Conference

HWRS 2023

9.00 am — 5.00 pm AEDT, 13 — 15 November 2023
488 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Hilton Sydney

Over the past five years Australia has witnessed several extreme events including bushfires, droughts, fish deaths and widespread flooding. There is scientific consensus that extreme weather events will become more frequent with changing climate. The challenge for water practitioners is how to plan for a more extreme present and future while dealing with deep uncertainties.

These challenges bring more uncertainty to managing our water resources, human safety and the ability to continue and protect our ecosystems. Collaboration, innovations and excellent engineering practice will need to come together to ensure resilient communities in years to come.

HWRS 2023 improved understanding of the inherent complexity of water sources, hydrologic and ecologic systems in uncertain times. Over three days, it sought to drive innovative technologies and solutions for this grand challenge.

Program

Over three days, HWRS 2023 covered the spectrum of engineering hydrology and the progress made in understanding the uncertainties facing water resources managers now and in the coming decades.  

Presenters explored:

  • hydrology
  • flood forecasting
  • integrated water resources planning and management
  • floods – risk assessment, planning and management
  • urban water management
  • ecosystem responses
  • responding to climate change
  • hydro-informatics and data analytics
  • groundwater
  • informing policy and operational decisions
  • education and training.
View the HWRS 2023 program (PDF)

 

Monday 13 November

  8.45–8.55 am
Official opening
  8.55–9.15 am
Welcome to Country
Opening address: Flood impacts on Aboriginal communities: the lessons learnt Northern Rivers flood events 2022

The opening address will briefly look at the relationship of Aboriginal people to ‘Country’ and how the influences of western social structures and behaviors have impacted the way Aboriginal people have lived with fire, flood and other extreme weather events in Australia for over 65,000 years. 

Warren will explore the unique circumstances impacting the disaster (flood) preparedness and early warning system effectiveness on Northern Rivers Aboriginal communities. This will be the catalyst for a more in-depth insight into the contemporary issues that impacted the effectiveness of emergency service personnel response to Aboriginal people and communities under emergency and/or evacuation circumstances. 

Warren will provide an insight into the challenges that Aboriginal people and communities faced in accessing emergency aid, services and economic support post the flood event. The key recommendations of the NSW Flood Report and what is required to mitigate, where possible, future risk. 

Headshot of Warren Martin
Warren Martin
Director Consultancy, i2i Global

Warren Martin is a proud Burramattagal man with more than 32 years’ experience in senior management and executive roles across the NSW justice, health, community service, housing, education and reconstruction sectors.  

With a specialty in indigenous community engagement, Warren has a proven record of successfully engaging and partnering Indigenous communities with key stakeholders to co-design and co-deliver place-based initiatives. Following the floods of 2022, Warren worked in the Northern Rivers of NSW, engaging with disaster impacted Indigenous communities and organisations to partner them with reconstruction and recovery, support, and programs. 

Warren knows that Indigenous communities can be complex and diverse, and that is why he focuses on developing and delivering place-based, fit for purpose initiatives that enable Indigenous people, communities, and business to realise their economic, environmental, and social aspirations, while protecting the dignity of their tangible and non-tangible cultural assets. 

Indigenous Australians have a unique and enduring connection to Country and the assets each sovereign nation is custodian of. Never has it been more important to work with our people around the value that Indigenous cultural intelligence systems, land, and water management practices to meet and overcome the risks associated with the climate crisis and weather pattern instability Australia is currently experiencing. With land and cultural flows all part of our ongoing sovereign negotiations Warren is highly equipped to lead best practice models of engagement. 

  9.15–9.20 am
Hydrologic Games announcement
  9.20–10.00 am
Living with extremes
Panel discussion
  10.00–10.30 am
Morning tea and exhibition
  10.30–11.25 am
The environmental costs and benefits of engineering our river
Keynote

Many of the world's rivers are engineered to ensure supply of water for drinking, power and industry. The building of dams and other structures has ensured that rivers are regulated so that water supply is ensured. At the same time, there is increasing realisation that there are significant environmental and social costs. This is reflected in a particularly strong policy and community debate in relation to the management of the rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Despite increasing understanding of environmental costs, many governments have continued to look for more efficient ways to deliver water from our rivers through engineering options. This has often been at the cost of the environment, with future generations guaranteed to pay long term environmental costs. To improve sustainability, engineering in river management will need to shift from a focus on supply generation to restoration of rivers and reducing demand.

Headshot of Professor Richard Kingsford
Professor Richard Kingsford
Director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW

Professor Richard Kingsford is a river ecologist and conservation biologist who has worked extensively across the wetlands and rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin and Lake Eyre Basin. He worked for the NSW Government Environment agency from 1986–2004. He also worked with many different communities and governments across this region. His research has influenced the policy and management of rivers in Australia, including through involvement on state and federal advisory committees.

He also leads a reintroduction or rewilding project, Wild Deserts, in Sturt National Park (NSW), collaborating on the Platypus Conservation Initiative and Red-Listing of Ecosystems. He is also researches effective ways of implementing effective conservation actions through developing adaptive management approaches and engagement with communities.  

  11.30–11.50 am
Does ARR2019 ensemble temporal pattern method represent various storm types in NSW?
Headshot of Jayden Fraser
Jayden Fraser
Graduate Engineer, WMAwater

Jayden is a Graduate Engineer at WMAwater with 18 months of experience in water resource and flood engineering. He graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental) from the University of New South Wales in 2021, and was awarded First Class Honours and the University Medal. Since then he has worked on a number of projects in this space including Monte Carlo analysis for the Hawkesbury-Nepean, scenario analysis for the March and July 2022 Floods Review, TUFLOW model reviews and hydrologic model calibration. He recently co-authored a paper with Mark Babister, presented at the 2023 Floodplain Management Conference.

  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
Combination of SCS-CN and rational function models to estimate daily river flow
Headshot of Dr Hossein Samadiboroujeni
Dr Hossein Samadiboroujeni
Premise Australia

Dr Hossein Samadiboroujeni is a water resources engineer and PhD graduate from the University of Ahvaz. Hossein worked at the Water Resources Research Center of Shahrekord University for 15 years and was a Visiting Research Fellow at University of Technology Sydney for four years before joining Premise in 2022. Hossein has more than 20 years’ of hands-on experience in research and study projects in Australia and overseas, with a focus on hydrological and hydraulic analysis, river flow modelling, water supply system assessment and design of hydraulic structure. He has published more than 100 papers in journals and proceedings.

  12.10–12.30 pm
Storage-based routing of floods through river channels: improving parameterisation with hydraulic models
Headshot of Richard Sharpe
Dr Richard Sharpe
Water Resources Engineer, Sunwater

Richard is a Water Resources Engineer at Sunwater. He has a keen interest in fluvial hydraulics, fluvial processes and flood hydrology. His 22 years of experience includes 15 years in consulting, six years in research (MSc and PhD) and one year in a government agency, Sunwater.

  12.30–1.20 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.20–1.40 pm
Extreme event dam hydrology calibration using ARR2019 with a limited data collection sample
Headshot of Lee Williams
Lee Williams
Flood Engineer, Aurecon

Lee is a Flood Engineer within Aurecon’s Transport, Land and Water unit as part of Newcastle’s Water Team. He has more than eight years’ experience in the consulting and design industry with a background in civil, water and flood engineering. Lee’s previous responsibilities have included working on numerous infrastructure projects through hydrological and hydraulic modelling whilst mitigating flooding impact outcomes for commercial, industrial and residential developments providing a sustainable and effective outcome.

  1.40–2.00 pm
Defining catchment delay and non-linearity using flow data
Headshot of Tim Rhodes
Tim Rhodes
Water Resources Engineer, SMEC Australia

Tim Rhodes is a water resources engineer with SMEC Australia with more than 25 years’ experience. Tim is responsible for project technical direction and leading teams to ensure that the outcomes are consistent with project requirements. He has experience with a variety of infrastructure classes inclusive of road, rail dam, hydropower and urban development. He has had experience on such projects both within and outside Australia. He has a keen interest in forwarding the science of design flood hydrology.

