5M over three years. Moreover, the Centre further increased its number of HDR, Honours and Practicum students. Throughout 2013, the core Academic team supervised and supported 13 PhD students, 1 MPhil, 3 Masters by Research and 18 Honours students. In addition, rCITI hosted two Practicum Exchange Program students from UConn (USA) and Harbin Institute of Technology (China). Professor Waller and his team have participated in the curriculum review of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering and commenced the implementation of transport course and program initiatives for 2014. Two new transport courses as well as 74
A research team led by Professor Waller and Dr Dixit won an ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant to deploy a Travel Choice Simulation Laboratory (TRACSLab), which is a world-first facility to observe collective travel choice in a realistic lab environment. The team completed the procurement process and has conducted initial experiments. The driving simulators are expected to be set up soon for the full project capacity to be utilized. This lab is unique due to the focus on travel choice, networked interaction and strong teaming, including partners at the University of Sydney and iCinema (UNSW). The findings of the lab will support a new generation of transport analysis techniques for emerging issues such as sustainability, reliability, and intelligent transport systems (ITS). Chief Investigators at rCITI were awarded two ARC Linkage grants this year. The project with investigators from the University of Sydney and industry partner TSS, one of the main transport software vendors globally, evolves around “Methodologies for the Incorporation of Congestion Propagation and System Reliability into Transport Network Models for Consistent Multi-Scale Planning”. This project improves the capabilities of transport planning techniques. Specifically, new methods are introduced which improve the realism of regional congestion modelling as well as the mathematical representation of traveller decision-making, thereby permitting an improved long-term transport plan. Government organizations have expressed interest in this particular project and are involved in project meetings to discuss potential funding of a test pilot. GoGet Carshare is the industry partner for the second awarded rCITI Linkage Project titled “Integrating Network Modelling with Observed Choice Data for Multi-Criteria Optimization of Complex Carshare Systems: Cost, CENTRES
Mobility and Transit Usage”. The aim is to develop methods to determine an efficient carshare system, which includes optimal location, one-way carsharing, and how carshare influences the broader transport system. By adopting such new comprehensive methods, the overall transport system will benefit through potential improvements in public transit usage. After ongoing meetings and scoping of potential collaboration, Professor Waller has been notified by Les Wielinga, Director General of Transport for NSW (TfNSW), that TfNSW agrees to enter into a three-year partnership with funding to rCITI of $500,000 per year. The agreement has been executed and work on project tasks has commenced. The collaboration is to “Develop and Deploy Novel Integrated Network Techniques to Enhance the NSW Transport System” and involves close ongoing interaction between UNSW researchers and students with TfNSW staff. Jointly with Evans & Peck, rCITI has been appointed to the Transport Modelling Service Panel of Transport for NSW, after undergoing a competitive tender submission and selection process. Professor Waller has been appointed Associate Director of the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, a UNSW interdisciplinary Arts, Engineering and Science Centre. He is also engaged as member of the Steering Committee for the City Futures Research Centre, UNSW’s leading urban policy research centre within the Faculty of the Built Environment, focusing on key research areas such as urban planning, housing, design, development and social policy. In order to further strengthen existing ties and exploring additional potential areas of mutual research and projects, rCITI co-organized a collaborative workshop with researchers and staff from NICTA as well as a workshop with academics and researchers of the School of Computer Science and Engineering. The initial workshops were perceived well and similar events are being considered for the future.
