WSUD Conference, Sydney, Australia

19 November 2015

On the 19th to 23rd October, 2015, the 9th International Water Sensitive Urban Design Conference was held in Cockle Bay, Sydney.

 

The conference was attended by over 400 delegates from industry and academia. There was a lot of high quality work and research presented at the conference with four oral presentation streams were run concurrently for the duration of the 3 day conference.

 

Of particular interest was the amount of work being done to harvest and reuse stormwater, and the research that is being conducted presently in Australia to develop better rain gardens and biofiltration treatment systems. Onsite retention/detention of stormwater was also a much discussed topic.

 

It was clear at the conference that Australia and in particular projects in NSW are among the world leaders in implementing WSUD principles, especially in newer developing suburbs such as Blacktown. The IECA Environmental Excellence and Stormwater NSW Awards presented during the conference dinner on the 21st showcased the large number of groups that were implementing exemplary stormwater designs and was a great way to acknowledge stormwater professionals and councils who have chosen to implement stormwater treatment solutions which were well considered for the local area and effective. It was great to see the culture of excellence and competition to implement innovative and effective stormwater treatment solutions.

 

At the conference our Research and Development Engineer Dr. John Cheah presented the work we have been conducting in our laboratory on Rapid Biofiltration Media using Local Materials (paper attached below) . The large number of conference delegates who were working on developing raingardens and biofiltration media led to many valuable discussions and new avenues and partnerships to explore. It was also encouraging to see the high levels of treatment and advantageous performance we were achieving in our rapid filtration media were in agreement with the research work and experience of others practitioners in the USA and Australia.