  2.00–2.20 pm
Water quantity and quality modelling for the Great Barrier Reef catchments and development of an operational-ready system
  2.20–2.40 pm
Robust hydrological model calibration for extreme events
Headshot of Caleb Dykman
Caleb Dykman
University of New South Wales

Caleb is currently undertaking a PhD in Statistical Hydrology at the UNSW Water Research Centre, focusing on water supply security in a non-stationary environment. Prior to this, Caleb worked in consulting as a Civil and Water Resources Engineer at Royal HaskoningDHV where he routinely undertook hydrological and hydraulic modelling and civil structure design.

  2.40–3.00 pm
Enhancing resilience in a community roof harvesting rainwater system based on Monte Carlo analysis
  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.30–4.10 pm
Data, models and advanced numerical techniques
  4.10–4.30 pm
Quantifying the benefits of using machine learning for the smart design and control of stormwater storages
  4.30–4.50 pm
Calibrating hydrological models for high flow estimation using data science resampling methods
Headshot of Maryam Zeinolabedini Rezaabad
Maryam Zeinolabedini Rezaabad
Water Research Centre, UNSW

Maryam is a PhD student at UNSW. She completed her Master’s at the Kerman Graduate University of Technology, Iran. In 2019, Maryam joined a research group in Copenhagen University, working in the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management where she focused on drone-based data. Her research interest is in using data-driven, artificial intelligence, hydrological modeling, statistical/mathematical modelling and remote sensing in water and environment fields. Maryam's PhD involves working on water quality prediction using data science techniques.

  4.50–5.10 pm
Parameter estimation for urban catchment modelling using artificial intelligent techniques
Headshot of Siming Gong
Siming Gong
University of Technology Sydney

Siming Gong is a qualified water resources engineer and a PhD candidate specialising in catchment modelling system design. With expertise in catchment hydrology and hydraulic modelling, he explores AI techniques for improved rainfall-runoff predictions. Siming also has industrial experience in catchment flood study, climate change study and flood risk management. His passion lies in developing innovative approaches for sustainable water management, bridging theory and practice. Committed to advancing the field, Siming aims to contribute to the understanding and management of catchment systems for a more resilient future.

  11.30–11.50 am
Benchmarking the differences between modelled flood peaks when using Monte Carlo and Ensemble approaches
Headshot of Matt Scorah
Matt Scorah
Hydrologist, Hydrology and Risk Consulting

Matt has worked as a hydrologist at HARC since 2015. Over this time, he has worked on a wide variety of flooding and water resources projects, often involving analysis of large datasets. He has been heavily involved in the estimation of exceedance probabilities for some of Australia’s largest dams. He also regularly works in development, maintenance and training for the hydrological model RORB.

  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
Practical advice when using FFA utilities
  12.10–12.30 pm
Lake Torrens (South Australia) arid catchment initial loss and continuing loss observations
  12.30–1.20 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.20–1.40 pm
Apprehending cybernetic water system dynamics and futures? A review of games and immersive environments for education and foresighting
  1.40–2.00 pm
Why is accurate low flow modelling important in long-term planning: a Greater Sydney case study for Warragamba Dam
Headshot of Marlène van der Sterren
Marlène van der Sterren
Water Quality Modelling Manager, WaterNSW

Marlène van der Sterren is the Water Quality Modelling Manager with WaterNSW. Marlène has focused her research on sustainable water cycle management and has applied her knowledge to develop practical solutions for water management and NSW policy and strategies for water management. She has extensive experience in modelling water resources. Water management comes natural to Marlène, as she was born and raised in the Netherlands. After immigrating to Australia in her late teens, Marlène discovered a talent for engineering and research. Marlène is a full-time working mum, but still finds time to be an active volunteer with Engineers Australia.

  2.00–2.20 pm
Catchment water balance modelling with timestep independence
  2.20–2.40 pm
A new approach to integrated environmental modelling
Michael Barry
Michael Barry
TUFLOW

Michael has more than 25 years' experience in environmental fluid mechanics and water quality modelling/assessment. He now leads water quality software development for TUFLOW.

  2.40–3.00 pm
A schematic modelling approach for estimating water quantity and quality in water supply systems in Greater Sydney
Dr Chris Chen CPEng
Dr Chris Chen CPEng
Data Analytics Engineer, WaterNSW

Dr Shengyang (Chris) Chen is a Data Analytics Engineer at WaterNSW. He has been leading interdisciplinary projects in water and ecological engineering. Chris was an Associate Lecturer at Water Research Laboratory, UNSW and a visiting scientist at ANSTO.

  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.30–3.50 pm
Post extreme event modelling to assess catchment changes in order to inform restoration prioritisation: a case study of Poatina catchment flooding
Headshot of Aaron Smith
Aaron Smith
Hydro Tasmania

Aaron is a civil asset portfolio manager for pipelines and penstocks. He is working on managing the risk profile and long term maintenance programs for a portfolio that extends over the whole state with more than 100 major assets connect to hydro power generation. Prior to joining Hydro Tasmania, Aaron held a number of roles in the wider utility sector including working lead storm water management for local councils, option and planning roles for water providers and detailed design position in multinational consultancies.

  3.50–4.10 pm
Spatially optimising natural flood management approaches across catchments
Headshot of Associate Professor Fiona Johnson
Associate Professor Fiona Johnson
Director, Water Research Centre UNSW

Associate Professor Fiona Johnson is the Director of the Water Research Centre at UNSW and is an academic in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has more than 20 years' experience in hydrology working as a consultant, for government and in academia. Associate Professor Johnson’s areas of research and teaching focus on statistical hydrology, particularly with respect to flooding and extreme events and the use of global climate models for climate change assessments of water resources systems. She has a particular interest in solutions to climate and hydrological challenges faced by communities in the Global South.

  4.10–4.30 pm
Fast flood simulation parametrised by 2D hydraulic models
  4.30–4.50 pm
Establishing floodplain connectivity using time series satellite data
Headshot of Sanji Somarathana
Dr Sanji Somarathana
Spatial Data Scientist, WaterNSW

Sanjeewani (Sanji) has more than eight years of experience in spatial modelling, GIS and remote sensing. She holds a PhD in Spatial Modelling from the University of Sydney. She working as a Spatial Data Scientist at WaterNSW, Australia. Prior joining WaterNSW, Sanji was a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at CSRIO, St Lucia.

  4.50–5.10 pm
A methodology for assessing the impact of cumulative development on flooding in Australian floodplains
Headshot of Chris Thomas
Chris Thomas
Practice Lead Water Resources, Advisian

Chris is a civil engineer with more than 35 years’ experience in hydrology and water resources, specialising in flood investigation and flood risk management. During his career Chris has championed the application of hydrodynamic models to better understand flood hydraulics with a focus on using the results of modelling to inform land use planning. He is currently the Practice Lead for Water Resources at Advisian where he manages a team of hydrologists and modellers who are committed to providing solutions to water engineering problems. 

Chris is also the 2023 Flood Risk Manager of the Year, as awarded by Floodplain Management Australia during its recent National Conference.

  11.30–11.50 am
Flood forecasting to prepare communities for flood events
  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
How useful are global streamflow forecasts for Australian catchments?
Headshot of Associate Professor Fiona Johnson
Associate Professor Fiona Johnson
Director, Water Research Centre UNSW

Associate Professor Fiona Johnson is the Director of the Water Research Centre at UNSW and is an academic in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has more than 20 years' experience in hydrology working as a consultant, for government and in academia. Associate Professor Johnson’s areas of research and teaching focus on statistical hydrology, particularly with respect to flooding and extreme events and the use of global climate models for climate change assessments of water resources systems. She has a particular interest in solutions to climate and hydrological challenges faced by communities in the Global South.

  12.10–12.30 pm
Radar-based ensembles forecasts to enhance flood forecasts and warnings in Australia
Headshot of Carlos Velasco Forero
Carlos Velasco Forero
Research Scientist and Senior Hydrologist, Bureau of Meteorology.