Throughout the year, Professor Waller further expanded rCITI’s core team, securing Dr David Rey, Dr Zhitao Xiong and Dr Saeed Bastani in PostDoctoral positions. Their respective expertise compliments the Centre’s efforts in key areas. Dr Rey joined rCITI from IFSTTAR (French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks) in France. His core interest is in Operations Research, which allows him to contribute to essential rCITI projects and further expand the Centre’s cross-campus collaboration into areas such as aviation and air traffic flow. Dr Xiong completed his PhD in Transport Studies at the University of Leeds (United Kingdom) and will deploy his expertise in Driving Simulation and Driving Behaviour to focus on rCITI’s TRACsLab (ARC LIEF grant). Dr Bastani joined UNSW after the completion of his PhD at the University of Sydney and is now placed at the School of Computer Science and Engineering. He is working closely with Dr Libman on the rCITI/CSE joint project of vehicular communications matters (Distributed Protocols for Wireless Systems and Vehicular Traffic Control). Associate Professor Satish Ukkusuri from Purdue University (USA), who had visited rCITI in 2012, returned to UNSW with a Study Abroad Group of 26 students and two senior staff from Purdue’s School of Civil Engineering. Professor Waller and A/Prof Ukkusuri have an established long-term collaboration on research related to transportation network modelling. rCITI hosted the group in May for a visit of the Centre and a specially organized mini-talk series on Sustainability and Infrastructure. This year’s visitors included Professor Mark Hickman, the ASTRA Chair and Professor of Transport Engineering and Director of the Centre for Transport Strategy at the School of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland (“Analysing and Modelling Passenger Behaviour in Public
Transport Networks”); Andrew Saul, the Founder & CEO at Genovation Cars – The Green Car Company (“Batteries are Included: Transport in the 21st Century”); Assistant Professor Nick Lownes, Director at the Center for Transportation and Livable Systems at the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UConn (“Leveraging big data for equity and efficiency in public transportation systems”); Professor Laurent DenantBoemont, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Laboratory for Experiments in Economics and Management at the School of Economics, University of Rennes (“Transport Costs and Location Choices in Urban Areas: Evidence from Laboratory Experiments”). Further, Professor Waller and other rCITI staff have attended and been invited to present at a variety of conferences and workshops this year. For example, key rCITI staff participated in the annual TRB (Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting, Washington D.C), presenting research contributions and chairing several TRB Committee Meetings. rCITI was also represented at the 46th HICSS (Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences), presenting papers and participating in workshops. Additional invited talks included Professor Waller’s and Dr Dixit’s keynote speech at the Mathematics of Planet Earth Workshop, Monash University, Melbourne; Professor Waller’s talk at the NSW Transport Infrastructure Summit in Sydney, at the International TSS/Aimsun User Meeting in Sydney, as well as being a Panel Chair at the 18th International Conference of Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies (HKSTS). 2013 has been a year of major accomplishments for rCITI, being awarded substantial funding, steadily expanding our PhD program and teaching curriculum, further strengthening the Centre’s relations across campus, nationally and internationally, as well as continuing to build a worldclass Centre with excellent staff.
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rCITI CORE CENTRE STAFF – 2013 DIRECTOR Professor S. Travis Waller, Evans & Peck Professor of Transport Innovation DEPUTY DIRECTOR Dr Vinayak Dixit, Senior Lecturer ACADEMICS Dr Upali Vandebona, Senior Lecturer Dr Lavy Libman, Senior Lecturer (Computer Science and Engineering) Dr Lauren Gardner, Lecturer Dr Taha Hossein Rashidi, Lecturer RESEARCHERS Dr David Rey Dr Zhitao Xiong Dr Saeed Bastani (Computer Science and Engineering) CENTRE MANAGER Ms Sylvia Brohl Ms Maria Lee (from December 2013) Adjunct & Visiting Academic Staff Dr Hironobu Hasegawa, PhD Muroran IT, Japan, Visiting Fellow Akita National College of Technology, Japan Dr Peter Hidas, MCEng and PhD Technical University of Budapest, Visiting Fellow Manager, Transport Modelling at Transport for New South Wales, Bureau of Transport Statistics (BTS) Dr Ken Doust, BEng NSWIT/UTS, MEng UNSW, PhD UNSW, Adjunct Senior Lecturer Director, Windana Research
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water@ UNSW water research centre
About Us The UNSW School of Civil and Environmental Engineering has a 60 year history of leading development of water technology in Australia. Apart from maintaining the largest postgraduate and undergraduate teaching programmes in water engineering in Australia, the School remains active in Australian fundamental water research: OOsurface and groundwater hydrology – ongoing Australian leadership of the quantifying of rainfall, runoff and groundwater flows at catchment scales (This history includes development of the lead Australian design document, Rainfall and Runoff, now published and developed by Engineers Australia). OOpublic health and water treatment – fundamental investigations of the chemistry and microbiology of water for urban use have been focussed within the Centre for Water and Waste Treatment over the last 20 years. OOcivil and environmental hydraulics – practical Project-based and theoretical hydraulics research undertaken using the unique large-scale facilities of the Water Research Laboratory at Manly Vale. 76
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There are two primary centre nodes: at Kensington with staff and students accommodated within the Vallentine annex; and, at the Water Research Laboratory at Manly Vale. The centre is co-supervised by Richard Stuetz and Bill Peirson, who are respectively responsible for each node. Centre activities are grouped around three dominant research themes:
1. Water Supply Australia is a continent of low rainfall and its development and economic robustness is constrained by presently available and potential water supplies.
