Estimating present day extreme water level exceedance probabilities around the coastline of Australia : tropical cyclone-induced storm surges

The incidence of major storm surges in the last decade have dramatically emphasized the immense destructive capabilities of extreme water level events, particularly when driven by severe tropical cyclones. Given this risk, it is vitally important that the exceedance probabilities of extreme water levels are accurately evaluated to inform risk-based flood and erosion management, engineering and for future land-use planning and to ensure the risk of catastrophic structural failures due to under-design or expensive wastes due to over-design are minimised. Australia has a long history of coastal flooding from tropical cyclones. Using a novel integration of two modeling techniques, this paper provides the first estimates of present day extreme water level exceedance probabilities around the whole coastline of Australia, and the first estimates that combine the influence of astronomical tides, storm surges generated by both extra-tropical and tropical cyclones, and seasonal and inter-annual variations in mean sea level. Initially, an analysis of tide gauge records has been used to assess the characteristics of tropical cyclone-induced surges around Australia. However, given the dearth (temporal and spatial) of information around much of the coastline, and therefore the inability of these gauge records to adequately describe the regional climatology, an observationally based stochastic tropical cyclone model has been developed to synthetically extend the tropical cyclone record to 10,000 years. Wind and pressure fields derived for these synthetically generated events have then been used to drive a hydrodynamic model of the Australian continental shelf region with annual maximum water levels extracted to estimate exceedance probabilities around the coastline. To validate this methodology, selected historic storm surge events have been simulated and resultant storm surges compared with gauge records. Tropical cyclone induced exceedance probabilities have been combined with estimates derived from a 61-year water level hindcast described in a companion paper to give a single estimate of present day extreme water level probabilities around the whole coastline of Australia. Results of this work are freely available to coastal engineers, managers and researchers via a web-based tool (www.sealevelrise.info). The described methodology could be applied to other regions of the world, like the US east coast, that are subject to both extra-tropical and tropical cyclones.

A multi-hierarchical motorway ramp signalling strategy

Ramp signalling is an access control for motorways, in which a traffic signal is placed at on-ramps to regulate the rate of vehicles entering the motorway and thus to preserve the motorway capacity. In general, ramp signalling algorithms fall into two categories: local control and coordinated control by their effective scope. Coordinated ramp signalling strategies make use of measurements from the entire motorway network to operate individual ramp signals for the optimal performances at the network level. This study proposes a multi-hierarchical strategy for coordinated ramp signalling. The strategy is structured in two layers. At the higher layer with a longer update interval, coordination group is assembled and disassembled based on the location of high-risk breakdown flow. At the lower layer with a shorter update interval, individual ramps are hired to serve the coordination and are also released based on the prevailing congestion level on the ramp. This strategy is modelled and applied to the northbound Pacific Motorway micro-simulation platform (AIMSUN). The simulation results show an effective congestion mitigation of the proposed strategy.

Environmental indicators for sustainable road development and operation

Road construction, maintenance and operation are activities that impact the environment by way of energy use, resource consumption and emission. Components such as construction material, transportation, street lighting, rolling resistance, traffic congestion during works, albedo and end-of-life processing impact the environment at different phases of the life of a road. With a view to promote sustainable development, a few sustainability rating schemes, e.g. Infrastructure Sustainability and Invest (Australia), Envision and Greenroads (USA), and CEEQUAL (UK) have been developed, that can assess road projects. These schemes address environmental areas such as: energy and emission, land, water, materials, discharges into surroundings, waste and ecology as factors for sustainable development. This paper assesses different rating schemes based on a defined comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) system boundary for road projects to identify different environmental indicators that address sustainable road development and operation. The findings indicate that new indicators are required to address different environmental components during the operation phase of roads.