Carlos is a Research Scientist and Senior Hydrologist at the Bureau of Meteorology. His research has particular focus on the estimation and forecast of rainfall grids in real-time using weather radars and rain gauges, in particular developing operational systems to generate large ensembles of rainfall forecasts for hydrological applications. Carlos has more than 15 years' experience as a hydrologist with experience in scientific and applied research, managing flood data collection networks, and delivering operational flood forecasting and warning services as lead operational flood forecaster and regional hydrology manager. Carlos was born in Colombia, one of the rainiest countries on earth.

  12.30–1.20 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.20–1.40 pm
Effect of dual bridge piers: learnings from CFD, ducks and 2D modelling
Heaadshot of David Cox
David Cox
Principal Engineer, SMEC

David is a Principal Engineer within Water Resources at SMEC with more than 18 years of experience working in the water resources industry. David is experienced in hydrologic and hydraulic analysis and design including rural and urban catchment studies, stormwater management and flood mitigation. David works closely with the dams, rail, road, environment and power teams to deliver large infrastructure projects throughout Australia and internationally.

  1.40–2.00 pm
Case study: estimation of bridge pier and deck form loss coefficients using 3D modelling
Headshot of Thomas Ramsay
Thomas Ramsay
GHD

Thomas is a hydraulic and hydrologic modeller who has worked on a range of projects, involving major road upgrades, bridge developments, drainage design, computation fluid dynamics, water resource management, water balance modelling, and dam breach modelling.

  2.00–2.20 pm
Modelling of nature-based solutions for bridge pier scour protection
Headshot of Muhammad Zain Bin Riaz
Dr Muhammad Zain Bin Riaz
Water Resources Engineer, AECOM

Dr Zain has devoted his professional life to unravelling the complexities of water resources, sediment transport and their far-reaching impacts. With more than a decade of experience across the Asia Pacific, including Pakistan, Singapore and Australia, he has provided his expertise in addressing the challenges posed by fluvial processes, river engineering, coastal protection and reservoir sedimentation. In 2022, he achieved a significant milestone by earning his PhD, focusing on the sediment transport phenomena along shorelines. Dr Zain's work extends to crucial areas such as hydrology and hydraulics, river engineering, coastal protection, agricultural land erosion and reservoir sedimentation.

  2.20–2.40 pm
Application of Bradley's Dual Bridges Theory in TUFLOW layered flow constrictions: a clarification
  2.40–3.00 pm
Modelling for floods
  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.30–3.50 pm
Extrapolating to extremes: an arid zone catchments comparison of advective and diffusive flood hydrograph models and storm loss algorithms.
Headshot of Alexander Rogan
Alexander Rogan
Principal Engineer, PSM

Alexander Rogan is a Principal Engineer at PSM with more than 11 years' consulting experience, working across hydrology, hydraulic and dams projects in Australia, South East Asia, Africa and South America. Alex's experience has commonly involved dealing with sparse hydrometeorological datasets, requiring a strong fundamental basis in hydrological theory to achieve reasonable predictions.

  3.50–4.10 pm
Extreme flooding in the Kimberley and the loss of WA's Fitzroy River Bridge
Headshot of Krey Price
Krey Price
Director, Surface Water Solutions

Krey has Bachelors and Masters degrees in civil engineering and water resources. Krey is the Director of Surface Water Solutions and has 25 years' experience in flood modelling, bridge and culvert design, dam breach assessments, and environmental impact assessments.

  4.10–4.30 pm
Taking a downpour of data and turning it into a flood of knowledge: applications of radar rainfall in hydrology
Headshot of Bronte Board
Bronte Board
Senior Engineer, Department of Transport and Main Roads

Bronte joined the Department of Transport Main Roads as a senior engineer in 2022. She completed a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) and Bachelor of Arts (French, Spanish) at the University of Queensland in 2016 and spent the years following this working in the private sector, completing local and regional scale hydrologic and hydraulic assessments for a range of applications from flood studies to infrastructure-based projects to drainage design.

  4.30–4.50 pm
Disaggregation of daily rainfall data to estimate at-site intensity-frequency-duration curves at sub-hourly timescales
Headshot of Dr Atiqul Islam
Dr Atiqul Islam
Water Resources Engineer, Stantec

Atiqul Islam is a Water Resources Engineer at Stantec. Atiqul completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering with Griffith University. His PhD thesis title was “Development of Satellite-derived Precipitation Products for Water Resources Management”. He has comprehensive experience of developing intensity-frequency-duration (IFD) curves at sub-hourly timescales in Australia as part of his PhD research project. Atiqul is experienced to work with big (spatial) data using different programming languages such as MATLAB, R and IDL. He also has experience to work with QGIS, TUFLOW, and HEC-RAS.

  4.50–5.10 pm
Regional rainfall frequency analysis for Tasmania's West Coast
Headshot of Benjamin James
Benjamin James
Water Engineer, Entura

Benjamin James is a water engineer at Entura, having recently graduated from the University of Tasmania.

  11.30–11.50 am
Challenges and opportunities in environmental water management: what's working and what can we do better?
Headshot of Christine Arrowsmith
Christine Lauchlan Arrowsmith
Co-CEO and Principal Engineer, Streamology

Christine is an experienced waterway and coastal engineer with more than 23 years industry experience. She has worked on a range of projects from flood studies and eco-hydraulics to waterway geomorphology and coastal hazard investigations. Her skills include the ability to lead teams of technical professionals to answer challenging waterway and coastal management questions and to link emerging science and understanding with practical outcomes.

  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
An ecohydrological approach for modelling and optimisation of vegetation health and ecosystem services in wetlands
  12.10–12.30 pm
Ecogeomorphological modelling of a mangrove wetland in Pacific Islands
  12.30–1.20 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.20–1.40 pm
Downstream fish passage on dam spillways: truths, myths and realities during prototype operation
Headshot of Hubert Chanson
Professor Hubert Chanson
Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland

Hubert Chanson is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland, where he has been since 1990 after six years in industry. His fields of expertise are environmental fluid mechanics and hydraulic engineering, both in terms of theoretical fundamentals, physical and numerical modelling. He leads a group of 5–10 researchers, largely targeting flows around hydraulic structures, two-phase free-surface flows, turbulence in steady and unsteady open channel flows, using computation, lab-scale experiments, field work and analysis. He has published more than 1250 peer reviewed publications including two dozen of books. He actively serves on the editorial boards of several international journals. 

  1.40–2.00 pm
Advantages of indirect screening for removal of gross pollutants from waterways
Headshot of Krey Price
Krey Price
Director, Surface Water Solutions

Krey has Bachelors and Masters degrees in civil engineering and water resources. Krey is the Director of Surface Water Solutions and has 25 years' experience in flood modelling, bridge and culvert design, dam breach assessments, and environmental impact assessments.

  2.00–2.20 pm
Reynolds stresses and secondary motion in box culvert barrel: implications in terms of upstream fish passage at road crossings
Headshot of Hui Ling Wong
Hui Ling Wong GradIEAust
University of Queensland

Hui Ling Wong is a PhD research student in hydraulic engineering at the University of Queensland. She graduated with MEng Civil Engineering from the University of Nottingham with First Class Honours in 2022. She has been working in the UQ AEB Hydraulics Laboratory since 2023 under the supervision of Professor Hubert Chanson. She has published several papers mainly on coastal reservoirs and river basin management. Her research interests include sustainable development, ecohydraulics, coastal hydraulics, turbulence and open channel flow.

  2.20–2.40 pm
Fish passage considerations in closed conduit systems
Headshot of Reilly Cox
Reilly Cox
University of New South Wales

Reilly joined the Water Research Laboratory (WRL) as a PhD student in 2021 to research “Helping fish migrate over barriers with Tube Fishways”. This research will focus on the safe transport of fish through closed conduit systems for a range of endangered Australian fish species, while ensuring minimal injuries to the fish. Optimising the operation with live fish will pave the way for the deployment of the closed conduit fish passage. Reilly completed a dual bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental engineering at UNSW graduating with first class honours.