2. The Coast Over 86% of the Australian community live in the coastal zone with consequent environmental impact and climate vulnerabilities.
3. Sustainability To maintain Australia’s current level of population and economic growth, water and contamination management need innovative solutions in terms of environmental, energy and social considerations.
WATER RESEARCH LABORATORY During 2013, Water Research Laboratory (WRL) celebrated its 54th year as a leading international research laboratory in hydraulics, groundwater and coastal engineering. WRL academic and research staff continue to undertake fundamental research with WRL Projects staff providing specialist professional engineering advice on specific projects across the water engineering discipline. A historical strength of WRL is the strong collaborative interaction between academic and project-based activities. With the unique large-scale physical facilities at the Manly Vale site, a track record for addressing computationally-demanding numerical modeling in water engineering and significant experience in undertaking field investigations, WRL continues to maintain an international reputation in the specific disciplines of: OOCivil and Environmental Engineering Hydraulics; Understanding the turbulent flow of water, air and sediment through pipes, turbomachines, open channels and across the landscape is one of the most challenging of technical disciplines. Engineering design must recognise the inherent uncertainties of measurement and modelling
methods when providing practical solutions to industry need. OOCoastal Engineering; Approximately 86% of Australians live in the coastal fringe with consequent major development of urban areas, industry and supporting infrastructure. Many of the processes of wave formation and impact as well as shoreline and structural response remain poorly understood. Robust coastal engineering design techniques are essential for sustainable coastal development. Coastal engineering design must be undertaken in an ecological context containing interacting marine and freshwater ecosystems. Present concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions are prompting a fresh look at the potential to harness energy in the coastal zone. OOGroundwater; In a country dominated by long droughts interspersed with floods, groundwater is a key water reserve: protected from evaporative loss but subject to contamination and potential overexploitation. Capturing key field information is critical to an adequate understanding of groundwater movement and its coupling to surface waters. The development of large-scale geophysical techniques to “see� CENTRES
beneath the ground surface is a key aspect of groundwater assessment. OOEstuarine Engineering. Estuaries are highly productive and complex ecosystems due to the high levels of nutrients available from catchment runoff and their large and diverse habitats. As coastal development occurs, engineering design is required to: mitigate adverse environmental effects and minimize impacts; find appropriate means of discharging treated wastewater; and, develop strategies for determining appropriate estuary fresh water flows to minimize ecosystem and threatened species impacts. ď Ź
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WRL 2013 Initiatives
2013 will be remembered as an exciting year of BIG initiatives at WRL as described below:
WRL Coastal Imaging Facelift WRL’s Argus Coastal Imaging stations have been monitoring sand movement on the Southern Gold Coast beaches for approximately 15 years. The information from this monitoring program, which includes half-hourly photos of the beach and weekly reports of shoreline position and beach width, is provided to the Tweed River Entrance Sand Bypassing Project (TRESBP) to assist with management of the sand bypassing scheme at the Tweed River Entrance. In early 2013, WRL upgraded the each of the Coastal Imaging systems which now provide higher resolution pictures and more accurate analysis. The system upgrade included the physical installation of new digital hardware, a total of 16 cameras across four different stations, as well as a detailed ground control survey and lens radial distortion calibration for accurate image rectification, and an upgrade of the WRL Coastal Imaging website (http:// ci.wrl.unsw.edu.au/). WRL has just been awarded a three year monitoring contract with the City of Gold Coast to once again provide Coastal Imaging for Palm Beach and the Surfers Paradise areaFor more information on the extensive range of coastal imaging projects undertaken by WRL along Australia’s eastern seaboard, please see http://ci.wrl.unsw.edu.au/
