Prediction and controlling of pipe failures in buried water and gas pipe systems. Australian Research Council has recognised water as a critical resource that must be protected from wastage. Along with water, the supply of gas to communities through extensive buried pipe networks is an essential service. As the pipe systems age, the pipe failures have increased. These failures lead to loss of valuable commodity and inconvenience and health hazard to public and workers. Effective asset manage ....Prediction and controlling of pipe failures in buried water and gas pipe systems. Australian Research Council has recognised water as a critical resource that must be protected from wastage. Along with water, the supply of gas to communities through extensive buried pipe networks is an essential service. As the pipe systems age, the pipe failures have increased. These failures lead to loss of valuable commodity and inconvenience and health hazard to public and workers. Effective asset management tools are urgently required in predicting and controlling pipe failures. A consortium of water and gas suppliers and a team of researchers from Monash University and CSIRO have joined forces to address this problem so that significant social and economic benefits to Australia can be realised. Read moreRead less
Sustainability of water and wastewater treatment chemicals. In recent years, the environmental design and management of water and wastewater treatment facilities has broadened from consideration of water quality outcomes to include the environmental consequences of energy and material inputs. This has produced nationally agreed approaches to estimating greenhouse gas emissions from power consumption, but for important chemical additives analysts are forced to work with low-quality estimated dat ....Sustainability of water and wastewater treatment chemicals. In recent years, the environmental design and management of water and wastewater treatment facilities has broadened from consideration of water quality outcomes to include the environmental consequences of energy and material inputs. This has produced nationally agreed approaches to estimating greenhouse gas emissions from power consumption, but for important chemical additives analysts are forced to work with low-quality estimated data. In a time when society wants to account for the 'carbon-footprint' of decisions and more broadly consider the resources used and emissions produced by industry, this research will make this quantitatively possible for chemicals used in water and wastewater treatment.Read moreRead less
On-line monitoring of cyanobacteria to predict coagulant doses and powdered activated carbon application in water treatment. Cyanobacteria, more commonly known as blue-green algae, can impact water quality by releasing toxins that can be harmful to human health and imparting unpleasant taste and odours to the water. This project will support the water industry in managing these risks by providing a rapid, on-line tool to assist in their removal during water treatment.
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
AI Assisted Probabilistic Structural Health Monitoring with Uncertain Data. This project aims to develop an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted probabilistic structural health monitoring approach for civil engineering structures. The developed approach applies novel deep learning techniques with a large amount of data measured from uncertain and complex environment, for reliable structural condition monitoring and performance prediction. This project expects to make a step change in d ....AI Assisted Probabilistic Structural Health Monitoring with Uncertain Data. This project aims to develop an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted probabilistic structural health monitoring approach for civil engineering structures. The developed approach applies novel deep learning techniques with a large amount of data measured from uncertain and complex environment, for reliable structural condition monitoring and performance prediction. This project expects to make a step change in data mining and interpretation. Expected outcomes of the project include novel AI assisted approaches to conduct probabilistic structural condition monitoring with sensitive features and future structural performance prediction. This will provide significant benefits to infrastructure asset owners to reduce maintenance costs.Read moreRead less
Fluorescence as a tool for sensitive detection of failures in recycled water treatment and distribution systems. Water reuse is emerging as a key strategy for the conservation of drinking water supplies around Australia. Accordingly, there is a need for fast, reliable, affordable and highly sensitive means of ensuring the reliability of treatment processes and final water quality. This research aims to meet such needs by providing new tools based on fluorescence analysis. These tools are to be i ....Fluorescence as a tool for sensitive detection of failures in recycled water treatment and distribution systems. Water reuse is emerging as a key strategy for the conservation of drinking water supplies around Australia. Accordingly, there is a need for fast, reliable, affordable and highly sensitive means of ensuring the reliability of treatment processes and final water quality. This research aims to meet such needs by providing new tools based on fluorescence analysis. These tools are to be implemented for online monitoring of treatment performance and for the identification of accidental contamination of drinking waters by recycled water. The enhanced ability to ensure both recycled water quality and drinking water quality will have public health and environmental benefits as well as protecting public confidence in water recycling systems.Read moreRead less
Boosting up Productivity: Optimizing Scaffolding Life Cycle Management with Virtual Design and Construction. Scaffolding management can be critical to construction industries across oil and gas, building, and infrastructure sectors. It can lead to low productivity and safety due to static and poor planning. This project aims to innovatively integrate a decision support system, virtual design and construction, and onsite monitoring into one dynamic planning system to significantly lift productivi ....Boosting up Productivity: Optimizing Scaffolding Life Cycle Management with Virtual Design and Construction. Scaffolding management can be critical to construction industries across oil and gas, building, and infrastructure sectors. It can lead to low productivity and safety due to static and poor planning. This project aims to innovatively integrate a decision support system, virtual design and construction, and onsite monitoring into one dynamic planning system to significantly lift productivity. The emphasis is on producing optimal solutions for planning, design, erection, monitoring, dismantling, and relocation of scaffolding, so that productivity is maximised subject to satisfying required cost and safety constraints. The project aims to therefore secure long-term economic benefits by improving productivity and enhancing project performance.Read moreRead less
Transforming liquefied
natural gas (LNG) plant construction productivity through mobile computing technologies. Australia's liquefied natural gas (LNG) construction industry is plagued by major cost blowouts. This project will investigate a new mobile computing approach for streamlining LNG construction projects, thus yielding significant productivity gains.
Advancing laterally loaded pile analysis. This project will replace out-of-date solution techniques for the design of pile foundations subjected to wind, waves and other horizontally applied forces and, in so doing, lead to more efficient designs of the foundations for structures such as elevated highways, tall buildings, bridges, jetties, towers, wind turbines and offshore platforms.
Mitigating the risk of cyanobacterial blooms in wastewater ponds. Cyanobacterial blooms in wastewater treatment plants impact on effluent quality and the utility of recycled water, posing a significant risk to the economy, the environment and public health. To understand the causes of cyanobacterial blooms in pond-based wastewater treatment plants and the risk they pose, this project will use the latest molecular techniques to examine how the microbial communities within these systems interact w ....Mitigating the risk of cyanobacterial blooms in wastewater ponds. Cyanobacterial blooms in wastewater treatment plants impact on effluent quality and the utility of recycled water, posing a significant risk to the economy, the environment and public health. To understand the causes of cyanobacterial blooms in pond-based wastewater treatment plants and the risk they pose, this project will use the latest molecular techniques to examine how the microbial communities within these systems interact with each other and their surrounding environment to form blooms and produce toxins and other harmful metabolites. Such knowledge will inform risk assessment and provide strategies for the mitigation of future bloom events, improving the security of our increasingly valuable recycled water resources.Read moreRead less