  2.40–3.00 pm
A review of artificial destratification and selective withdrawal techniques to mitigate the impacts of reservoir stratification and cold water pollution
Headshot of Fred Chaaya
Fred CHaaya
UNSW Water Research Laboratory

Fred is a member of the UNSW Water Research Laboratory's Projects team. He has a double degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UNSW, with a focus towards aspects of water engineering including hydraulics and coastal engineering. Fred has developed a sound understanding of complex hydraulic processes through laboratory testing of dam spillways, cruise ship prop-wash and coastal flume modelling. He applies his knowledge of hydrological and other environmental processes through field investigations, monitoring instrumentation installations and data assessments. Fred plays a key role in the ongoing works to mitigate the environmental, ecological and social impacts of cold water pollution.

  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.30–3.50 pm
Lessons from an assessment of water supply system yield in South East Queensland: climate change is already happening
Headshot of Ian Varley
Ian Varley
WREMA

Ian is a Chartered Professional Engineer with more than 30 years of experience in hydrology, including water supply investigations and yield studies for large irrigation projects and urban water supply systems in Australia and Asia. A focus of recent studies had been consideration of the impact of climate change on water availability. Recent studies, which have involved collaboration between industry practitioners and leading academics, have demonstrated that climate change has already had a significant impact in some regions and there is a need to explore new approaches to incorporate climate change trends in yield assessment methods.

  3.50–4.10 pm
Challenges in incorporating climate change impact to Greater Sydney water supply security
Headshot of Selvaratnam Maheswaran
Selvaratnam Maheswaran
Consultant

Mahes has more than 40 years of professional experience in water resources engineering in Denmark, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Brunei and Australia with a magement leadership in strategic planning and technology and water operational system implementation. He has a Masters in Water Resources Engineering from the Asian Institute of Technology and a Bachelors degree from Univerisity of Peradenia, Sri Lanka.

  4.10–4.30 pm
Projections of initial and continuing loss under climate change and the impacts on design flood estimation
Headshot of Conrad Wasko
Conrad Wasko
ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Melbourne

Conrad Wasko is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has more than ten years’ experience in engineering and environmental hydrology in both consulting and research, with a focus on understanding the effects of climate change on extreme rainfall events and flooding.

  4.30–4.50 pm
Impact of climatic factors on groundwater piezometry dynamics over a long-term observation
Headshot of Adnan Mohammed
Dr Adnan Mohammed
Enginers Australia

A recent PhD graduate in environmental remediation focusing on the impacts of climate change on contaminated groundwater, Adnan recently interned at Hunter Water Corporation. He has previously worked as Projects Support Officer for Rural Solution SA, PIRSA and as Research Assistant at GCER, the University of Newcastle. Adnan has an extensive water resources management professional history.

  4.50–5.10 pm
From resistance to resilience: adapting to the dichotomy of urban flood response induced by a changing climate
Headshot of Suresh Hettiarachchi
Suresh Hettiarachchi
University of New South Wales

Suresh is a specialist in water resources with more than 20 years of industry and academic experience.

  5.10–6.00 pm
Welcome reception
Exhibition Area, Level 3

Kickstart HWRS 2023 in an informal setting, foster new connections, engage in simulating conversations and set the tone for what’s sure to be an enriching event.

  6.00–6.15 pm
Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame honours individuals who have made outstanding and lasting contributions to the water engineering profession in Australia.

  6.15–7.15 pm
Munro Oration

The Munro Oration is delivered by an eminent speaker in the field of hydrology and water resources. It is jointly sponsored by Engineers Australia, the Canberra Hydrological Society and the South Australian Hydrology Society.

Headshot of Dr Francis Chiew
Dr Francis Chiew
Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

Dr Francis Chiew is a Civil Engineer and PhD graduate from the University of Melbourne. Francis worked at the University of Melbourne for 15 years before joining CSIRO as a Science Leader in 2006. Francis has led the surface water hydrology group in CSIRO for the past 15 years and has worked with governments and industry to deliver knowledge, datasets and tools to inform management and climate adaptation in the water resources and related sectors.

Francis is known internationally for his research on hydroclimate, hydrological modelling and water resources management, and the science outputs from his team and collaborators are widely adopted and cited. Francis was a lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth and Sixth Assessment reports, and the recipient of the 2022 International Hydrology Prize (Volker Medal) from the International Association of Hydrological Sciences for outstanding contributions to hydrology and the application of research for the benefit of society.

Tuesday 14 November
  8.45–8.50 am
Welcome and day two briefing
  8.50–9.40 am
Strategic management of flood risk for communities
Keynote

Duncan will discuss his thoughts on the strategic management of flood risk for communities in consideration of more than 30 years of experience in flood risk management in local and state government, consultancy and in supporting flood risk management best practice and industry education. Topics he will touch on include lessons learnt during his career, current and evolving flood risk management practice, and key considerations and challenges for the industry into the future.

Headshot of Duncan McLuckie
Duncan McLuckie
Principal Flood Specialist, Environment Heritage Group, NSW Department of Planning & Environment

Duncan is a national thought leader on best practice in flood risk management. He led a range of national initiatives, including update of Australian Institute of Disaster Resilience Handbook Managing the Floodplain and associated technical guidelines and he leads the update of NSW flood risk management guidance.  

Duncan is also the primary author of the book Strategic Management of Flood Risk, co-authored several chapters of Australian Rainfall and Runoff and is central to the development and delivery the University of Technology, Sydney Flood Risk Management subject. He has also developed and helped deliver a range of workshops at key industry conferences. 

  9.40–10.00 am
Estimating rainfall loss values for flood modelling using catchment characteristics
Headshot of Matthew Tiller
Matthew Tiller
Queensland University of Technology

Matthew Tiller is a PhD Candidate at Queensland University of Technology, within the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on the influence of land covers, soil type, and topography on rainfall infiltration. He is aiming to develop rainfall loss maps based on the physical characteristics of catchments. By integrating these physical catchment characteristics into flood models, he aims to improve model accuracy of rainfall loss estimation, and thus the reliability of the overall model.

  10.00–10.20 am
The need for a national test dataset
  10.20–10.40 am
HyFS: a hydrological forecasting system for a continent
  10.40–11.10 am
Morning tea and exhibition
  11.10–11.30 am
Enhancing infrastructure upgrade projects in Melbourne area: overcoming challenges and seizing opportunities for achieving zero afflux in flood modelling
Headshot of Farshad Lotfiazad
Farshad Lotfiazad
Principal Water Resources Engineer, WGA

Farshad Lotfiazad is a Principal Water Resources Engineer at WGA with 24 years’ experience. He is Group Technical Lead for Flood Modelling for WGA. Farshad’s expertise is in surface water modelling and assessment including hydrologic, hydraulic, 1D and 2D flood, urban and road drainage, WSUD, stormwater harvesting, water balance modelling and water management direction and strategic water management planning. He has accomplished water engineering projects for infrastructure, land/urban development, buildings, energy, defence, catchment flood management, mine water management, water supply for irrigation, stormwater harvesting and river and lake hydraulic and water quality modelling.

  11.30–11.50 am
When zero does not equal zero: the need to transition from flood hazard management to a comprehensive flood risk mitigation approach
  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
Solar farm flood hydraulics
  12.10–12.30 pm
Eliminating flood risk on stadium construction projects
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Siobhan Maxwell
Group Manager Hydrology and Drainage Engineering, John Holland

Siobhan Maxwell is a driven and focused engineer who specialises in drainage design, hydrology and hydraulics for major infrastructure projects across Australia. As a valued member of John Holland's Precontracts Team she identifies technical design criteria and commercial conditions with inherit risk in demonstrating compliance during delivery. Siobhan works closely with construction teams to develop temporary works design solutions to protect their construction sites from flooding.

