{"title":"Smart Water—How to Master the Future Challenges of Water Management","authors":"Günter Müller-Czygan","doi":"10.5772/intechopen.90644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90644","url":null,"abstract":"Innovative digital developments from industry like autonomous machine controls based on intelligent data acquisition, collection and evaluation, promises better adapting municipal infrastructure systems to changing conditions. When the technology initiative KOMMUNAL 4.0 was developed as an idea in 2015, digitalization was not a central topic in water management. As Industry 4.0 was present everywhere in the media, the idea of transferring suitable parts of the basic idea of Industry 4.0 to municipal water management was born. In particular, it was necessary to implement consistent IT and IoT communication at all levels of water management tasks. The aim was not only to create a uniform structure for networking a wide variety of applications, but also to round off KOMMUNAL 4.0’s complete range of services with IoT for existing and newly developed products and solutions. Regardless of whether it concerns measurement and data technology applications, smart machines, SCADA or asset management systems, all application solutions contain a standardized network core that guarantees standard data communication and also complying with safety and cybersecurity requirements.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85535489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The influence of statutory land use planning on water sensitive urban design practices","authors":"Don J. Williams","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2020.1746173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1746173","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Regulation, including statutory land use planning law, is seen as an important way to encourage the adoption of water sensitive urban design (WSUD) practices. Despite this, there has been little empirical investigation of how statutory land use planning influences the uptake of WSUD practices, and how planning frameworks could be redesigned, to better support WSUD. The influence of statutory planning on WSUD practices was investigated in four case studies, two from Victoria and two from Western Australia. The case studies considered how statutory planning influenced four discrete components of WSUD practice. In the case studies, statutory planning did encourage the adoption of WSUD practices. The capacity of statutory land use planning to encourage WSUD practices was enhanced when statutory planning included specific quantitative targets and when it encouraged the adoption of these practices at the localised, street scale. The research also found that statutory land use planning interprets the WSUD concept, by encouraging specific practices. These practices, in turn, reinforce our assumptions about what WSUD might be.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2020.1746173","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47402299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fidelis G. Jaravani, Michelle Butler, P. Byleveld, D. Durrheim, P. Massey, J. Collins, J. Judd, M. Oelgemöller
{"title":"Drinking water quality in regional Hunter New England, New South Wales, Australia, 2001-2015","authors":"Fidelis G. Jaravani, Michelle Butler, P. Byleveld, D. Durrheim, P. Massey, J. Collins, J. Judd, M. Oelgemöller","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2020.1742057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1742057","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of drinking water quality verification monitoring as a means of improving preventive measures on drinking water quality management in regional New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Water sampling and E. coli detection data were obtained from the NSW Drinking Water Database. Statistical analysis was performed using Incidence Rate Ratios to compare the relationship between the proportion of samples collected to the tests allocated based on population served (sampling adequacy), E. coli detection and the relationship between sampling adequacy and E. coli detections over time. Sampling adequacy and E. coli detections significantly improved during the study period. Sampling adequacy was significantly lower in smaller populations (IRR = 0.83, p = 0.036). E. coli detections were significantly increased in smaller communities (IRR = 4.3, p = 0.01) and in summer (IRR = 2.7, p = < 0.001). There was a strong inverse correlation between improved sampling adequacy and decreased E. coli detections (Spearman’s rho = −0.821; p < 0.0001). This research has highlighted the value of continued assistance to water utilities in the implementation of drinking water management systems to improve drinking water safety.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2020.1742057","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44786806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Improving Australia’s flood record for planning purposes – can we do better?","authors":"K. Allen, P. Hope, D. Lam, J. Brown, R. Wasson","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2020.1745735","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1745735","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Extreme rainfall is projected to increase with climate change, but the impact of climate change on floods is uncertain. Infrastructure design based on information available from short gauged time series (typically ~30 – 80 years) may not take account of the full range of possible flood events, or be suitable for identifying non-stationarity. Australian palaeoflood and palaeo-hydroclimate records drawn from a wide variety of natural archives and documentary sources suggest that Australia has been subjected to larger flood events in the past; a pluvial period for eastern Australia in the eighteenth Century is particularly note-worthy. If the current infrastructure is inadequate for past floods, it is unlikely it will adequately mitigate future floods. We discuss how improved awareness, and incorporation, of palaeoflood records in risk estimates could help guide infrastructure planning and design, flood event prediction and inform flood mitigation policy. This is particularly relevant for Australia with its notoriously variable hydroclimate.