Research in Water and Environmental Engineering

Problems of Interest

Ecological and Public Health

With an increased awareness of the effects of mismanagement of our natural environment on both human and ecological health and a recognition of the costs associated with rectifying such damage, funding support for both strategic and applied research in this area is increasing. Particular activities underway within the School include:

• Environmental pathogen detection and management
• Microbial risk assessment
• Impact of land management practices on stimulation of toxic cyanobacterial blooms in estuarine and coastal waters
• Thermodynamic and kinetic analysis of trace nutrient supply to organisms

Improvement of Existing and Development of New Treatment Technologies

Water and wastewater treatment represent key activities of civil and environmental engineers. Despite the critical role of treatment in ensuring maintenance of public and ecological health, treatment plants are designed and operated in a highly empirical, "rule of thumb" manner. There is considerable demand from the water industry for improvements in our capacity for predictive modeling in this area. In addition, scope (and funding) exists for development of new technologies for treatment of drinking waters, municipal and industrial wastewaters, atmospheric emissions and solid waste discharges. School academics are at the cutting edge in a range of areas related to improvements in existing and development of new treatment technologies including:

• Advanced oxidation technologies in water treatment
• Application of membranes in water recycling
• Application of fractal techniques to floc characterisation in water and wastewater treatment (with School of Chemical Engineering and Industrial Chemistry)
• Development of new technologies for management of acid discharge from acid sulfate soils regions (with the School of Geography)
• Application of life cycle and materials flux analysis in water and waste management

Hydrology and Hydraulics of Natural Systems

The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering has long been known for its strength in hydraulic and hydrologic research.  The changing foci of concern by practising engineers and catchment managers and, hence, the research needs in this area has resulted in this area remaining a core area of research within the School.  Within this topic area, academics and associated researchers within the School are making substantial contributions in the following areas:

• Catchment modelling systems inclusive of system calibration and system complexity, error propagation through the system and linkage between the stochastic nature of real systems and system parameters
  
• Coupling of real time data acquisition with hybrid (physical and numerical) modelling for monitoring and management of catchments.
  
• Hydroinformatics inclusive of spatial and temporal data management systems, artificial intelligence applied to catchment modelling systems, and the application of artificial neural networks in catchment simulation.
• Stochastic analysis of hydrologic events and application to water resource management
• Urban stormwater runoff modelling and management

Groundwater Systems

The UNSW Groundwater Centre was created in 1992 and is a joint venture between the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences in the Faculty of Science. Groundwater consultancy is carried out through the Water Research Laboratory at Manly Vale. Current research interests are:

• Development of geophysical technique for the detection of groundwater contamination
• Remote sensing of groundwater resources using MSS and airborne radar

Coastal and Estuarine Systems

• Development of particle imaging techniques for bounded flow systems with particular application to investigation of breaking wind waves in the upper ocean
  
• Coupling of real time data acquisition with hybrid (physical and numerical) modelling for monitoring and management of coastal and estuarine environmentals.

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