Hydrology Research Reignites at Fowlers Gap The Fowlers Gap Arid Zone Research Station has undertaken founding research in the fields of science and engineering for many decades. The research station was home to pioneering arid climate studies undertaken by the Water Department in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New South Wales between the 1970’s and 1990’s. These studies looked at various facets of Australian arid climate hydrology and included collecting invaluable data on rainfall distribution, surface runoff,
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evaporation and stream flow in a semi-arid environment. WRL in collaboration with the Connected Waters Initiative (http://www.connectedwaters.unsw.edu.au/) has taken the lead in reigniting interest in the site with state-of-the-art hydrological and hydrogeological infrastructure. For more information, please see http://www.wrl.unsw.edu.au/site/ projects/hydrology-research-reignites-at-fowlers-gap/
On-ground Action at Big Swamp Following a recent WRL report outlining an on-ground strategy to combat acid drainage, large scale earthworks have commenced at Big Swamp. Located in the lower Manning River Estuary, portions of the wetland have been acquired by Council and over 600 hectares are currently being redesigned and reconstructed. The works are being undertaken by Greater Taree City Council as part of a large “Caring for Country” Project for the Big Swamp floodplain. This is one of the extensive saltwater wetland rehabilitations ever undertaken in Australia (http://www.wrl.unsw. edu.au/site/2013/11/on-ground-action-at-big-swamp/) and follows hard on the heels of the major rehabilitations presently underway at Tomago (http://www.wrl.unsw.edu.au/ site/projects/tomago-wetlands-tidal-inundation-modelling/) in which WRL has played a key strategic design and monitoring role.
International Review of Artificial Reefs Artificial reefs are constructed, submerged structures that provide protection of sandy coasts thereby avoiding the undesirable aspects of constructed protection on the coast itself. During 2013, WRL Coastal Engineers reviewed internationally the application and use of artificial reefs for providing coastal protection on behalf of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH). The purpose of this review was to evaluate the potential future use of artificial reefs in NSW.
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The review summarised the present understanding in terms of the design for structural stability, hydrodynamic processes, and the morphological beach response for submerged coastal structures such as multi-purpose reefs (MPRs), artificial surfing reefs (ASRs) and submerged breakwaters. For more information, please see http://www.wrl.unsw.edu. au/site/2013/11/international-review-of-artificial-reefs/
Precious Old Swamps and New Ideas Temperate Highland Peat Swamps on Sandstone are unique wetlands listed as endangered ecologic communities by both the NSW and Commonwealth Governments. The slow growing swamps have distinct ecological characteristics and are located throughout the Blue Mountains, Newnes Plateau and the Sydney Basin. For the past 2 years, WRL staff have been investigating the potential impact, mitigation techniques and remediation strategies of these upland swamps when impacted by longwall mining. The current state of the knowledge of these unique systems has been assembled and the key management issues identified. For more information, please see http:// www.wrl.unsw.edu.au/site/2013/11/old-swamps-and-newideas/ Riverbank Vulnerability Assessment of the Shoalhaven River This project continues a 40 year track record of developing new techniques for diagnosing bank erosion, monitoring, rehabilitation and techniques for resolving community issues in relation to Australia’s extensive coastal river systems. For more details, please see http://www.wrl.unsw. edu.au/site/projects/riverbank-vulnerability-assessmentof-the-shoalhaven-river/
Future Coasts - Port Fairy Coastal Hazard Assessment WRL has recently undertaken a detailed sea level rise and coastal hazard assessment for Moyne Shire Council, Victoria. This project was jointly funded by Moyne Shire Council and the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), and is part of the Future Coasts Program which aims for a. in better understanding and planning for the risks associated with sea level rise and storm surge.. This strategic study continues our track record of providing key advice on impacts and management of climate-impacted coasts. http://www.wrl.unsw.edu.au/site/projects/futurecoasts-port-fairy-coastal-hazard-assessment/ More details of the ongoing exciting activities of the Water Research Laboratory can be found at www.wrl.unsw. edu.au.