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2020.1745735","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46979822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Quantifying intangible benefits of water sensitive urban systems and practices: an overview of non-market valuation studies","authors":"A. Gunawardena, S. Iftekhar, James Fogarty","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2020.1746174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1746174","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The positive impacts of water sensitive urban investments on the environment, community well-being, and lifestyles are widely recognised, but the process of formally quantifying these intangible benefits remains an underdeveloped research area. The monetary value of intangible benefits can be estimated using non-market valuation techniques. Here, we provide a review of over 190 existing non-market valuation studies related to water sensitive urban systems and practices that have reported dollar value estimates for intangible benefits. The empirical evidence suggests that communities are willing to make financial contributions towards projects that deliver intangible benefits. As such, incorporating the intangible benefits of water sensitive urban systems and practices into project evaluation processes is important. Unfortunately, attempts to evaluate water-sensitive urban projects based on both tangible and intangible benefits are rare. The summary and synthesis of existing research in this area is presented in the hope that it will facilitate greater use of intangible benefits in project evaluations.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2020.1746174","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41956865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Australian dams and reservoirs within a global setting","authors":"T. McMahon, C. Petheram","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2020.1733743","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1733743","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There has been a resurgence of interest in the construction of large dams worldwide. This study examined many dams from around the world (>10,000) and compared them to a comprehensive dataset developed for Australia (224) to provide insights that might otherwise not be apparent from examining just one or several dams. The dam datasets (ICOLD and ANCOLD) largely confirm existing narratives on Australian dam construction. Compared to dams from Rest of the World (RoW), Australian dams were found to: have larger reservoir capacities and spillway capacities for a given catchment area; have higher dam walls for a given capacity; and result in higher degrees of river regulation. A range of general relationships among reservoir capacities, reservoir surface areas, and catchment areas are presented which can be used in reconnaissance or pre-feasibility studies and for global hydrologic modelling when dam and reservoir information are required as input.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2020.1733743","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47795911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Water systems and disruptions: the ‘old abnormal’?","authors":"K. Daniell","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2020.1780732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1780732","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The dual nature of water – giver of life and massive disruptor – is not new. There is rarely one equilibrium state for a water system; there are multiple different states natural water systems cycle through. And human-induced changes to water systems, including through the use of technologies to modify and exploit them, and through climate change, further accentuate the opportunities for extreme disruptions to society. Human history is dotted with examples of challenges in managing water systems and disruptions. This year, parts of Australasia have seen widespread drought, massive fires, smoke pollution, ecological destruction, hail storms, cyclones and now a pandemic, COVID-19, protection from which requires adequate safe water and space for hygiene and limiting transmission. Our notions of time, space and connection to others and our environment, including water, have again come into focus as we search for a new equilibrium after this wave of disruptions – a ‘new normal’. But is this just a very human desire for stability amid the seeming chaos? Instead, do we instead need to get better at managing more appropriately through the ‘old abnormal’: the continuous variability, change and increasingly extreme events due in part to human modification and societal expansion across the planet? This editorial paper provides a reflection on the moment we have found ourselves in at the beginning of 2020. It draws together insights from a range of water science and management challenges presented in the papers of this issue, in order to chart some positive ways for more appropriately navigating water systems and their future disruptions.