Keep the conference vibe going by joining our National webinars

Before the CRCWSC ends on 30 June 2021, we invite you to join a series of webinars that showcase each of our major research projects.

COVID was a significant disrupter of our 5^th Water Sensitive Cities Conference plans. We had to modify the conference format, and take many of the sessions online. But this change also gave us the opportunity to be innovative.

To accommodate restrictions on in-person gatherings (particularly in Victoria), we converted the planned National Conference day into a series of webinars, to reduce online meeting fatigue.

The National webinar series is the result. It is still an integral part of the conference, and includes an exciting range of topics and presenters, particularly to share the outcomes of the six major research projects that have dominated the CRCWSC since 2016.

Webinar schedule

Following the successful conference in March, we’re delivering 11 webinars between April and June 2021.

The highlights are the two keynote webinars:

Mr Khoo Teng Chye from Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities will talk about his city’s journey to mainstream water sensitive urban design. We’ll learn how these activities were scaled up from initial pilot projects, and how they are now transforming into a new agenda of resilience and liveability. The aim of this session is to learn from cites that have already embarked on a mainstreaming journey. This will be a livestream from Singapore.
Ms Lucinda Hartley will provide insights into the future of urban planning using social media data to understand community needs. We’ll learn how the communities of Australia’s major cities responded to COVID lockdowns and what this means not only for urban planners but also for the water sector. Lucinda will also give us insights into the world of startups to show how the changing face of planning creates new business opportunities. COVID permitting, this will be an in-person event in Melbourne, livestreamed for participants in other states.

Integrated Research Projects

Other webinars are structured around completing our research activities, which wrap up in March 2021. To celebrate this milestone, we have 6 webinars, each devoted to an Integrated Research Project. You’ll hear from the Project Leader on the key outcomes, outputs and emerging research questions, as well as case studies that show how the research findings are being used in practice. These webinars include:

Integrated Research Project 1 – Associate Professor Briony Rogers will discuss how cities make the strategic transition to being more water sensitive.
Integrated Research Project 2– Dr Md Sayed Iftekhar will discuss the economics of water sensitive cities, and how this leads to better decision making.
Integrated Research Project 3 – Chris Chesterfield will provide insights on guiding urban planning processes to get better water sensitive city outcomes.
Integrated Research Project 4 – Associate Professor Steve Kenway and Professor Nigel Bertram will demonstrate the outcomes of their project looking at infill development, so that our cities can be regenerative as development occurs over time.
Integrated Research Project 5 – Professor Carolyn Oldham will discuss the research into water sensitive urban design and urban development in areas impacted by high groundwater.
Tools and Products project – Dr Christian Urich will show how our research has been codified into a suite of tools that assist in diagnosing, planning and evaluating water sensitive cities.

Hot topics

Interspersed in this program will be several ‘hot topics’ webinars:

Urban heat: Researchers such as Dr Kerry Nice will provide a synthesis of the urban heat research, and we’ll hear about projects that aim to cool our cities using water.
Benchmarking water sensitive cities: With more than 50 cities now benchmarked, we’ll explore how the benchmarking tools are being adapted for use in cities such as Cape Town (South Africa) and Perth (WA) which was recently benchmarked for a second time.
CRCWSC’s international applications: For several years the CRCWSC has used its international projects as a test bed for new technologies and approaches. Hear what lessons on community engagement, industrial design and nature-based solutions that can be transferred to other cities.

Transformative cities

The final webinar will be explore the concept of Transformative Cities. This session will be led by Professor Tony Wong and Associate Professor Briony Rogers, who will launch a new Water Sensitive City Think Tank paper outlining future directions for water management in our cities. The aim is to transform our cities into more liveable and resilient places by repositioning water services from a basic commodity into an enabler for broader outcomes.

Details of each webinar will be released through our WaterSense newsletter and the CRCWSC’s social media. Keep an eye out to register.

For more information, contact Jamie Ewert (National Engagement Executive) at Jamie.ewert@monash.edu.