Acknowledgements WRL staff and students would like to thank our many supporters and collaborators throughout industry, government and at Universities. ď Ź CENTRES
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wrc - water research laboratory Staff News 2013 Peter Cullen Fellowship Dr Will Glamore was recently awarded a Peter Cullen Fellowship. The Peter Cullen Trust contributes to effective leadership, communication and collaboration among those who plan, manage and research Australia’s water and environmental resources. The Trust awards annual Fellowships via their ‘Science to Policy Leadership Program’. This highly competitive program raises awareness of key issues amongst mid-career rising stars and builds leadership and communication skills geared towards bringing about positive change in water and catchment management in Australia. Dr William Glamore is the first UNSW academic to receive this award.
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2013 Coasts & Ports Conference The 2013 Coasts & Ports Conference was held at the Novotel Sydney Manly Pacific from 11-13 September. The Coasts & Ports Conference series is the pre-eminent forum in the Australasian region for engineers, planners, scientists and researchers to meet and discuss issues extending across all disciplines related to oceans, coasts and ports. WRL was well represented, with 14 delegates attending the conference. As part of the Coasts & Ports Field Trips, WRL was visited to view the facilities and equipment. New to the conference was the nextGEN poster forum. Four posters (and associated papers) were presented by WRL students, with WRL PhD student Dan Howe being awarded both the nextGEN Poster Award, and the Delegate’s Choice nextGEN Poster Award.
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D.N. Foster Awards at WRL At the biennial Coasts and Ports Conference recipients of the D.N. Foster award are named. The D.N. Foster award is to encourage engineering students to pursue career opportunities in coastal and/or ocean engineering. Doug, (1930-2001) was referred to by many of his peers as ‘the father of coastal engineering in Australia’, was a founding staff member when WRL began operations at Manly Vale in 1959. Doug became the third Director of WRL in 1973 and retained that position for fourteen years until he retired in 1987. The 2013 conference provided an opportunity for past recipients of the D.N. Foster award, many of whom are associated with WRL, to meet and show their appreciation to Doug Foster’s widow Shirley.
wrc - kensington Engineering Excellence Award WRL were finalists in the ‘Innovations and Inventions’ category in the 2013 Engineering Excellence Awards Sydney Division. This commendation was for specialist, customised barochambers that were designed, built, tested and implemented for the purpose of understanding the upper limits of decompression that Australian fish species can safely tolerate during passage through our water infrastructure. On the 5th February 2014, the Powerhouse Museum opened the exhibition Engineering Excellence Awards 2013 which showcases innovative Australian engineering projects. The barochambers were one of the five projects showcased in a display that will remain for 12 months and be viewed by the half a million museum visitors this year.
Major Conservation Award Dr William Glamore, Duncan Rayner and Jamie Ruprecht are to be warmly congratulated on securing the prestigious 2013 National Trust of Australia’s Award for Conservation (Natural Heritage). The award was presented to the Tomago Wetland Restoration Project’s team, including the staff and scientists of WRL, NSW Parks and Wildlife Division and NSW Fisheries for their ongoing work at the site.
L-R Jamie Ruprecht (WRL), Dr Craig Boys (Fisheries NSW), Rob Jenkins (WRL), Bob Creese (Fisheries NSW), Grantley Smith (WRL), Brett Miller (WRL) and Brett Pflugrath (WRL/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA).
