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Official Site Visit of the Hydrology and Water Resources Congress 2012

St Marys Water Recycling Plant Site Visit & Hawkesbury Nepean Modelling Presentation
Monday 19th November at 7:45 from Dockside in Sydney

The WSRG and Water Panel are running a half day site visit to the WRP in St Marys followed by presentations of the Hawkesbury Nepean Modelling conducted by Sydney Water Corporation, SKM and BMT WBM on the Monday prior to the conference.

The first event of the site visit day is the Water Recycling Plant in St Marys.

St Marys WRP is a wastewater treatment and recycling plant. The plant uses reverse osmosis technology to supply recycled water for release to the Hawkesbury-Nepean River. It replaces up to 18 billion litres of water that until now has been released from Warragamba Dam to assist the health of the river. Site visit activities may include:

  • a multimedia presentation
  • tour of the adjacent water recycling plant or wastewater processes
  • interactive activities at the centre

The day will continue after lunch at the University of Western Sydney with presentation on the modelling of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River.

Sydney Water is developing a new Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, hydrodynamic and river system model. This new model will inform wastewater infrastructure investment decisions for Sydney’s northwest and south west growth sectors. The modelling is being undertaken by Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) in partnership with BMT WBM, eWater CRC and CSIRO. A pilot modelling phase has been completed and simulates the hydrology, hydraulics and biochemical processes to determine the water quality benefits and impacts resulting from various waste water treatment environmental flow, water sensitive urban design and land-use change scenarios.

After the presentations, the bus will return to Dockside in time for welcome drinks.

Numbers are strictly limited and are filling up. Pre-registration is madatory.

Total cost is $70.00, which includes all bus transfers, lunch and afternoon tea.

Engineers Without Borders Short Course on WASH

Otherwise known as the Engineers Without Borders Short Course on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene it is coming up in late October 2012.

EWB ‘Pathways’ is a short course seminar series aimed towards both professionals and students wishing to gain the skills and knowledge required to undertake development work. The overall objective of EWB Pathways is to connect, educate, and empower people to do humanitarian engineering. Covering topics pertinent to EWB’s humanitarian work, the course will run as a series of four 2-hour workshops held once a week on Tuesday evenings commencing on 30 October. The sessions will be in a workshop format including a design challenge activity (based on a real-world scenario) followed by a presentation from a guest speaker.

There is a PDF Flyer with the full details.

Panel Presentation for September

The Water Panel is pleased to announce that the September presentation will be given by Dr Bryson Bates, CSIRO, and is titled Climate Change and IFD.  The presentation will be given at EA’s Chatswood auditorium on Tuesday 25th September 2012, 5:30 for 6pm with drinks and nibbles available prior to the presentation.  The abstract of the presentation is:

Bryson has been the lead of several CSIRO projects that have been assessing the impact of climate change on rainfall extremes. Bryson is also joint author of the ARR climate change research strategy and plan. Bryson’s presentation will discuss how climate change will affect rainfall extremes- what we do know and what we don’t and what we are likely to know in the future, as well as the uncertainty about estimates.

A printable PDF flyer is available for redistribution.

ARR Update Sept 2012

Australian Rainfall and Runoff Workshop

The ARR revision team is running a full day workshop on Monday 19th November in Sydney.  The workshop will run from 10am – 4.15pm at UTS, Sydney. A preliminary schedule is attached however this is subject to change depending on whether outcomes of other projects are available at the time. The worksop will discuss the framework for delivery as well as project updates. Registration is open to those attending or not attending the Hydrology and Water Resources Conference. For those attending the Hydrology and Water Resources Conference 19-22nd November – Please note that registration for this event is separate to registering for the conference. The cost of registration is $150 (inc. GST). Places are limited so Register NOW!

Update: there is also a PDF flyer.

St Mary’s WRP Site Visit and Hawkesbury Nepean Modelling Presentation

The WSRG and Sydney Water Panel are running a half day site visit to the WRP in St Marys followed by presentations of the Hawkesbury Nepean Modelling conducted by Sydney Water Corporation, SKM and BMT WBM. The site visit will start from various locations and details in regards for pick-up locations are in the attached flyer. Numbers are strictly limited and the cost for the full day is $70.00. The afternoon presentation on the modelling can also be attended without registering for the site visit. Please refer to the flyer and website for details.

Changes to Car Parking at EA Chatswood

We have been advised by Engineers Australia the the car park in Thomas Street, which is closest to the EA Auditorium, will be closed from the 28th of September 2012.  This is to allow for redevelopment and when finished there should be approximately 250 car parking spaces available.  In the mean time EA suggests the use of the following car parks:

  1. Victor St Car Park
  2. Mandarin Centre Car Park
  3. Westfield Car Park
  4. The Concourse Car Park


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Changes to the NSW Office of Water Guidelines for Riparian Corridors on Waterfront Land

The following notice may be of interest to water practitioners:

Due to popular demand, Stormwater NSW will be hosting a second seminar on the changes to the NSW Office of Water Guidelines for Riparian Corridors on Waterfront Land. The Seminar will be held from 8.30am until 12.30pm on Thursday, 15th November.