  12.30–1.30 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.30–2.30 pm
Infrastructure and acceptable impacts
Panel dicussion
  2.30–3.10 pm
Australian Rainfall and Runoff update
  3.10–3.40 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.40–4.00 pm
Can the yield approach to urban water supply planning be trusted in a non-stationary climate?
  4.00–4.20 pm
Engaging water sector stakeholders to identify impactful compound events and climate extremes
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Steven Thomas
Bureau of Meteorology

Steven works for Bureau of Meteorology's in the Water Sector Services team in the Business Solutions Group (BSG). The Water Sector Services advocates for the needs of the water sector in terms of their water, weather and climate information needs. Steven has research experience investigating hydroclimate projections for Australia to explore drought like conditions and was involved in producing the Bureau's National Hydrological Projections. Steven's work in the VicWaCI project was focused on assisting DEECA to engage with water sector stakeholders to capture their insights and to share these findings internally to help stakeholders across the Bureau.

  4.20–4.40 pm
A line of sight: how roadmaps support the water resources sector by linking strategy to technical scoping and delivery
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Stephanie Kermode
Jacobs

Stephanie is an environmental scientist with expertise in catchment and river management, policy and strategy. She has recently specialised in leading catchment and waterways modelling to support the water services sector. She has been involved with a wide-range of analytical methods in her career – both laboratory and modelling based, and an equally broad range of applications. Her interests lie in delivering complex interdisciplinary projects which support environmental management while delivering to the needs of society. She is emerging as a strategist and liaison, who is able to bridge the gap between the strategic and technical and bring together multidisciplinary teams to deliver quality projects.

  4.40–5.00 pm
The Bradfield Scheme: a contemporary analysis
  9.40–10.00 am
Intensification of sub-hourly heavy rainfall
Headshot of Dr Hooman Ayat
Dr Hooman Ayat
University of Melbourne

Hooman is a researcher in climate science whose interests revolve around studying mesoscale atmospheric processes using high-resolution observational and model datasets. He received his PhD in climate science from the University of New South Wales in 2022. Hooman's focus during his PhD was on understanding the characteristics of mesoscale storms and how they have changed over the last few decades, utilising radar and remotely-sensed data. Currently, his research is centered on understanding the small and large-scale drying mechanisms during the Black Summer bushfires using high-resolution simulations and reanalysis datasets.

  10.00–10.20 am
Are CMIP3 projections still plausible to 2030 for Tasmanian catchments?
Headshot of Kirsten Adams
Kirsten Adams
Senior Hydrologist, Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania

Kirsten has more than 25 years of experience as a hydrologist, working in consulting, federal and state government organisations. At present, she is a senior Hydrologist for the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania where she is currently leading the Department's work on updating climate change projections used in water management and planning.

  10.20–10.40 am
Projecting rainfall and flood frequency curves under climate change
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Conrad Wasko
ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Melbourne

Conrad Wasko is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has more than ten years’ experience in engineering and environmental hydrology in both consulting and research, with a focus on understanding the effects of climate change on extreme rainfall events and flooding.

  10.40–11.10 am
Morning tea and exhibition
  11.10–11.30 am
Continuous simulation of catchment hydrology using a coupled direct rainfall surface / groundwater hydraulic model: Oxley Creek catchment calibration
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Dr Shuang Gao
Environmental Engineer, TUFLOW

Shuang Gao is an Environmental Engineer and a TUFLOW developer. He completed his master’s and PhD studies at Tokyo Institute of Technology. As part of his master’s and PhD degrees he developed a 2D Large Eddy Simulation (LES) model for the flow and sediment transport assessment of composite channels with vegetated floodplain. Since joining TUFLOW team in 2017 Shuang has been involved in a variety of R&D projects, flood and coastal modelling, technical support, training and marketing. Shuang’s R&D experience includes developing a multi-sediment fraction bedload transport module for TUFLOW FV, implementing sub-grid sampling methods and a variety of new turbulence models for TUFLOW.

  11.30–11.50 am
Estimation of flood magnitudes affected by combined outflows from a large dam and side-creek using long term continuous simulation
  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
New IFDs for Brisbane region
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Sarah Blundy
Hydrologist, WMAwater

Sarah is a hydrologist with 10 years’ experience working on a range of project including continuous forecast modelling, design flood studies and long term yield assessments. She has worked extensively on Tasmanian project and has also worked on projects in NSW and Queensland. She has a particular interest in data quality including both streamflow data and rainfall data and its uncertainty in real world application.

  12.10–12.30 pm
Towards resilient water supply management: innovative forecasting techniques for medium to long-term rainfall anomalies
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Dr Ze Jiang
University of New South Wales

Ze Jiang is a postdoctoral research associate from the University of New South Wales who specialises in the field of hydro-climatology. His research is centred on understanding the impact of climate change on the water cycle, specifically investigating the effects of global warming on droughts and floods. Ze received his PhD in Water Resources Engineering from UNSW, where he developed an incredibly cool method known as Wavelet System Prediction (WASP), capable of predicting sustained hydro-climate changes.

  12.30–1.30 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.30–1.50 pm
Water quantity calibration and validation of storages in Greater Sydney drinking water catchments
  1.50–2.10 pm
Exploring memory of catchment represented by conceptual rainfall-runoff models
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Thien Nguyen
University of Adelaide

Thien is a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide. He is interested in all things water. Thien's research focuses on stochastic rainfall models and their application in flood and drought risks assessment.

  2.10–2.30 pm
Multivariate time series-based streamflow forecasting
  2.30–2.50 pm
A development of long-term daily high-resolution grid meteorological data for South Korea based on deep learning
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Yookyung Jeong
Incheon National University
  2.50–3.10 pm
Software application for spatiotemporal variability of design rainfall for use in hydrological modelling in Qatar
Headshot of Niels-Erik Jorgensen
Niels-Erik Jorgensen
NJ Data ApS

Niels-Erik Jorgensen is a software engineer with knowledge of hydraulics and hydrology and a background in software and engineering firms such as the Danish Hydraulic Institute, Motorola Inc., and COWI Engineering. Niels-Erik Jorgensen established his own company, NJ Data ApS, in 2016, now with an entrepreneurial mindset focused on solving the problems related to climate change, delivering specialised software within the engineering fields, especially hydraulics and hydrological engineering, that can overcome future challenges. In addition, Niels-Erik Jorgensen has recently won a more significant contract with ASCO Consultant in Qatar to develop a portal solution for addressing the abovementioned challenges.

  3.10–3.40 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.40–4.00 pm
Blending of radar, satellite and gauge rainfall data for hydrological application
Headshot of Jayaram Pudashine
Jayaram Pudashine
Precipitation Nowcast Scientist, Bureau of Meteorology
  4.00–4.20 pm
Hydrological seasonal forecasting at the Bureau of Meteorology
  4.20–4.40 pm
The AR&R2019 design flood estimation procedure: a need for review
  4.40–5.00 pm
Extrapolating to extremes: a perennial stream comparison of advective and diffusive flood hydrograph models with embedded baseflow algorithm
  9.40–10.00 am
Adopting regularised linear model within peaks-over-threshold framework for regional flood frequency analysis: a case study for south-east Australia
Xiao Pan
Xiao Pan
Western Sydney University

Xiao Pan is a part-time PhD student at Western Sydney University focusing on flood frequency analysis. The PhD topic focuses on developing a peaks-over-threshold (POT) based flood estimation method. He was recently involved in projects using POT based approach for at-site and regional flood frequency analysis. Xiao is also working as Product Design and IP Development Manager for Fletcher Building Australia within building's team focusing on cold-formed steel software development.

  10.00–10.20 am
Updating the quantile regression technique regional flood frequency in Queensland
  10.20–10.40 am
Rainfall and flow monitoring in an arid catchment – Analysing 30 years of rainfall and flow data in Arcoona Creek in the Gammon Ranges
Headshot of David Kemp
David Kemp
University of South Australia

Dr David Kemp was until his retirement from full time employment, employed as the Principal Hydrologist by the South Australia Government in the transport and infrastructure field. He has 40 years’ experience in South Australian hydrology and stormwater management and has a commitment to furthering knowledge of both flood hydrology and urban runoff quality management. He has been for the last eleven years an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in UniSA STEM, University of South Australia, and is continuing his research into runoff routing models, arid zone hydrology and in the implementation of water sensitive urban design.

