Incentivising On Country Aboriginal Employment: Anangu Futures. . This project aims to investigate the changing face of cultural tourism in central Australia and examine pathways towards sustainable aboriginal employment in and around Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. The project is significant because it brings together Aboriginal community members, industry and government stakeholders to identify micro-business opportunities, youth training initiatives, better relations across cultural divides, ....Incentivising On Country Aboriginal Employment: Anangu Futures. . This project aims to investigate the changing face of cultural tourism in central Australia and examine pathways towards sustainable aboriginal employment in and around Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. The project is significant because it brings together Aboriginal community members, industry and government stakeholders to identify micro-business opportunities, youth training initiatives, better relations across cultural divides, and the economic value of Aboriginal knowledge. Outcomes include a model for sustainable Aboriginal employment in remote and very remote contexts, and the development of culturally relevant and sustainable governing guidelines for regional investment. Benefits include more sustainable jobs for Aboriginal people.Read moreRead less
Making Crime Pay: Manufacturing Heritage Experiences in a Digital Age. This project aims to create digital tools to allow visitors to experience Australian convict sites and historical big data in new and novel ways. The project expects to forge a synergistic long-term relationship between archives, historical sites and research programs through pioneering thematic digital storytelling techniques, allowing audiences to access research data not previously curated for public consumption. Expected ....Making Crime Pay: Manufacturing Heritage Experiences in a Digital Age. This project aims to create digital tools to allow visitors to experience Australian convict sites and historical big data in new and novel ways. The project expects to forge a synergistic long-term relationship between archives, historical sites and research programs through pioneering thematic digital storytelling techniques, allowing audiences to access research data not previously curated for public consumption. Expected outcomes include enhanced international and disciplinary collaborations, generating standards for curating digital site, archival and collection data, and new means of communicating research results to a wider public, especially descendants. This should provide significant benefits to heritage site operators. Read moreRead less
Quantifying the impact of infiltration on dune erosion under waves & surge. Through a series of controlled laboratory experiments and numerical model development, this project aims to determine and quantify for the first time the role of water infiltration on sandy soil stability at actively eroding coastal sand dunes. This project expects to generate much-needed understanding of fundamental dune erosion processes using innovative instrumentation to obtain continuous measurements of wave-dune in ....Quantifying the impact of infiltration on dune erosion under waves & surge. Through a series of controlled laboratory experiments and numerical model development, this project aims to determine and quantify for the first time the role of water infiltration on sandy soil stability at actively eroding coastal sand dunes. This project expects to generate much-needed understanding of fundamental dune erosion processes using innovative instrumentation to obtain continuous measurements of wave-dune interactions, dune profile evolution, and water infiltration. Expected outcomes of this project include improved coastal engineering models to predict dune erosion under waves and increasing water levels. This should provide significant benefit to the future management of coastal assets using nature-based solutions.Read moreRead less
Reducing plate waste in hotels - which interventions are most effective? This project aims to quantify the comparative effectiveness of belief-based and choice-architecture-based interventions in reducing food waste generated by tourists at hotel buffets. Expected outcomes include: new insights into effective triggers of pro-environmental tourist behaviour; the first empirical data on carbon emissions caused by plate waste in tourism; an automatic plate waste measurement system and benchmarking ....Reducing plate waste in hotels - which interventions are most effective? This project aims to quantify the comparative effectiveness of belief-based and choice-architecture-based interventions in reducing food waste generated by tourists at hotel buffets. Expected outcomes include: new insights into effective triggers of pro-environmental tourist behaviour; the first empirical data on carbon emissions caused by plate waste in tourism; an automatic plate waste measurement system and benchmarking app for monitoring and comparison; and effective practical measures to reduce avoidable food leftovers generated by tourists. This should provide significant benefits by: lowering food cost for the struggling tourism industry, reducing carbon emissions, and contributing to Australia’s aim of halving food waste by 2030.Read moreRead less
Containment and Reduction of Rework in Transport Mega Projects. Mega transport projects (>$1 billion) are poorly managed during their construction with significant cost and schedule overruns and benefit shortfalls regularly being experienced. Having to perform rework has been identified as a major factor that contributes to these unintended consequences. As there has been limited research that has empirically examined rework causation, an inability to develop effective rework containment and red ....Containment and Reduction of Rework in Transport Mega Projects. Mega transport projects (>$1 billion) are poorly managed during their construction with significant cost and schedule overruns and benefit shortfalls regularly being experienced. Having to perform rework has been identified as a major factor that contributes to these unintended consequences. As there has been limited research that has empirically examined rework causation, an inability to develop effective rework containment and reduction strategies prevails. This research aims to develop a theoretical model that can be used to develop robust containment and reduction strategies to mitigate the adverse economic, productivity and safety consequences that materialize from performing rework during the construction of mega transport projects.Read moreRead less