If you would like to receive further information regarding this event as it becomes available, please email Katherine Ducker from GEMS Event Management on kducker@gemspl.com.au.

The seminar will cover important issues including:

  • The NSW Government’s planning reform agenda to address systematic issues affecting the NSW housing sector and why are riparian corridors and waterfront land so important to consider;
  • Understanding the new NSW Office of Water Guidelines for riparian corridors on waterfront land, including how to apply the ‘riparian corridor matrix’ for a controlled activity approval, and how to apply the ‘averaging rule’ to offset riparian corridor encroachment;
  • Primary considerations for the preparation of a controlled activity approval application to ensure compliance with the new Guidelines for riparian corridors on waterfront land;
  • The new controlled activity approval fee schedule, including the new ‘priority assessment fee; and
  • The role of the NSW Office of Water in regulating controlled activities on waterfront land and the importance of protecting and restoring the riparian corridor environment.

Presenters include:

  • Marwan El Chamy, Manager Water Regulation, NSW Office of Water. Marwan El Chamy will introduce the seminar and outline the changes to controlled activities in riparian corridors and controlled activity approval fees. The changes will better meet the needs of the development industry, whilst continuing to protect and restore waterfront land.
  • Robert Black, Executive Director, Land Release (Planning and Delivery), NSW Department of Infrastructure and Planning. Robert Black will outline the NSW Government’s planning reform agenda to address systematic issues affecting the NSW housing sector.
  • Jeremy Morice, Water Regulation Officer, NSW Office of Water. Jeremy Morice will present the new Guidelines for riparian corridors on waterfront land and explain how to apply the ‘riparian corridor matrix’ and offsetting ‘averaging rule’.
  • Gina Potter, Water Regulation Officer, NSW Office of Water. Gina Potter will present a case study of a development site in western Sydney where the new Guidelines for riparian corridors on waterfront land are being applied.

Should you have any questions regarding this Seminar, please contact GEMS Event Management on (02) 9744 5252.

ARR Update for August 2012

Project Updates

Project 4 (Continuous Rainfall Sequences at a point)

The Stage 2 report on Continuous simulation of rainfall sequences has been released for industry comment. Continuous simulation of rainfall sequences are becoming increasingly important in design flood estimation as they represent, arguably, the most rigorous technique available to represent the joint behaviour of flood-producing extreme rainfall events, the preceding antecedent rainfall conditions, and the influence of non-stationary catchment conditions. This report describes the outcomes from the second stage of ARR research project 4. The objectives of this stage are to:

  1. finalise the development of the regionalised state-based method of fragments approach as well as the development of a regionalised daily rainfall generation model; and
  2. assess the performance of the method of fragments model using the same statistics and locations that were used in Frost et al [2004].

Arising from this project, methods were developed to allow for the generation of sequences of point-rainfall at the resolution of the pluviograph data (in this study taken to be in increments of 6-minutes) at any location in Australia. The testing conducted in this phase of work focused on statistics relevant for using continuous simulation in flood frequency estimation. Specifically, the method was tested in the context of the capacity to reproduce both extreme rainfall and the antecedent rainfall leading up to the annual maxima event, with the suite of methods generally performing well against these metrics.

Download a PDF of the report.

Project 10 and 15 (People Safety and Two dimensional Modelling (Flow around buildings))

Flow around buildings and People Safety presentation will be held at the 19th Queensland Water Symposium on 27-28 Sep in Brisbane.

Report Review Process

The Revision team is committed to producing a quality project for industry. As part of the revision process has been developed where reports are reviewed by the Technical Committee as well as Australian and International reviewers. The following reports are undergoing the detailed review process prior to release to the industry for comment and are expected to be released soon.

General Updates Call for Reviewers

Those interested in reviewing projects should email arr_admin@arr.org.au briefly describing which projects they are interested in reviewing and what qualifications/experience they have in those practice areas.

HWRS 2012

Registration is now open for the Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium. HWRS 2012 is Australia’s largest event devoted to hydrology, water engineering and related areas in water resources management. The Symposium has a long history as Australia’s pre-eminent conference in hydrological research and provides a forum to discuss emergent and innovative approaches for practicing engineers and scientists. HWRS 2012 takes place from 19 – 22 November 2012 at Dockside, Sydney NSW,
HWRS 2012 will bring together a large audience of academics, government officials and industry practitioners. Symposium highlights will include presentations from various researchers working on the 21 Australian Rainfall and Runoff Revision Projects, and keynote speeches from some of the world’s leading experts in hydrology and water resources. Dr Rob Vertessy, of the Bureau of Meterology has been confirmed to give the Munro Oration.