  10.40–11.10 am
Morning tea and exhibition
  11.10–11.30 am
Spatio-temporal patterns of channel morphology: a case study of Dry Creek, Northern Adelaide
Headshot of Tesfa Gebrie Andualem
Tesfa Gebrie Andualem
University of South Australia

Tesfa is a PhD candidate in Civil Engineering at the University of South Australia. Tesfa received his MSc degree in Hydraulic Engineering from Arba Minch University and BSc degree in Water Resources and Irrigation Management from Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia. Tesfa lectures and tutors different water engineering courses. His PhD study focused on hydrological and sediment modelling of Dry Creek. He has published more than 30 research articles on reputable journals focusing on hydrological modelling, groundwater potential, soil erosion, remote sensing based land suitability analysis for irrigation, rainwater harvesting and dam construction.

  11.30–11.50 am
Assessing the reliability, efficiency and limitations of the TUFLOW 1D Model: a case study on the 2021 extreme river event calibration
Headshot of Dr Yucen Lu
Dr Yucen Lu
Aurecon

Dr Yucen Lu is a senior water engineer with five years’ experience as a consulting engineer in the water resources engineering sector and five years’ experience as a researcher in the field of experimental fluid and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
Applying computer vision approaches to stream gauging
Headshot of Daniel Wagenaar
Daniel Wagenaar
Senior Hydrologist, Xylem Water Solutions

Daniel started his hydrometric career in South Africa as a civil engineer technician with experience in surface and ground water monitoring. He expanded his career of 33 years in water engineering and hydrometric operations by accepting the Manager of Water Monitoring Systems position (2008) in the Northern Territory, Australia. He made the conscious decision to further specialise in water engineering by accepting a position (2014) at SonTek, an acoustic doppler manufacturer in the US. Daniel returned to Australia by accepting a Senior Hydrologist position (2018) at Xylem Water Solutions. Daniel holds a B.Sc. in Water Engineering (Central University Technology) and B.Sc. in Geohydrology (Free State University).

  12.10–12.30 pm
Consideration of life safety risk equity principles in the assignment of design flood probability
  12.30–1.30 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.30–1.50 pm
Experimental investigation of the effectiveness of macro-roughness in erosion protection
  1.50–2.10 pm
Integrating ESG with sustainable water management approach in urban areas to respond to climate change
Headshot of Hamed Esfahani
Hamed Esfahani
Principal Civil Engineer, Stantec

As a well-established civil engineer, Hamed has a passion for delivering quality design outcomes in civil projects with the community in mind. He has more than 15 years' experience as a civil engineer expert in various aspects of civil infrastructure projects from preliminary and detailed design to construction.

Hamed is an expert in identifying client’s requirements, designing and delivering complex projects. As a technical team leader in Stantec, he has managed civil design/engineer team to deliver multidisciplinary civil infrastructure, highways and urban development projects.

  2.10–2.30 pm
Not again! A case study of heavy and recurring rainfall during a construction project
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Dr Rodney Ronalds
Director, Friends Civil Engineering

Rodney is a Director of the consulting firm Friends Civil Engineering. He holds a PhD specialising in hydrologic modelling and is a Chartered and Registered Professional Engineer. Rodney's research revolves around the practical aspects of stormwater modelling and the application of advanced hydrologic and hydraulic theories to "real world" engineering projects.

  2.30–2.50 pm
Designing an effective stormwater treatment system: a case study in South East Queensland using PCSWMM and MUSIC tools
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Owen Meng
Brisbane City Council

Owen is a dynamic and driven water specialist who is dedicated to influencing the progress of water-sensitive urban planning. He began his career as a civil engineer and has since gone on to obtain both a degree in Civil Engineering and a Master of Integrated Water Management, accumulating a vast amount of experience in civil and environmental engineering through his industry work. With a fervent desire to make a genuine global impact, Owen has contributed his knowledge and expertise to a variety of organisations, including the Department of Industry (NSW Government), Aurecon, Moreton Bay Regional Council, and his present employer, the Brisbane City Council.

  2.50–3.10 pm
Oyster beds as stormwater champions: nature’s solution for offsetting stormwater impacts and achieving water quality targets
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Andre Foersch
Environmental Scientist, AECOM

Andre Foersch is an environmental scientist and advocate for nature-based solutions and restoration ecology. Andre's passion for preserving and restoring ecosystems led him to pursue a degree in environmental science from the University of the Sunshine Coast. Driven by his commitment to create sustainable legacies, Andre joined AECOM's Water Resources team in July 2022. At AECOM, he utilises his expertise in restoration ecology and applies his knowledge to various projects aimed at protecting and improving water quality. Andre's dedication to his work is evident in his approach to finding innovative and sustainable solutions and applications.

  3.10–3.40 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.40–4.00 pm
"City on Alert": a digital tool to anticipate and control flood risk
Headshot of Remy Baudot
Rémy Baudot
River Hydraulics Director, Egis

Remy has 22 years' experience as hydraulic engineer, having graduated from ENSEEIHT in France. Currently, he is River Hydraulics Director with Egis and provides cross-functional support to all of the group's activities, both in France and internationally. He has worked on numerous projects related to flood risk management: flood warning, flood prevention plan, detail design and work construction of containment systems and project management of watercourse development works, and dams. Rémy is regularly confronted with the increase in extreme phenomena and the resulting risks. Thus, he is able to propose engineering solutions to adapt our infrastructures or our lifestyles to increasingly frequent extreme phenomena

  4.00–4.20 pm
The building blocks of a business case to manage flood risk in the Gawler River region
Headshot of Katharine Ward
Katharine Ward FIEAust CPEng NER
Department for Environment and Water

Katharine is a civil and environmental engineer with more than 20 years' experience in public service delivering water and environment projects.

  4.20–4.40 pm
Dynamic CA-ffé: a hybrid 1D/2D fast flood evaluation model for urban floods
Headshot of Maziar Gholami Korzani
Dr Maziar Gholami Korzani
Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

Maziar is a Research Fellow investigating computational mechanics using advanced numerical modelling techniques. He is currently developing a fast flood modelling tool to tackle our real-world problem of climate change. Building on industry experience, Maziar completed his PhD at the University of Queensland, and developed his first computational code, ”PersianSPH”, to model the post-failure behaviour of geotechnical structures. He then joinied the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, as a postdoctoral researcher focusing on coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes in porous media. He is also Editor-In-Chief of Geothermal Energy Journal.

  4.40–5.00 pm
Upstream impact assessment of reservoir operation during floods: a case study of Narracan
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Yanni Wang
Hydrologist, HARC

Yanni is a hydrologist and has worked on a number of projects in flood hydrology, hydraulic modelling and dam safety risk assessments since joining HARC in 2022. She holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering with Architecture from the University of New South Wales. Yanni's enthusiasm lies in merging her hydrology interest with technical expertise to make a positive impact on infrastructure and environmental sustainability.

  9.40–10.00 am
Future water supply scenarios for Tasmanian municipalities: a data scaling approach
Headshot of Dr Michael Wright
Dr Michael Wright
WMAwater

Dr Michael Wright is a water resources engineer from America with experience in Californian and Tasmanian water issues. He worked for the Bureau of Reclamation supporting operation of dams including Shasta Dam in Northern California before moving to Tasmania with WMAwater in January 2023. In Tasmania, he has worked with agencies such as TasWater, Tasmanian Irrigation and the Department of Natural Resources and Energy.

  10.00–10.20 am
The impact of errors in hydrological predictions on water resource system performance
  10.20–10.40 am
Benchmarking MUSIC and GLM models in two window lakes in South East Queensland
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Dr Brett Phillips
Senior Principal, Stantec

Dr Brett Phillips is a Senior Principal with more than 38 years of experience in managing and undertaking a wide range of hydro-environmental assessments, catchment studies, flood and floodplain management studies and WSUD investigations for government and industry clients. He also had senior roles on 33 projects that received 43 divisional or national engineering excellence awards since 1987. He is an author or co-author of more than 200 papers published in international and Australian conference proceedings on sustainable development, integrated catchment management, flooding and floodplain management and hydrology.

  10.40–11.10 am
Morning tea and exhibition
  11.10–11.30 am
Water and CO2 fluxes in a perennial pasture
  11.30–11.50 am
Predicting event response in coupled catchment-reservoir models
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Dr Peter Yeates
Director, Hydronumerics

Peter has a PhD in physical limnology and 25 years' experience assessing and modelling water supply reservoirs, hydro-power dams, estuaries and coastal receiving waters. Peter has provided technical expertise and management to projects globally, including dam feasibility studies, environmental impact assessments, water quality risk analysis, and discharge fate and transport studies.

  11.50 am – 12.10 pm
Planning and design for seasonal herbaceous wetlands in future growth areas
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Ian Pham
Principal Engineer, Melbourne Water

Ian is a water engineer with more than 10 years' experience in both the Brisbane and Melbourne water industry. He is currently a principal engineer at Melbourne Water and has worked in both the public and private sector. He specialises in green/blue infrastructure from concept to construction, he is currently working in the growth corridors of Melbourne. Ian is passionate of the human element in engineering infrastructure and how it is linked with the natural environment.

  12.10–12.30 pm
Understanding hydrodynamic drivers of algal bloom in the Berowra Creek Estuary
  12.30–1.30 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.30–1.50 pm
The development of integrated water end use and climate responsive demand modelling for urban water resources system models in Darwin and Canberra
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Russell Beatty
Principal Water Resources Engineer and Economist, HARC

Russell is a water resources engineer and economist with more than 30 years’ experience in integrated water resources management, economics, statistical analysis, policy development and urban water cycle management. He has worked in projects in Australia, New Zealand, North America and South East Asia.

  1.50–2.10 pm
Integrated water system modelling for the Resilient Water Futures strategy
  2.10–2.30 pm
Water balances in pit lakes: integrating hydrogeology, surface water balances and climate change
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Andrea Garcia
Civil Engineer, WSP

Andrea is a Civil/Water Resources Engineer with more than five years of consulting experience. Andrea’s project experience includes water balance modelling, processing and reviewing climate data, flood risk assessments, designing of civil and hydraulic infrastructure, spatial data analysis and project management. Her modelling experience extends to 1D and 2D surface water models using a variety of software packages.

  2.30–2.50 pm
Assessing conditions of bioretention basins: investigating influential factors on asset performance and longevity
  2.50–3.10 pm
Calibration and validation of water quality parameters in the Greater Sydney drinking water catchments
  3.10–3.40 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.40–4.00 pm
Improving rating curves in 2D hydraulic models
  4.00–4.20 pm
Contribute to the NCWE paper on Improving rating curves in 2D hydraulic models
  4.20–4.40 pm
Achieving accuracy, stability and parallelism in a new 1D hydraulic scheme for TUFLOW HPC
Headshot of Greg Collecutt
Greg Collecutt
TUFLOW

Greg is the principal GPU software developer at TUFLOW. He has degrees in mechanical engineering and a PhD in theoretical physics, and has worked extensively in CFD modelling. In addition to working with the TUFLOW team, Greg has also worked for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, in the solar thermal power industry and in the aerospace industry. Greg's core passion is for scientific coding and pushing the boundaries of computing technology, and has found a niche within the team at TUFLOW. In this role he is involved with the implementation and benchmarking of new modelling features.

  4.40–5.00 pm
Hydraulics and energy dissipation on a steep stepped spillway: physical modelling in a large‐size facility
Headshot of Hubert Chanson
Professor Hubert Chanson
Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland

Hubert Chanson is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland, where he has been since 1990 after six years in industry. His fields of expertise are environmental fluid mechanics and hydraulic engineering, both in terms of theoretical fundamentals, physical and numerical modelling. He leads a group of 5–10 researchers, largely targeting flows around hydraulic structures, two-phase free-surface flows, turbulence in steady and unsteady open channel flows, using computation, lab-scale experiments, field work and analysis. He has published more than 1250 peer reviewed publications including two dozen of books. He actively serves on the editorial boards of several international journals. 

  7.00–11.00 pm
Gala dinner
Grand Ballroom, Level 3

Dine in a relaxed setting while sharing insights and building relationships with industry peers, speakers and organisers.

Wednesday 15 November
  9.00–9.05 am
Introduction
  9.05–9.12 am
Climate change needs for flood modelling
  9.12–9.20 am
Climate change needs for water supply planning
  9.20–9.40 am
State of the science on heavy rainfall
  9.40–10.00 am
State of the science on drought
  10.00–10.20 am
Q&A
  10.20–10.50 am
Morning tea and exhibition
  10.50–11.40 am
Water and cumulative impacts: global policy issues and approaches
Keynote

Many of our pressing water-related environmental problems are cumulative from many contributors. These problems build up incrementally and in scientifically complex ways. Sometimes direct impacts to water resources are only one of several categories of pressures on a valued part of the environment. For example, expanding impermeable surfaces in our cities increase stormwater flows, damage the ecological health of urban streams, and increase flooding risks, all exacerbated by extreme events driven by climate change.

Cumulative environmental problems are a crucial challenge for managers and policy makers alike. Bridging law, policy, and science to develop solutions to cumulative environmental problems is the focus of a forthcoming book by Dr Nelson, Regulating a Thousand Cuts: Global Law and Policy Solutions to Cumulative Environmental Problems. This presentation draws out key issues from the book’s approach to evaluating the effectiveness of a policy system to address these problems, with water-related examples from Australia and abroad.

Headshot of Dr Rebecca Nelson
Dr Rebecca Nelson
Associate Professor and Director - Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

Dr Rebecca Nelson is an Associate Professor and Director at the University of Melbourne and a practising lawyer. Dr Nelson’s research focuses on environmental and natural resources laws, with an emphasis on the regulation of cumulative environmental effects across diverse natural resources.

She is an author of Water Resources Law (2nd edition) and more than 60 other publications. Dr Nelson is a former Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2018–2021), the IAH (Australia)/National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training Distinguished Lecturer (2016) and the Law Council of Australia’s Young Environmental Lawyer of the Year (2014). She holds a JSD(Stanford), JSM(Stanford) and BE(Environmental)/LLB (University of Melbourne).

Dr Nelson is a member of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s statutory Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Sciences and a non-executive director of Bush Heritage Australia.

  11.40 am – 12.00 pm
Selecting representative evacuation events from large Monte Carlo data sets
  12.00–12.20 pm
Application of space-time rainfall patterns derived from atmospheric reanalysis data to define the joint probability of riverine catchment and local stormwater flooding
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Dr Phillip Jordan
Principal Hydrologist, HARC

Dr Phillip Jordan is Principal Hydrologist with HARC and has 28 years of experience in hydrology and water resources engineering. He is a Fellow of the Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust and he was Chairman of the Organising Committee for the Melbourne HWRS in 2018. Phillip has applied both Monte-Carlo simulation and continuous simulation techniques to flood hydrology and is at the forefront of industry best-practice. He was lead author two chapters in ARR2019, the Australian guideline on flood hydrology. He has co-authored more than 50 journal and conference papers.

  12.20–12.40 pm
Application of joint probability to respond to climate change and avoid extreme assumptions in hydrology
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Peter Coombes FIEAust CPEng
Director, Urban Water Cycle Solutions

Peter Coombes is a director of Urban Water Cycle Solutions, an honorary and visiting professor in Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, a Fellow of Engineers Australia and Certified Practicing Engineer. He was an editor of the Urban Book of Australian Rainfall and Runoff, and is a former chief scientist in the Victorian government. He holds a PhD in civil and environmental engineering systems, and has qualifications in surveying, engineering, economics and law.

