July 2010 - Swinburne University of Technology
July 2010 - Swinburne University of Technology
July 2010 - Swinburne University of Technology
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JULY <strong>2010</strong> swinburne<br />
WEB TOOL TO GET US<br />
tanked up<br />
STORY BY Kellie Penfold<br />
DR MONZUR IMTEAZ is a glass-half-empty<br />
kind <strong>of</strong> chap. He’s not being unduly<br />
negative, he just sees wasted opportunity in<br />
not being able to fill to the top.<br />
In particular he recoils at the thought <strong>of</strong><br />
half-empty rainwater tanks, or worse, tanks<br />
that can’t hold any more water, just because<br />
there’s no simple tool to help people better<br />
match storage with catchment.<br />
Water is again becoming our most<br />
precious resource – as it used to be when<br />
Australians better understood the realities <strong>of</strong><br />
living on the world’s driest continent – and<br />
collecting urban water, in particular, is likely<br />
to become crucial for our fast-growing towns<br />
and cities.<br />
Dr Imteaz’s interest in the re-emerging<br />
popularity <strong>of</strong> rainwater tanks – which for<br />
a period were actually banned by some<br />
municipalities – stems from his research<br />
at <strong>Swinburne</strong> <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Technology</strong>’s<br />
Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure,<br />
where he specialises in the development <strong>of</strong><br />
stormwater as a resource.<br />
This under-used water source and the<br />
commercial, rather than scientific, approach<br />
to capturing it is driving Dr Imteaz to<br />
develop a number <strong>of</strong> simple tools, building<br />
on the STORMKIT system he has already<br />
developed, to analyse and design stormwater<br />
systems.<br />
“House tanks are a good example. People<br />
want to catch the stormwater collected on<br />
their own ro<strong>of</strong>s, but tanks are <strong>of</strong>ten installed<br />
with little or no planning as to whether they<br />
are the right size. There are plenty <strong>of</strong> tanks<br />
that will never fill and there are plenty that<br />
are too small to capture all the water which<br />
is available,” Dr Imteaz says.<br />
He says engineers and managers dealing<br />
generally with water and drainage matters<br />
either use tedious manual calculations<br />
or sophisticated, large, data-dependent<br />
programs to perform stormwater analysis<br />
and design. The advantages <strong>of</strong> a tool such as<br />
STORMKIT are its accuracy and simplicity.<br />
STORMKIT was presented and<br />
demonstrated at the 32nd Hydrology and<br />
Water Resources Symposium, held in<br />
Newcastle in November 2009, and is now<br />
available to water managers and other users.<br />
Dr Imteaz is now developing an internetbased<br />
tool to help householders establish<br />
PHOTO: PAUL JONES<br />
Across Australia householders are installing rainwater tanks … without any handy way to calculate<br />
the optimum tank size. <strong>Swinburne</strong> researcher, Dr Monzur Imteaz, has set out to rectify this.<br />
rainfall capture capacity which, with suitable<br />
funding to help develop the website, could<br />
also be available this year.<br />
Corporate and local government<br />
stakeholders regularly employ consultants<br />
to analyse the potential water catchment in<br />
urban projects, but Dr Imteaz feels that this<br />
information – <strong>of</strong>ten obtained at a high price<br />
– is subsequently used by just a few people,<br />
whereas a web-based tool would be available<br />
to everyone and could be used over and over<br />
again.<br />
Using information such as contributing<br />
catchment size, tank volume, geographic<br />
location, weather conditions and the water’s<br />
intended use, his proposed calculation tool<br />
will determine the volume <strong>of</strong> water likely to<br />
be captured each year according to different<br />
rainfall scenarios.<br />
He notes that historic rainfall figures are<br />
not much help any more. “If you look at<br />
Melbourne, it was 650 millimetres for 70 or<br />
80 years. Yet for the past 12 years it has been<br />
360 to 630mm. Therefore, water storages are<br />
subject to high rainfall, average rainfall and<br />
below-average rainfall.”<br />
Near his <strong>of</strong>fice on the university’s<br />
Hawthorn campus are two large rainwater<br />
tanks with which Dr Imteaz has put his<br />
theory into practice, establishing their<br />
effectiveness and payback period. Applying<br />
his calculations to the capture area, he was<br />
able to measure by how much one tank was<br />
too large to readily fill, and the extent to<br />
which the other was too small to capture all<br />
available rainfall.<br />
The point Dr Imteaz makes is that better<br />
analysis and design before constructing such<br />
facilities would significantly improve their<br />
effectiveness and cost-benefit.<br />
Initially, the proposed tool is for<br />
stormwater capturing analysis for impervious<br />
ro<strong>of</strong>s only. But it can be extended for<br />
pervious surfaces (such as golf courses and<br />
playing fields) by incorporating soil loss<br />
parameters.<br />
While the complete development <strong>of</strong><br />
the proposed tool depends on the success<br />
<strong>of</strong> getting funds from relevant authorities,<br />
Dr Imteaz is moving his focus to fog<br />
water – to see what value there would be in<br />
harvesting moisture created during foggy<br />
weather conditions. ••<br />
CONTACT. .<br />
<strong>Swinburne</strong> <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Technology</strong><br />
1300 275 788<br />
magazine@swinburne.edu.au<br />
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine<br />
Key points<br />
<strong>Swinburne</strong>’s Dr Monzur<br />
Imteaz is developing simple<br />
tools to analyse and design<br />
stormwater systems.<br />
His proposed calculation<br />
tool will determine the<br />
volume <strong>of</strong> water likely to<br />
be captured each year<br />
according to different<br />
rainfall scenarios.<br />
SUSTAINABILITY<br />
3