Asset Intelligence: Maximising Operational Effectiveness for Digital Era . The primary aim of this project is to develop an innovative lifecycle semantic–based decision making approach through asset intelligence so as to maximize the operational effectiveness maintenance, repair and rehabilitation planning of infrastructure assets, such as concrete pavement. The research intends to address an important gap by providing logical formalisms and real-time capability to life-cycle asset information t ....Asset Intelligence: Maximising Operational Effectiveness for Digital Era . The primary aim of this project is to develop an innovative lifecycle semantic–based decision making approach through asset intelligence so as to maximize the operational effectiveness maintenance, repair and rehabilitation planning of infrastructure assets, such as concrete pavement. The research intends to address an important gap by providing logical formalisms and real-time capability to life-cycle asset information through computational intelligence. The expected outcome will be an intelligent asset management platform that provides structured and semantically enriched lifecycle asset information for optimised solutions to help reduce the cost, time and effort in asset information storage and retrieval, and decision-making. Read moreRead less
Rare Event Simulation: Protecting vital infrastructure from flood extremes. This research aims to develop Rare Event Simulation to quantify the future risk of very rare to extreme floods. Expected outcomes include a framework for the design and maintenance of critical Civil Engineering infrastructure such as dams, extrapolation of extreme storm events beyond the observed record, and an assessment of change in rare flood risk across Australia. The significance of this world-first research lies in ....Rare Event Simulation: Protecting vital infrastructure from flood extremes. This research aims to develop Rare Event Simulation to quantify the future risk of very rare to extreme floods. Expected outcomes include a framework for the design and maintenance of critical Civil Engineering infrastructure such as dams, extrapolation of extreme storm events beyond the observed record, and an assessment of change in rare flood risk across Australia. The significance of this world-first research lies in adapting rare event simulation techniques that have only been applied to computer system failure before, to water engineering design. With Australian riverine flooding projected to cause $170 billion in losses by 2050, the benefit of this proposal in reducing future infrastructure damage costs and liability is overwhelming.Read moreRead less
Bridge performance assessment through advanced sensing and modelling. Bridge performance assessment through advanced sensing and modelling. This project aims to create cyber infrastructure to manage and maintain civil infrastructure, specifically bridges. Current sensor data interpretation approaches are not good at assessing the performance of civil infrastructure or evaluating the reserve capacity; in particular, they do not adequately account for high levels of systematic modelling uncertaint ....Bridge performance assessment through advanced sensing and modelling. Bridge performance assessment through advanced sensing and modelling. This project aims to create cyber infrastructure to manage and maintain civil infrastructure, specifically bridges. Current sensor data interpretation approaches are not good at assessing the performance of civil infrastructure or evaluating the reserve capacity; in particular, they do not adequately account for high levels of systematic modelling uncertainties. This project intends to ease the current scientific data interpretation bottleneck. Expected outcomes are better infrastructure management and maintenance planning, fewer redundant interventions, modified infrastructure and improved future design.Read moreRead less
Condition-Based Maintenance Optimisation for Queensland’s Railways. Rail maintainers currently use time-based (scheduled) approaches to balance the costs and benefits of inspections and maintenance. Changing to condition-based maintenance has the potential to reduce costs and improve track condition. This project aims to enable this approach for rail by developing: 1) new track degradation prediction techniques combining Big Data and engineering knowledge; 2) new on-board sensing capabilities fo ....Condition-Based Maintenance Optimisation for Queensland’s Railways. Rail maintainers currently use time-based (scheduled) approaches to balance the costs and benefits of inspections and maintenance. Changing to condition-based maintenance has the potential to reduce costs and improve track condition. This project aims to enable this approach for rail by developing: 1) new track degradation prediction techniques combining Big Data and engineering knowledge; 2) new on-board sensing capabilities for frequent, low-cost track monitoring; 3) novel inspection and maintenance optimisation methods to efficiently allocate resources. The knowledge generated by this project is expected to decrease maintenance costs, safety risk, and track closures and therefore enhance the affordability and reliability of rail travel.Read moreRead less
The effects of cyclic loading on partially saturated soils. This project aims to predict the settlement and strength of the upper, partially saturated layer of the ground when it is subjected to cyclic loading. Most of our critical infrastructure is built on or in this layer, but currently we cannot reliably predict the ground response of partially saturated soils to the cyclic loads that arise from earthquakes, traffic and construction processes. The project is expected to develop a new numeric ....The effects of cyclic loading on partially saturated soils. This project aims to predict the settlement and strength of the upper, partially saturated layer of the ground when it is subjected to cyclic loading. Most of our critical infrastructure is built on or in this layer, but currently we cannot reliably predict the ground response of partially saturated soils to the cyclic loads that arise from earthquakes, traffic and construction processes. The project is expected to develop a new numerical model that can predict the effects of cyclic loads, and provide updated engineering guidance to ensure the integrity of infrastructure dependent on partially-saturated soils. Improved predictions of the processes involved resulting from this project will have significant economic benefits, as well as ensuring the safety and security of infrastructure and reduced maintenance costs.Read moreRead less