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2020.1780732","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42020308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Floods after bushfires: rapid responses for reducing impacts of sediment, ash, and nutrient slugs","authors":"J. Alexandra, C. Finlayson","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2020.1717694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1717694","url":null,"abstract":"Australia’s mega-fires of 2019–2020 have burnt over ten millions of hectares 1 – almost twice the size of the 2019 Amazon fires (; Woodward 2020). Forested mountain ranges across the country – the ...","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2020.1717694","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45584220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why we disagree about the Murray–Darling Basin Plan: water reform, environmental knowledge and the science-policy decision context","authors":"M. Colloff, J. Pittock","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2019.1664878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2019.1664878","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Narratives emerging from the interaction between science and policy set the common language for understanding complex environmental issues. We explore discourses of contestation over a major environmental policy, the Murray–Darling Basin Plan, intended to re-allocate irrigation water to restore the environment in south-eastern Australia. We examine three areas of scientific knowledge and decision-making at the science-policy interface: (1) water accounting and availability; (2) perspectives on ecological change and (3) issues of trust and the management of environmental water. Engagement and communication between scientists, bureaucrats and the public forms the basis for understanding contestation: over different sets of values, expectations of what scientists can deliver, perceptions of risk and uncertainty, interpretation of conflicting messages and economic development versus conservation. The Basin Plan was shaped by institutional processes not designed to account for such differences and has inadvertently promoted contestation through exclusion of world views that do not fit those of the decision makers. We consider how the Basin Plan can be re-framed by changing the values, rules and knowledge that set the decision context. These changes enable the Basin Plan to be re-conceptualised from a problem to be solved to an idea that can mobilise imaginative engagement by agents with diverse perspectives.","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2019.1664878","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44087839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Discussion on 'Large floods in South East Queensland: is it valid to assume they occur randomly?' by GM McMahon and AS Kiem","authors":"R. French, M. Jones","doi":"10.1080/13241583.2019.1669970","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2019.1669970","url":null,"abstract":"No doubt the authors’ paper was received with many mutterings of ‘You have to be out of your cottonpickin’ minds, Piglets. I’ve been doing flood frequency analyses since I was in three-cornered pants and the idea that floods come in cycles has to be total bovine excrement!’ It is understandable that longterm compliance with Australian Rainfall and Runoff (Pattison 1977; Pilgrim 1987; Ball et al. 2016) could result in practitioners truly believing that annual floods are perfectly random entities and that they always occur according to the Log-Pearson Type III (LP3) distribution. That statistical distribution, first devised in 1888 by Pearson to describe skewed data, has come to us through five U.S. studies from 1966 to 1982, after which Stedinger and Griffis (2008) commented: ‘Bobée and Ashkar (1991, 76) observe that since the official adoption of the LP3 distribution in the United States and Australia, “its application to the study of floods has been both extensive and widespread.” Still a concern is whether the adopted LP3 distribution with log-space moments is a good choice . . . the true distribution will never be known.’ Bypassing that philosophical profundity in favour of practicality, Australian Rainfall and Runoff (Ball et al. 2016) continues to follow U.S. practice in its Book 3 Chapter 2 and encapsulates it in TUFLOWFlike flood frequency software. Since then, the U.S. has produced Bulletin 17C (England et al. 2018) to strengthen a number of identified areas of weakness and has resulted in USGS PeakFQ version 7.1 and USACE HEC-SSP 2.1 software. But with all its tweaking, the LP3 distribution is not omnipotent. Under the sub-heading Decadal Trends in Annual Peak Streamflow, Mastin et al. (2016, 12) declare: ‘In the Pacific Northwest region, decadal shifts in precipitation are linked to atmospheric circulation and sea surface temperatures (Cayan et al. 1998). As result, decadal trends in annual peak flows are evident at many sites’ as shown by their Figure 7. It appears that the semicyclicity of flooding is the new reality for flood hydrologists. An examination of LP3-advocating Bulletin 17C flood records at 01134500 Moose River at Victory VT suggests the biggest floods may occur on a 20-year semi-cycle on the U.S. East Coast (England et al. 2018, Table 10.3). And it is not that Australians are ignorant of the lumpiness of flooding. Australian Rainfall and Runoff (Ball et al. 2016) Book 3 Chapter 2.2.1 states: ‘Climate may experience pseudo-periodic shifts that persist over periods lasting from several years to several decades. There is growing evidence that parts of Australia are subject to such forcing and that this significantly affects flood risk . . . practitioners are therefore advised to keep abreast of new developments.’ Questions for the authors are:","PeriodicalId":51870,"journal":{"name":"Australasian Journal of Water Resources","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/13241583.2019.1669970","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41686038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}