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Tuesday 22 November at 12:30 pm
Microbial pathogens in South East Queensland waterways: presence, survival and risk
Simon Toze, CSIRO Land and Water
Location: Seminar Room 1, Ecosciences Precinct, 41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park
The seminar room is located across from the security desk. Visitors do not need to sign in.
Abstract
Australia is at the forefront of increasing water security, particularly in urban environments by means of increasing alternative water supplies to augment or replace existing potable supplies. In Queensland, there is a move to reduce pressure on potable supplies by increasing the use of alternative supplies such as recycled water, urban stormwater runoff and roof harvested rainwater along with more efficient use and treatment of all these water supplies. The potential presence of microbial pathogens, however, remains a major health risk for potable supplies and the alternative supplies, which, at times is hampering the potential uptake of alternative supplies.
Recent research has shown that, while microbial pathogens are commonly present in recycled wastewater, they can also be regularly detected in other alternative water supplies, such as urban stormwater and roof harvested rainwater. This presentation will provide details on the research underway determining the types of microbial pathogens present in these water sources and the potential sources of these pathogens; as well as on investigations underway determining the persistence, movement and ultimate health risks from these microbial pathogens in South East Queensland.
About the speaker
Dr Simon Toze is a Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO Land and Water in the Urban and Industrial Water research theme. His current principal research focus is on the reuse of water in urban environments, in particular involving managed aquifer recharge and indirect potable reuse.
With over 20 years of experience as a microbiologist, Simon has a range of research interests, including the fate and behaviour of microbial pathogens in recycled and environmental water, the influence of groundwater micro-organisms on the biogeochemistry of aquifers, and the development of rapid and accurate molecular based methods for the detection and enumeration of viable microbial pathogens in environmental water samples.
Simon has published more than 50 refereed journal papers and is an adjunct senior lecturer at the University of Queensland. Simon led the Premiers Water Foundation Project on Managed Aquifer Recharge, which was awarded the 2008 Western Australian Water Award for Water Recycling Commercial Projects, and currently runs two of the major projects within the Queensland Urban Water Security Research Alliance. He has also participated on various working groups for the new Australian Water Reuse Guidelines.
Wednesday 5 October at 12:30 pm
Operationalising the Australian Water Resources Assessment (AWRA) system
Matt Stenson, CSIRO Land and Water
Wednesday 29th June at 3:30pm
Monitoring floods and droughts
Rogier Westerhoff, Deltares, Netherlands
This presentation provides a short overview of two global projects being undertaken by Deltares looking at monitoring of floods and droughts. FP7 GLOWASIS (Global Water Scarcity Information Service) is a project being run in the European Framework Package 7 programme and deals with open standard and open source information provision on water scarcity models, statistical data and satellite data. The second project, Global Flood Observatory, is executed within the Dutch Flood Control 2015 programme and deals with providing near real time water extent data on a 1 x 1 km scale or finer in open source and open standard. In both projects, Australia plays an important role as a pilot case.
About the speaker
Rogier Westerhoff is a geophysicist with Deltares, the premier independent research institute for water, soil and subsurface issues in the Netherlands. Rogier works in the Subsurface and Groundwater Systems unit based in Utrecht, Netherlands, which undertakes geohydrological, geological and geohydrological research. Earth observation for floods, drought and subsidence is a relatively new key focus. Working together with Netherlands Space Office, Deltares is trying bridge the distance between space technology and end users in water research. Rogier works currently as a guest researcher at CSIRO Land and Water, Brisbane and Canberra.
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