Partners demonstrate how CRCWSC tools work in practice

As a cooperative research centre, one of our objectives is for our partners to take our tools and research, and demonstrate how they can be used in practice. And that’s exactly what happened at the recent Liveable Cities Conference in Adelaide (12–13 August).

An annual event, the theme of this year’s conference was 2020 and beyond: leadership in healthy and connected global communities and regions. According to the event organisers, creating healthier, happier and more sustainable cities requires the right tools, knowledge and advice.

Two of our SME partners—E2Designlab and Alluvium’s Mosaic Insights—demonstrated how CRCWSC research and tools can help to create more liveable, resilient, sustainable and productive cities:

What is the best strategy? Blue-green infrastructure scenario testing and benefit cost analysis tools

Water and vegetation are key ingredients for delivering cool, attractive and liveable cities. But how do we determine the best mix of solutions to deliver the most benefit? Kim Markwell, from E2Designlab, explained how industry practitioners can use two CRCWSC tools to help test and compare the benefits of potential water management and green infrastructure strategies.

Kim presented an overview of the Scenario Tool and the Benefit: Cost Analysis Tool to demonstrate how they can be used to inform strategy development, enable rapid comparison of potential design scenarios and determine the benefits and costs of options:

• Practitioners can use the Scenario Tool to compare options for managing urban heat and the urban water cycle. Project teams can develop strategies and test them under dynamic what-if scenarios.
• And they can use the Benefit: Cost Analysis (BCA) Tool to assess investments in water management and green infrastructure.

Transitioning towards world’s best practice in water management to deliver liveable, resilient and productive cities

In this presentation, Kim Markwell outlined two more CRCWSC tools to help cities transition to water sensitive cities:

• The WSC Index Tool rates the water sensitivity performance of a geographical area against 34 indicators of a water sensitive city.
• The WSC Transition Dynamics Framework helps organisations identify where internal action will be most effective to embed and stabilise best practice in water management.

Importantly, these tools identify not just the physical and on-ground projects necessary to become a water sensitive city. At the same time, the processes bring together stakeholders, promote conversations across disciplines and organisations, and support knowledge sharing.

Urban cooling in the wet and dry tropics: modelling case studies of Weipa, Australia and Amaravati, India

Dr Stephanie Jacobs, a consultant at Alluvium’s Mosaic Insights, discussed urban cooling strategies such as street trees, green roofs and new waterbodies, and how they can be applied in the tropics. In particular, she looked at their application in Weipa Australia (an example of a dry tropical area) and Amaravati, India (a new city planned for India’s wet tropics). These two projects occurred through partnerships with the CRCWSC.

Modelling using the CRCWSC’s TARGET urban microclimate model showed spatial urban cooling modelling can be conducted on master plans and conceptual designs allowing for the results to feed into the design process. It also showed urban cooling strategies can improve human thermal comfort in the tropics, but the hotter it is, the harder it becomes.