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Water Research Centre 2013 - People Kensington Co-Director Professor Richard Stuetz
Business Manager Robert Steel, BSc (Hons) UNSW, BE UQ
Dr Xiaomin Li Fitsum Woldemeskel Di He Eli Ershadi
Water Research Laboratory (excl. CWI)
Technical and Administration
Director, WRL, Co-Director of Water Research Centre
Patricia Karwan
Grantley Smith, BE (Hons) MEngSc CPEng
Duncan Rayner, BE (Hons) MEngSc
Academics
Priom Rahman, BE (Hons 1) BCom
Professor David Waite Professor Ashish Sharma Associate Professor Ron Cox Associate Professor Ian Turner Associate Professor Matthew McCabe Associate Professor Tommy Wiedmann Dr Gregoire Mariethoz Dr Stuart Khan Dr Chris Blenkinsopp Dr Fiona Johnson
Professor Nicholas Ashbolt, University of Cincinnati, USA Business Manager
Associate Professor Sivakumar Bellie Associate Professor Sven Lundie Dr David Roser Dr Eric Sivret Dr Heather Coleman Dr Chris Duesterberg Dr Shikha Garg Dr Richard Collins Dr Rita Henderson Dr Hoori Ajami Dr Xavier Barthelemy Dr Mark Bligh Dr Adele Jones Dr Andrew Kinsela Dr Nhat Le Dr James McDonald Dr Rajeshwar Mehrotra Dr Kate Murphy Dr Gavin Parcsi Dr An Ninh Pham Dr Michael Short Dr Kristen Splinter Dr Jacqueline Stroud Dr Lucy Marshall Dr Xianguang Wang Dr Yuan Wang Dr Hazel Rowley Dr Yi Lui Dr AJ Anceno Dr Tongxu Liu Dr Christopher Miller Dr Sanjeev Jha
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Dr Francois Flocard, MSc PhD Nathan Guerry, BE (Hons 1) BA
Visiting Academics
Research Staff
Chris Drummond, BE (Hons 1) MIEAust
Associate Professor Bill Peirson, BE BSc MEngSc PhD MIEAust
Academics
Associate Professor Ian Cordery, University of New South Wales, Australia
Erica Davey, (BE (Hons 1) BSc
Dr Stuart Dever, GHD, Australia
Alessio Mariani, BE (Hons1) MEnvEng
Associate Professor Ron Cox, BE PhD CPEng FIEAust James Ruprecht, BE (Hons Professor Jorg Drewes, 1) Civil Associate Professor Ian Colorado School of Mines, Turner (Deputy Director), Administration and Colorado, USA BSc (Hons) MEnvEngSc PhD Technical Staf Mr Peter Kovalsky, University MIEAust Jodi Adams of New South Wales, Dr Chris Blenkinsopp, PhD Australia Anna Blacka, BD (Visual Research Staff Communication) Dr Simin Maleknia, University Michael Allis, BE (Hons) PhD of New South Wales, Emma Johannson candidate Australia Robert Jenkins Dr Xavier Barthelemy, PhD Professor Henrique de Coral Johnson, BSWk Melo Lisboa, Universidade Dr Kristen D Splinter, BSc Federal de Santa Catarina, Larry Paice (Eng) MSc PhD Brazil Ross Mathews Project Staff Associate Professor Andrew Principal Project Engineer – Hamish Studholme Rose, Southern Cross Hydraulic & Modelling Joan Terleckyj University, Australia Brett Miller, BE BSc MEngSc Robert Thompson Dr Gareth Swarbrick, Pells MIEAust Sullivan & Meynink, Sydney Water Reference Library Australia Senior Project Engineers Doug Anderson, BE (Hons) MEngSc (Groundwater) MIAH MIEAust Matt Blacka, BE (Hons) MEngSc(Coastal) MIEAust James Carley, BBuild MEngSc MIEAust Dr William Glamore, PhD
Project Engineers Alexandra Badenhop, BE (Env)(Hons), MEngSc (Groundwater Studies) Ian Coghlan, BE (Hons1) MEngSc DipEngPrac MIEAust
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– WRL
Caroline Hedges, BA (Lib Sc) Grad Cert (Training) MEd ALIA
Visiting Academics Assistant Professor Mamoru Arita, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University Dr Bruce Cathers, UNSW Australia Associate Professor Mark Davidson, School of Marine Science and Engineering, Plymouth University Professor Ian King, BA (Cantab) MS, PhD (Univ of California) Member ASCE
Co-funders of Academic Positions: Mr Gary Johnston for the Gary Johnston Chair of Water Management
School Industry Partners:
School Industry Supporters: