Australian-German Workshop on Sustainable Urban Water Management
1- 4 April 2008, Melbourne, Australia

"Transition towards sustainable and integrated solutions for urban water infrastructure system and water resources management in urban areas"

Overview | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Presentations & Abstracts | Workshops | Delegates

Overview

By Stewart Burn, Leif Wolf and Harald Hiessl

This project "Australia/Germany alliance" was undertaken as part of the Infrastructure Technologies stream in the Urban Water theme of the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship.

Background

The sustainability and reliability of urban water infrastructure systems needs to be reassessed with respect to climate change, demographic change, changes in housing stock, technological innovations. There is growing consent that the management of urban water infrastructure systems needs to be embedded into a catchment perspective and must refine urban water cycle concepts taking a systems point of view. Based on this concept strategies have to be developed on how to transform existing urban water systems and urban water management towards sustainable urban water systems or – even further – to sustainable urban utility provision (including water, sanitation, drainage solid waste and energy) that minimizes the ecological footprint of the respective urban agglomeration.

Both Australia and Germany have highly sophisticated water utilities that employ different management concepts and technological solutions corresponding not only to differences in physical circumstances but also institutional arrangements and public perceptions. Comparative analysis opens new views on innovative concepts and helps to develop strategies with the time horizon 2040+.

Australia-Germany collaboration

The Australia-Germany program of collaboration on water & environmental R&D was established by the Department of Industry, Science and Tourism in November 1992. The program was managed by the Environment Industry Development Network and the Water Research Foundation of Australia and in Germany by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under support of PTKA.

This is the 6th series of workshops held in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1998 and is jointly funded by the Australian Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Focal themes for the workshop include demographic, climate and technological changes that require new approaches respectively and provide new options to the provision of utility services in urban areas including the joint management of urban water infrastructure and urban water bodies including groundwater. Whilst most of the names have changed since the first meeting in 1992 the concepts remain the same in that what has been set in place is the basis for securing and enhancing the strong scientific and technological links between our two nations; whilst at the same time offering opportunities for the mutual commercial exploitation of water solutions in the ASEAN and European regions.

Goals and Outcomes

The workshop aimed to conjoin a group of capable partner institutions from water utilities (water supply, sanitation, and drainage), industry, research and funding agencies in order to discuss research needs for developing long-term strategies for sustainable urban water systems. In this respect the workshop was very successful in that the participants of the workshop developed a number of joint research projects to address the constitutive research issues related to the practical transition to sustainable urban water systems based on two cities (one from Australia and one from Germany) as case studies (“twinning project”).

These projects include the concepts of

• Transitional costs and how the community can afford them.
• Resource recovery from water, wastewater and industry systems.
• Whole of urban water systems analysis and modelling.
• Sustainable urban re development addressing water, energy, nutrients, and community costs.
• Aquifer recharge of groundwater in urban areas and emerging pollutants.
• Optimising design and operation of urban systems to minimise cost and Green House
• Development of new pricing systems based on ‘smart’ metering.

These will be developed further over the next two years between the participants with a workshop planned to be held in Hamburg in 2010.

For more information contact

Stewart Burn
Group Leader and Senior Principal Research Scientist