Sustainability outcomes of infrastructure sustainability rating schemes for road projects

The construction and operation of infrastructure assets can have significant impact on society and the region. Using a sustainability assessment framework can be an effective means to build sustainability aspects into the design, construction and operation of infrastructure assets. The conventional evaluation processes and procedures for infrastructure projects do not necessarily measure the qualitative/quantitative effectiveness of all aspects of sustainability: environment, social wellbeing and economy. As a result, a few infrastructure sustainability rating schemes have been developed with a view to assess the level of sustainability attained in the infrastructure projects. These include: Infrastructure Sustainability (Australia); CEEQUAL (UK); and Envision (USA). In addition, road sector specific sustainability rating schemes such as Greenroads (USA) and Invest (Australia) have also been developed. These schemes address several aspects of sustainability with varying emphasis (weightings) on areas such as: use of resources; emission, pollution and waste; ecology; people and place; management and governance; and innovation. The attainment of sustainability of an infrastructure project depends largely on addressing the whole-of-life environmental issues. This study has analysed the rating schemes’ coverage of different environmental components for the road infrastructure under the five phases of a project: material, construction, use, maintenance and end-of-life. This is based on a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) system boundary. The findings indicate that there is a need for the schemes to consider key (high impact) life cycle environmental components such as traffic congestion during construction, rolling resistance due to surface roughness and structural stiffness of the pavement, albedo, lighting, and end-of-life management (recycling) to deliver sustainable road projects.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi MAC address based crowd data collection and monitoring : benefits, challenges and enhancement

This paper firstly presents the benefits and critical challenges on the use of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for crowd data collection and monitoring. The major challenges include antenna characteristics, environment’s complexity and scanning features. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are compared in this paper in terms of architecture, discovery time, popularity of use and signal strength. Type of antennas used and the environment’s complexity such as trees for outdoor and partitions for indoor spaces highly affect the scanning range. The aforementioned challenges are empirically evaluated by “real” experiments using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Scanners. The issues related to the antenna characteristics are also highlighted by experimenting with different antenna types. Novel scanning approaches including Overlapped Zones and Single Point Multi-Range detection methods will be then presented and verified by real-world tests. These novel techniques will be applied for location identification of the MAC IDs captured that can extract more information about people movement dynamics.

National and state-level politics on social media : Twitter, Australian political discussions, and the online commentariat

This paper examines the use of Twitter for long-term discussions around Australian politics, at national and state levels, tracking two hashtags during 2012: #auspol, denoting national political topics, and #wapol, which provides a case study of state politics (representing Western Australia). The long-term data collection provides the opportunity to analyse how the Twitter audience responds to Australian politics: which themes attract the most attention and which accounts act as focal points for these discussions. The paper highlights differences in the coverage of state and national politics. For #auspol, a small number of accounts are responsible for the majority of tweets, with politicians invoked but not directly contributing to the discussion. In contrast, #wapol stimulates a much lower level of tweeting. This example also demonstrates that, in addition to citizen accounts, traditional participants within political debate, such as politicians and journalists, are among the active contributors to state-oriented discussions on Twitter.

Mobile phones and media use in Madang province of Papua New Guinea

A mobile phone service was not available to the majority of the population in Papua New Guinea (PNG) until mid-2007. Since that time, commercial competition has been introduced into the mobile telecommunication sector and coverage has spread across many parts of the country. While the focus of this article is on mobile phones, the research has also explored media access and media usage more generally. Analysis in this article adopts the 'circuit of culture' model developed by du Gay et al. (1997). The article is based on data from a survey conducted in 2009 in eight rural villages in Madang Province. The research occurred during the primary stages of mobile phone adoption in these places, providing a rare opportunity to gauge early adoption behaviour and attitudes.

Help at hand to navigate legal minefields

Review(s) of: The journalist's guide to media law, 4th edition, by Mark Pearson and Mark Polden, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2011, 480 pp. ISBN 9781742370385; Blogging and tweeting without getting sued: A global guide to the law for anyone writing online, by Mark Pearson, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012, 222 pp. ISBN 9781742378770.

Urban knowledge and innovation spaces : concepts, conditions, and contexts

Innovation is one of the key determinants of growth in the globalised knowledge economy, and ‘urban knowledge and innovation spaces’ form the spatial foci for sustained innovation. This paper aims to explore concepts, conditions and contexts that substantiate the development of these spaces of innovation. The paper seeks to identify the foundational elements of knowledge- based urban development to outline the concept of urban knowledge and innovation spaces, and justify its meaning, unique characteristics and growing influence in the contemporary cities. It rationalises the relevance of the three underlying conditions—namely policy, place, and people— to better understand their contribution in the development of such spaces. This paper sheds light over the varied contexts shaping each urban knowledge and innovation space uniquely. The paper reveals the interplay between design and policies that is required for the creation of spaces of innovation that are economically strong, socially connected, spatially stimulating, and environmentally sustainable.

