Development of Tranche 2 research program: Message from the Chief Research Officer

The development of the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC) Tranche 2 research program seriously kicked off in October/November with the Needs and Opportunities workshops in five locations Australia-wide. The main objective of these was to get a good understanding of the key issues and needs that are concerning our industry partners, both nationally and in each of the key locations/states where our participant organisations are located.

Participation has been excellent with overall more than 180 attendees across the five workshops. Attendees were drawn from 58 CRCWSC participant organisations and 58 mostly industry-based organisations and other key stakeholders as well as members of the CRCWSC Executive and Board, and various advisory sub-committees.

The consolidated list of needs (based on hundreds of individual flip-chart contributions) ran to 17 different items, with some raised across all locations while others were more specific for particular states or cities.

Key themes coming through in many of the statements were: a shared vision; a coordinated/aligned approach to policy, legislation and regulations and planning; consistent/robust evaluation tools and decision making; guidance for context-specific solutions and improved designs; better monitoring, validation and operations frameworks; and effective community engagement to achieve broadly-accepted water sensitive city outcomes.

Additionally, a large number of opportunities for future CRCWSC activities and projects were identified by the participants, which form an excellent basis for the further development of the location-based project portfolios that will be developed as part of the next tranche of research.

In early December, about 50 researchers plus representatives of all Regional Advisory Panels, Research and Stakeholder Advisory Sub-Committees and the CRCWSC Executive put their thinking caps on to start developing key research activities that could help to address the identified industry needs. This has lead to the creation of a number of possible new”research clusters” that will continued to be refined over the next couple of months.

The ongoing process will see a growing involvement of the Regional Advisory Panels as they are expected to be the drivers and ‘champions’ of the location based projects, while we will also ensure that a broad national approach on these key research activities will be maintained through the research clusters.

In the meantime, we still have many research outputs and deliverables to achieve in the current range of projects, most of which are still running at least until mid 2016 and many going into 2017. Therefore, the close engagement between the current project teams and the industry members will be critically important to ensure we can capture the maximal benefit of the current research, while also building a sound foundation for the next stage of the CRC’s research program.

The energy and enthusiasm of both industry and academic participant members in these workshops over the last few weeks has clearly demonstrated a strong commitment on all sides and highlighted the clear need for more close and productive interactions between researchers and end-users as there are many benefits to be gained from this across the board. The structure of the proposed Tranche 2 research program should further enrich and enhance these close collaborations.

Workshop participants can still view the various workshop presentations, materials and outputs by logging in to this website and using the search bar to find the required information.

Jurg Keller
Chief Research Officer
CRC for Water Sensitive Cities