Water Green-Urban-Management (WaterGUM)

Specialists in urban water management

The Urban Water group focuses on: (i) development of green technologies which use natural, low energy, low maintenance techniques to remove pollutants from urban stormwater and greywater for water recycling/harvesting before discharging to receiving waterways; and (ii) integrated urban water modelling to assist in planning of green technologies in the development of Water Sensitive Urban Designs (WSUDs).

Research resources & expertise

  • Water Sensitive Urban Design (Sponge City)
  • Green Infrastructure – living / green walls, biofilters (raingardens), wetlands
  • Experimental design and lab testing (testing of soils, plants, system design and operation)
  • Water chemical and microbial quality testing
  • Field monitoring and data collection
  • Integrated water modelling, WSUD planning, future scenarios exploration
  • Flood protection (modelling)
  • Planning support systems and integrated urban modelling for WSUD integration in urban landscapes

What we do

We're helping cities around the world to adopt a more sustainable system of urban water management. We have been researching the use of biofilters, wetlands and green walls to treat stormwater, greywater and groundwater. These low-energy technologies enable the removal of critical pollutants, pathogens and even micropollutants. These multifunctional systems also provide amenity and cooling benefits in our urban environment. 

Our team combines expertise in experimental design, modelling, and field monitoring to achieve the highest scientific quality results, and develops green systems appropriate for particular applications.

Recent and current projects

  • Investigating Water Sensitive Urban Design opportunities using UrbanBEATS – a case study on Georges River catchment 

    People involved: Martijn Kuller, Veljko Prodanovic, Hary Setya Budhi (student) 

    Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) has been implemented around the world not only for stormwater pollution management, but also microclimate and urban landscape improvement. However, with rapid urbanisation there are still some planning challenges with regards to WSUD, and there is lack of evidence on potential benefits. UrbanBEATS (http://urbanbeatsmodel.com/) is an integrated modelling tool that can assist the planning of WSUD within urban catchments and is gaining popularity among councils and industries in Australia. In this study, we will firstly collect local spatial data (elevation, population, landuses etc.) to generate input files, and the urban form will be calibrated. Then we will explore WSUD opportunities for Georges River catchment under various urban planning scenarios, and assess various benefits.

    Understanding current Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) infrastructure in Georges River Catchment

    People involved: Martijn Kuller, Veljko Prodanovic, Xu Chen (student) 

    Distributed and green urban drainage infrastructure known as Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is increasingly being implemented in cities globally to combat climate change and urbanisation effects. Sydney is one of the first cities in the world that started building these systems, but due to the inconsistent and unmethodical approach to implementation of WSUDs, locations, designs and performance of many of these systems are unknown. This project is aimed to create database of WSUD assets within Georges River Catchment, with detailed GIS map of locations of different types of assets (biofilters, rain gardens, wetlands, green roofs, etc.), and determine detailed design specifications of WSUDs, along with age and current state. This database is expected also to contain any existing performance measurements of these assets (stormwater treatment and retention) and any available water quality data linked with particular WSUD system.

    Community values: What is current public understanding of stormwater and WSUD in Georges River Catchment?

    People involved: Marilu Zurita, Veljko Prodanovic, Taylor Coyne (student) 

    Distributed and green urban drainage infrastructure known as Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is increasingly being implemented in cities globally to combat climate change and urbanisation effects. While local city councils have started implementing these systems around Sydney almost 10 years ago, with a fast changing and growing communities, it is not clear whether general public has recognised these WSUD technologies as water retention and treatment systems, or they are observed as merely green and blue spaces. Furthermore, some inadequate WSUD designs might have given public a wrong perception of all WSUD systems and negatively affected future widespread implementation of WSUDs in certain areas. This project aims to understand current general public knowledge of stormwater and WSUD assets in Georges River Catchment, so that it can inform local governments on how best to approach future legislations and implementation of WSUDs. Community surveys and questionnaires will be performed, to find out how much different communities value green and blue spaces, water savings and water quality. We intend to discover how communities would like to use the Georges River and its surroundings, so that we can understand if improvements to water quality should be made and what would be the best approach to creating more livable Georges River Catchment.
    • Urban flood modelling at speed and scale
    • Green walls for greywater treatment in arid conditions
    • Advanced tree-pit technology for wastewater treatment
    • Advancing water pollution emissions modelling in cities of the future
    • Sino-Australian Centre on Sponge City

  • AUD$30 million research funds from government and industry to conduct research on urban water, including:

    • Integrated multi-functional urban water systems (living/green walls for stormwater/greywater treatment)
    • Developing leapfrogging pathways towards water sensitive cities
    • Socio-technical modelling tools to examine urban water management scenarios
    • Demonstrating capability for stormwater harvesting in Israeli cities
    • Cities as water supply catchments program
    • Demonstration through urban design
    • Biofiltration in Israel: The Kfar-Saba Biofilter
    • Modular stormwater harvesting technologies
    • Facility for Advancing Water Biofiltration

Our partners

We have worked closely with councils, governments, water utilities, the community and the water industry (both in Australia and overseas), a few of our past and current partners include:

  • Easthigh Environmental Holdings
  • Georges Riverkeeper 
  • Melbourne Water
  • EPA Victoria
  • Knox City Council
  • Black town City Council
  • Hornsby Shire City Council
  • Office of Environmental Heritage