Activism, art and social practice : a case study using Jacques Ranciere’s framework for analysis

The question can no longer just be whether “art and social practice” or creative forms of activism are part of larger neo liberal agenda nor if they are potentially radical in their conception, delivery or consumption. The question also becomes: what are the effects of social practice art and design for the artists, institutions, and the publics they elicit in public and private spaces; that is, how can we consider such artworks differently? I argue the dilution of social practices’ potentially radical interventions into cultural processes and their absorption into larger neo liberal agendas limits how, as Jacques Rancière might argue, they can intervene in the “distribution of the sensible.” I will use a case study example from The Center for Tactical Magic, an artist group from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Australian content

There has long been widespread community, political and industry agreement over the important place of Australian content in the media mix, but debate continues over what counts as such in different media, how that content is defined, how much there should be, whether particular genres should be privileged, who should finance production, and how all of these things should be regulated.

Moving from outsider to insider : peer status and partnerships between electricity utilities and residential consumers

An electricity demand reduction project based on comprehensive residential consumer engagement was established within an Australian community in 2008. By 2011, both the peak demand and grid supplied electricity consumption had decreased to below pre-intervention levels. This case study research explored the relationship developed between the utility, community and individual consumer from the residential customer perspective through qualitative research of 22 residential households. It is proposed that an energy utility can be highly successful at peak demand reduction by becoming a community member and a peer to residential consumers and developing the necessary trust, access, influence and partnership required to create the responsive environment to change. A peer-community approach could provide policymakers with a pathway for implementing pro-environmental behaviour for low carbon communities, as well as peak demand reduction, thereby addressing government emission targets while limiting the cost of living increases from infrastructure expenditure.

Organizational work-related road safety situational analysis: More than just an audit tool

Although safety statistics indicate that road crashes are the most common form of work-related fatalities, many organizations fail to treat company vehicles in the same manner as other physical safety hazards within the workplace. Traditionally, work-related road safety has targeted primarily driver-related issues and not adequately addressed organizational processes, such as the organizations’ safety system and risk management processes and practice. This inadequacy generally stems from a lack of specific contextual knowledge and basic requirements to improve work-related road safety, including the supporting systems to ensure any intervention strategy or initiative’s ongoing effectiveness. Therefore, informed by previous research and based on a case study methodology, the Organizational Work-Related Road Safety Situational Analysis was developed to assess organizations’ current work-related road safety system, including policy, procedures, processes and practice. The situational analysis tool is similar to a safety audit however is more comprehensive in detail, application and provides sufficient evidence to enable organizations to mitigate and manage their work-related road safety risks. In addition, data collected from this process assists organizations in making informed decisions regarding intervention strategy design, development, implementation and ongoing effectiveness. This paper reports on the effectiveness of the situational analysis tool to assess WRRS systems across five differing and diverse organizations; including gas exploration and mining, state government, local government, and not for profit/philanthropy. The outcomes of this project identified considerable differences in the degree by which the organizations’ addressed work-related road safety across their vehicle fleet operations and provides guidelines for improving organizations’ work-related road safety systems.

ERP stakeholders’ perceptions of data quality and utility

While data quality has been identified as a critical factor associated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) failure, the relationship between ERP stakeholders, the information they require and its relationship to ERP outcomes continues to be poorly understood. Applying stakeholder theory to the problem of ERP performance, we put forward a framework articulating the fundamental differences in the way users differentiate between ERP data quality and utility. We argue that the failure of ERPs to produce significant organisational outcomes can be attributed to conflict between stakeholder groups over whether the data contained within an ERP is of adequate ‘quality’. The framework provides guidance as how to manage data flows between stakeholders, offering insight into each of their specific data requirements. The framework provides support for the idea that stakeholder affiliation dictates the assumptions and core values held by individuals, driving their data needs and their perceptions of data quality and utility.