  12.40–1.40 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.40–2.00 pm
Inconsistency between rainfall depths and temporal patterns for GSDM PMP
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Dr Eric Lam
Technical Director, Aurecon

Dr Eric Lam is an Aurecon Technical Director and highly experienced engineer/hydrologist; civil and environmental engineer with more than 32 years' experience in managing and performing a wide range of transport infrastructure, drainage and WSUD design, hydropower, irrigation, flooding, hydrology, hydraulic, sediment transport, river basin and reservoir operation simulation modelling and water quality investigations projects in Australia, China, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, India, Lao, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, United Kingdom and Uganda.

  2.00–2.20 pm
On the frequency of flooding of the Barwon River at Geelong
  2.20–2.40 pm
Spatial and temporal patterns of rainfall changes at decadal time period in south-east Australia
Xiao Pan
Xiao Pan
Western Sydney University

Xiao Pan is a part-time PhD student at Western Sydney University focusing on flood frequency analysis. The PhD topic focuses on developing a peaks-over-threshold (POT) based flood estimation method. He was recently involved in projects using POT based approach for at-site and regional flood frequency analysis. Xiao is also working as Product Design and IP Development Manager for Fletcher Building Australia within building's team focusing on cold-formed steel software development.

  2.40–3.00 pm
A methodology for assessing the impact of cumulative development on flooding in Australian floodplains
  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  11.40 am – 12.00 pm
Improving the rigour of catchment-wide hydrodynamic modelling of the rainfall-runoff process
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Dan Williams
Director, Torrent Consulting

Dan has worked in Australia and the UK, predominantly in the field of flood risk management for state and local government clients and the private development sector. He worked for BMT (formerly WBM) in Newcastle for 11 years, becoming their NSW Flood Lead and Newcastle Office Team Leader, prior to establishing Torrent Consulting. Dan has a strong technical foundation in the numerical modelling of flood hydrology and hydraulics. He is experienced in the application of hydrodynamic modelling within rural, urban, inland and coastal environments.

  12.00–12.20 pm
Estimates of design wet season rainfall depths across northern Australia
  12.20–12.40 pm
PNG Highland storm rainfall response
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Alexander Rogan
Principal Engineer, PSM

Alexander Rogan is a Principal Engineer at PSM with more than 11 years' consulting experience, working across hydrology, hydraulic and dams projects in Australia, South East Asia, Africa and South America. Alex's experience has commonly involved dealing with sparse hydrometeorological datasets, requiring a strong fundamental basis in hydrological theory to achieve reasonable predictions.

  12.40–1.40 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.40–2.00 pm
Developing a guideline for modelling the interaction of catchment and coastal flooding for Victoria: why do need one and what does it cover
Headshot of Christine Arrowsmith
Christine Lauchlan Arrowsmith
Co-CEO and Principal Engineer, Streamology

Christine is an experienced waterway and coastal engineer with more than 23 years industry experience. She has worked on a range of projects from flood studies and eco-hydraulics to waterway geomorphology and coastal hazard investigations. Her skills include the ability to lead teams of technical professionals to answer challenging waterway and coastal management questions and to link emerging science and understanding with practical outcomes.

  2.00–2.20 pm
Investigating routing discrepancies between hydrological and hydraulic models
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Richard Gale
Engineer, Venant Solutions

Richard Gale completed his Honours in 2014 and Masters in 2015, both in Civil Engineering. In 2017 he joined Venant Solutions and has since gained experience in hydrological and hydraulic modelling.

  2.20–2.40 pm
Urban water risk, water law and insurance
  2.40–3.00 pm
Enhancing rating curve development using 2D hydraulic models: a case study
  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  11.40 am – 12.00 pm
A structured flood mitigation approach case study: Road Level Crossing Removal Project
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Gus Naghib
Senior Water Resource Engineer, SMEC Australia

Gus is a Chartered water resource engineer with more than eight years of industry experience and six years of postgraduate studies. His areas of interest include flood modelling, hydrology, drainage design, hydrodynamic and water quality. 

  12.00–12.20 pm
An attempt to generalise the flood mitigation provided by potential future dams in northern Australia
  12.20–12.40 pm
Update to regional flood frequency estimation for Australia
  12.40–1.40 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.40–2.00 pm
The NSW Healthy Floodplain Project and using multiple lines of evidence to support better estimates of floodplain harvesting entitlement in the Barwon Darling Valley
  2.00–2.20 pm
Surface water extent mapping of Macquarie Marshes through satellite data fusion and random forest analysis
Headshot of Saba Zehra
Saba Zehra
University of Sydney

Saba is a HDR student at the University of Sydney, specialising in flood dynamics and modeling techniques. As a member of the PUAN Environment Interest Group, she is passionate about addressing the challenges posed by changing climates. Saba's research aims to enhance our understanding of flood impacts and develop effective mitigation strategies. Through her work, she aspires to contribute to a safer and more resilient future for communities worldwide to drive positive change.

  2.20–2.40 pm
Creek rehabilitation in Sydney: addressing multi-disciplinary challenges to enhance the liveability of urban catchment
  2.40–3.00 pm
Characterising stormwater gross pollutants captured in catch basin inserts
  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  11.40 am – 12.00 pm
Digital Twins to Establish rain gauge site exposure to wind and measurement errors in an arid Qatari environment 
Headshot of Niels-Erik Jorgensen
Niels-Erik Jorgensen
NJ Data ApS

Niels-Erik Jorgensen is a software engineer with knowledge of hydraulics and hydrology and a background in software and engineering firms such as the Danish Hydraulic Institute, Motorola Inc., and COWI Engineering. Niels-Erik Jorgensen established his own company, NJ Data ApS, in 2016, now with an entrepreneurial mindset focused on solving the problems related to climate change, delivering specialised software within the engineering fields, especially hydraulics and hydrological engineering, that can overcome future challenges. In addition, Niels-Erik Jorgensen has recently won a more significant contract with ASCO Consultant in Qatar to develop a portal solution for addressing the abovementioned challenges.

  12.00–12.20 pm
Advancing environmental management through digital twin technology: a demonstration and future outlook for land and water resource development in Australia
  12.20–12.40 pm
A digital twin for optimising cooling and water efficiency in parks
Headshot of Ben Cressall
Ben Cressall
Hydrologist, Hydrology and Risk Consulting

Ben graduated from Monash University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours). Throughout his degree, he specialised in the design and analysis of urban water systems and completed a final year research project implementing a near-real-time flood detection system utilising remote sensing technology and machine learning techniques. 

Ben is enthusiastic to combine his urban water and hydrology interests with his programming and data analysis capabilities to achieve data-driven solutions. He has worked on a range of modelling projects that have included the development of Source and Tuflow models and several interactive dashboards to summarise technical data in meaningful and approachable ways.

  12.40–1.40 pm
Lunch and exhibition
  1.40–2.00 pm
Investigating machine learning methods for predicting soil carbon and nitrogen of bioretention systems: stormwater asset management
  2.00–2.20 pm
Benchmarking of a surrogate model optimisation to an event based hydrological model against traditional metaheuristic optimisation algorithms
  2.20–2.40 pm
Artificial intelligence based long-term streamflow forecasting of Goulburn River using different input predictors
Headshot of Shamotra Oad
Shamotra Oad
Assistant Professor, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed University of Technology and Skill Development

Shamotra is Assistant Professor at the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed University of Technology and Skill Development, Pakistan. She is currently a PhD Scholar at Swinburne University of Technology under the supervision of Dr Monzur Alam Imteaz, Head of Urban Environmental and Transport Systems. Shamotra's areas of interest are water resources management and climate change.

  2.40–3.00 pm
Prediction of seasonal rainfall using the hybrid model combining wavelet transform and machine learning algorithms
  3.00–3.30 pm
Afternoon tea and exhibition
  3.30–4.30 pm
Climate change guidance update to Australian Rainfall and Runoff
Panel discussion