Register Now.

LinkedIn

Australian Rainfall and Runoff has joined LinkedIn. Join the group for discussions and updates on the revision of Australian Rainfall and Runoff.

PDF Slides from COPEP Presentation

Dr Westra has kindly provided PDF copies of his presentation:

EA Announces Response to QLD Floods Enquiry

Engineers Australia has just released a discussion paper prompted by the Queensland Flood Enquiry, their notification states:

Engineers Australia has completed a comprehensive analysis of the implications of the Queensland Flood Commission of Inquiry’s Final Report and its recommendations for engineering professionals. Engineers Australias report focuses on four key areas concerning flooding and floodplain management including; planning, resilience, response and implementation.

Engineers Australia Queensland Division President Steven Goh highlighted the inconsistent approach to flood plain management across the state as a key issue.

“Engineers Australia has not questioned the technical competence of the engineers involved in the floods. Given the circumstances, the dam operators performed appropriately. Flood operation is a multifaceted task that requires specialised operators who must use their expert technical judgment, with guidance from flood operation manuals or other appropriate documentation,” Goh said.

The full report from Engineers Australia is available online.

Reproduced from Engineers Australia eNews 9 July 2012.

Interaction of Catchment and Coastal Processes on Flooding and Inundation – Full Details

The Water Panel is pleased to announce that the July presentation will be a joint presentation with the NSW Coastal, Ocean and Port Engineering Panel titled: Interaction of Catchment and Coastal Processes on Flooding and Inundation.  The presentation will be given in two parts by Seth Westra (UNSW) and Dave Callaghan (UQ).

When: Monday 16th July 2012 – NOTE a different date for us.
Time: 5:30 for 6pm
Where: EA Chatswood

Online registration would be appreciated.

downloadable PDF of this information is available.

Abstracts

Extremes and extremely big storms: how changing physics impacts statistics in coastal engineering.

While often assumed and applied that extreme event magnitudes can be estimated from measurements, hindsight often offers different outcomes far exceeding our expectations. A recent example involving wave height was seen at Niue where previous “measurements” would have underestimated the risk of wave damage to houses on top of a near vertical cliff 22m above MSL. A polar accelerating tropical cyclone in phase with growing waves (i.e., increasing group celerity) was able to keep the cyclonic winds on the growing waves (typical waves generated by cyclonic winds outrun the wind field, a mechanism that limits their growth). This in phase phenomenon lead to an estimated doubling of wave height compared to that expected for the TC intensity involved. While this is a dramatic version where the more common events look very different to the extreme events, other examples are found for storm surge and wave run- up.
The talk will address how to incorporate these different events into statistical modelling by a simple analytical example that qualitatively explains the empirical shapes found in the NSW storm surge measurements. Some generalisation will be suggested to handle more complex scenarios.

Compound extremes: quantifying interactions between catchment flooding and storm tides in the coastal zone.

Climate and weather related events such as flooding, heatwaves, wildfires and cyclones pose significant risks to society. The overall impact of these events is determined by the interaction of many processes acting together, where the manner in which the processes are combined is often just as important as the state (extreme or otherwise) of each of the driving variables.
This presentation will aim to provide an overarching framework to understand such extremes, focusing on the specific case of coastal flooding as an example of a complex system with many interacting variables. The complexity in such systems arises because floods in estuarine and coastal areas can be caused by both catchment runoff as well as storm tides, and thus both are important in evaluating flood risk. Furthermore, storm surge is largely determined by atmospheric pressure and wind anomalies and thus can be triggered by the same meteorological conditions as intense rainfall events. The diversity of possible interactions which cause such climate extremes suggest that new methods for flood estimation are required that better capture these dependencies, in order to develop more accurate and precise estimates of flood risk.

Speaker Biographies

Dave Callaghan

Before joining the University of Queensland, Dave Callaghan held positions within industry including Parsons Brinckerhoff and Lawson and Treloar and research sector including Nederlands Instituut voor Ecologie and the University of Queensland. He is the author of a book section and more than 50 other technical documents with applied and research applications. He is recognised for leading edge research in coastal engineering including statistics of extremes, beach erosion from extreme events, physical and biological interactions of salt marshes and coral reefs, lagoon dynamics and wave propagation.

Seth Westra

Seth Westra is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide, and has over eight years of industry and research experience in fields of flood hydrology and hydroclimatology. Seth’s recent research has focused on better understanding the hydrological extremes of flooding and drought under a variable and changing climate, as well as understanding hydrological events which are caused by multiple forcings.

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