Measuring the impact of urban regulation on housing affordability in Australian cities and regions. Urban planning must ensure that development meets new environmental goals, but stringent regulation may reduce housing supply and affordability. This project uses new local planning data and econometric studies to quantify and monitor planning regulation impacts on housing supply and affordability in Australian cities and regions.
Why is (re)development hot?: Measuring cumulative heat in Australian cities. Incremental (re)development of Australia’s residential areas occurs piecemeal, with varied planning oversight, and results in potentially harmful cumulative warming. This project aims to causally identify the warming effect of residential (re)development and investigate the impact of planning policies that control changes in the built form associated with increased heat exposure. Using large geospatial datasets and a qu ....Why is (re)development hot?: Measuring cumulative heat in Australian cities. Incremental (re)development of Australia’s residential areas occurs piecemeal, with varied planning oversight, and results in potentially harmful cumulative warming. This project aims to causally identify the warming effect of residential (re)development and investigate the impact of planning policies that control changes in the built form associated with increased heat exposure. Using large geospatial datasets and a quasi-experimental research design, warming in Australia’s suburbs over the past decade at the micro (street canyon)- and neighbourhood-scales, will be attributed to (re)development types and ‘fissures’ in policy to inform climate resilient planning. Read moreRead less
Transistor-based sensor technology for fast, reliable and accurate in situ monitoring of recycled wastewater. Water recycling is becoming critical for water supplies worldwide, due to declining natural supplies of fresh water, combined with increasing demand. The greatest community and industry concerns over recycled water are quality assurance and relative cost. Ensuring quality requires monitoring of contaminants, yet no single real-time technology exists to measure the myriad of potential con ....Transistor-based sensor technology for fast, reliable and accurate in situ monitoring of recycled wastewater. Water recycling is becoming critical for water supplies worldwide, due to declining natural supplies of fresh water, combined with increasing demand. The greatest community and industry concerns over recycled water are quality assurance and relative cost. Ensuring quality requires monitoring of contaminants, yet no single real-time technology exists to measure the myriad of potential contaminants. This project will develop technology using AlGaN/GaN-based transistors, sensitised to different contaminants, enabling multi-analyte real-time sensor arrays. In situ monitoring systems based on such arrays will be fast, accurate, reliable, low-cost, and applicable to a broad variety of water recycling projects.Read moreRead less
Engineered and functionalized nanocarbons for clean energy and water. This project aims to develop a novel material platform based on metal-free graphitic carbon nitride and its functionalised composites in solar energy utilisation for water treatment, energy conversion to hydrogen, solar cell, and electrochemical battery in energy storage. The project aims to address the scientific challenges in rational nanomaterial synthesis, functionalisation and practical applications. The research outcomes ....Engineered and functionalized nanocarbons for clean energy and water. This project aims to develop a novel material platform based on metal-free graphitic carbon nitride and its functionalised composites in solar energy utilisation for water treatment, energy conversion to hydrogen, solar cell, and electrochemical battery in energy storage. The project aims to address the scientific challenges in rational nanomaterial synthesis, functionalisation and practical applications. The research outcomes are expected to provide a scientific basis for development of cutting-edge nanotechnologies for sustainable energy transformation and wastewater treatment, leading to significant benefits in Australian energy industries and environment.Read moreRead less
Carbon nanotube fluidic channels for desalination - interplay of nanoscale confinement and electrostatics. Tiny tubes of carbon, ten thousand times smaller than human hair, allow water to pass through at extraordinary speed. This project aims to understand and improve their salt rejection properties using comprehensive experimental and theoretical approaches. This will provide the impetus and knowledge for developing advanced membranes for desalination
Source - receptor analysis of lignin and lipid macromolecules in karst to quantify stalagmite biomarker proxies of vegetation and temperature change. Cave stalagmites are archives of past climate and environmental changes. This project seeks to develop two novel biomarkers, lignin and bacterial membrane lipids, from which we will generate new records of historic and prehistoric vegetation and temperature change.
A new framework for flow and mixing at the sediment-water interface. Ensuring the sustainability of Australia's freshwater resources is vital to the nation. This project addresses a fundamental, and as yet unanswered, question in our efforts to maintain the quality of our freshwater systems: "How important are the sediments?"
Resilience in biogeochemical pathways along a catchment-to-coast continuum. Aquatic systems have degraded more in the past 50 years than any other time in history. Global pressures are further threatening their sustainability, but their complexity makes it difficult to understand how they are responding. This project will combine numerous state-of-the-art approaches to unravel pathways that shape their response.
Mass flux pathways in stratified lakes. The aims of this project are to determine parametric descriptions of all transport and mixing mechanisms and their interactions in a stratified lake, validate these parameterisations through process fieldwork (Lake Argyle and Lake St Clair) and then use this understanding to validate and improve a new Lagrangian Dynamic Lake Multi-Basin Model. This project will endeavour to provide lake managers with a new, validated numerical model that will allow inter-s ....Mass flux pathways in stratified lakes. The aims of this project are to determine parametric descriptions of all transport and mixing mechanisms and their interactions in a stratified lake, validate these parameterisations through process fieldwork (Lake Argyle and Lake St Clair) and then use this understanding to validate and improve a new Lagrangian Dynamic Lake Multi-Basin Model. This project will endeavour to provide lake managers with a new, validated numerical model that will allow inter-seasonal simulations with the numerical error being less than the signal. This will be of great importance to ecology, as future advances in that area will largely depend upon a model with correct description of the mass flux paths in a stratified lake.Read moreRead less
Theoretical modelling study of thin film permeability. Loss of water from open storages through evaporation exceeds 40 per cent. This project will study the structure, stability and permeation properties of the protective ultra-thin layers. The knowledge will help design novel evaporation suppressants which will drastically reduce water losses and will be crucial for new membrane and drug delivery technologies.