Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications
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ItemA novel approach for 3D neighbourhood analysis(Copernicus GmbH, 2017-09-12)Abstract. Population growth and lack of land in urban areas have caused massive developments such as high rises and underground infrastructures. Land authorities in the international context recognizes 3D cadastres as a solution to efficiently manage these developments in complex cities. Although a 2D cadastre does not efficiently register these developments, it is currently being used in many jurisdictions for registering land and property information. Limitations in analysis and presentation are considered as examples of such limitations. 3D neighbourhood analysis by automatically finding 3D spaces has become an issue of major interest in recent years. Whereas the neighbourhood analysis has been in the focus of research, the idea of 3D neighbourhood analysis has rarely been addressed in 3 dimensional information systems (3D GIS) analysis. In this paper, a novel approach for 3D neighbourhood analysis has been proposed by recording spatial and descriptive information of the apartment units and easements. This approach uses the coordinates of the subject apartment unit to find the neighbour spaces. By considering a buffer around the edges of the unit, neighbour spaces are accurately detected. This method was implemented in ESRI ArcScene and three case studies were defined to test the efficiency of this approach. The results show that spaces are accurately detected in various complex scenarios. This approach can also be applied for other applications such as property management and disaster management in order to find the affected apartments around a defined space.
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ItemThe value of water in storage: Implications for operational policies(Curran Associate Inc., 2018-01-01)With desalination plants becoming an increasingly common feature of water supply systems for major cities, the options for managing water security are now markedly different to past times when the short-term response to low water availability essentially revolved around reducing usage. The operation of desalination plants and other components of diversified water supply systems now enable operators to increase availability, essentially by producing water. The operation of such systems clearly impacts operational costs but, more subtly, also impacts future augmentation decisions. This can have major cost implications as there is a trade-off between the costs of operating a water supply system and the probability and timing of future augmentations that leads to important differences in the economics of reliably supplying water. This paper first summarises an economic analysis framework in which to explore the interaction of short (operational) and long (capital investment) term decisions towards maintaining water security. It then explores the implications of different operation approaches in Melbourne’s water supply system, assuming a planned augmentation pathway under conditions of low water availability. We assume augmentation decisions are prompted by critically low water availability events, rather than long-term reliability analysis. We show that the majority of the variation in cost of maintaining a reliable water supply is associated with impacts of operational rules on likely capital investment and that this results in a strong interaction between short and long-term decision making. The outcome of this work has implications for both operational decision making and augmentation planning for urban water supply systems. These implications are relevant to any water supply system where a climate independent water supply source, such as desalination, can be accessed.
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ItemA Machine Learning Approach for the Performance Prediction of GCHPs with Horizontal Ground Heat Exchangers(IOS PRESS, 2019-01-01)This study aims to provide a machine learning approach to predict the performance of Ground Coupled Heat Pumps (GCHPs) with horizontal Ground Heat Exchangers (GHEs). Specifically, an ANN model was developed for this purpose which can potentially be generally applied to similar sites at different locations and climate conditions, with even limited types of input data. In this example, a TRNSYS model regarding a typical horizontal trench within a rural farm in Australia, has been developed and verified, covering over 50 different yearly loading patterns under 3 different climate conditions. The simulated performance data is then used to train the artificial neural network. As results, the trained ANN is able to predict the performance of GSHPs systems with identical GHEs even under climatic conditions (and locations) that has not been specifically trained for. With only limited input data, the presented ANN shows no more than 5% error in most cases tested.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEquifinality and process-based modelling(American Geophysical Union, 2018-11-26)Equifinality is understood as one of the fundamental difficulties in the study of open complex systems, including catchment hydrology. A review of the hydrologic literature reveals that the term equifinality has been widely used, but in many cases inconsistently and without coherent recognition of the various facets of equifinality, which can lead to ambiguity but also methodological fallacies. Therefore, in this study we first characterise the term equifinality within the context of hydrological modelling by reviewing the genesis of the concept of equifinality and then presenting a theoretical framework. During past decades, equifinality has mainly been studied as a subset of aleatory (arising due to randomness) uncertainty and for the assessment of model parameter uncertainty. Although the connection between parameter uncertainty and equifinality is undeniable, we argue there is more to equifinality than just aleatory parameter uncertainty. That is, the importance of equifinality and epistemic uncertainty (arising due to lack of knowledge) and their implications is overlooked in our current practice of model evaluation. Equifinality and epistemic uncertainty in studying, modelling, and evaluating hydrologic processes are treated as if they can be simply discussed in (or often reduced to) probabilistic terms (as for aleatory uncertainty). The deficiencies of this approach to conceptual rainfall-runoff modelling are demonstrated for selected Australian catchments by examination of parameter and internal flux distributions and interactions within SIMHYD. On this basis, we present a new approach that expands equifinality concept beyond model parameters to inform epistemic uncertainty. The new approach potentially facilitates the identification and development of more physically plausible models and model evaluation schemes particularly within the multiple working hypotheses framework, and is generalisable to other fields of environmental modelling as well.
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ItemPutting the personal into risk measurement: exploring the roles of psychological and sociological factors in the perception of risk in the water industry(MSSANZ, 2017)Risk measurement has predominantly utilised the technical and scientific approach to risk, developed in the 1950s and 1960s. This ‘rational’ and ‘objective’ approach to assessing risks has not been updated and is still widely used within the water industry. Furthermore, it has been cemented in risk management standards, and acts as the key model for risk assessments. Risk research in the last forty years has proposed alternate theories that are highly critical of the systematic, ‘rational’ approach of these old risk practices. This criticism stems from the lack of incorporating psychological, sociological and cultural risk elements in assessments, thus limiting the scope of how risks are actually perceived by assessors. Psychological approaches consider the risk assessor’s own affiliations with the risk, based on experience and other psychological factors. Sociological theories, such as those proposed by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, argue that the beliefs, or worldviews of the assessor more effectively describes how a risk will be evaluated. In this paper an approach to test the extent technical risk approaches can be deemed ‘rational’ and ‘objective’ and whether psychological or cultural theories of risk may be more effectively describe how risks are actually evaluated, are highlighted. The water sector’s existing risk processes are used to test these theories. This industry is highly regulated, and also (in most cases) government-led, acting as a good candidate for assessment of risk processes. Water management is also becoming an ever more pertinent issue. In circumstances of declining supply and increased demand, risk assessments act as the decision-making tool in the gateway to implementing new projects. Therefore, whether risks are assessed comprehensively will have long-term ramifications in water management.
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ItemThe Victorian digital Cadastre: Challenges and investigations(CEUR, 2016-01-01)In 2011 the Digital Cadastre Protocol (ePlan) was introduced in Victoria. ePlan is a collaborative program between the Australian land authorities and the surveying industry, in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM). ePlan is to replace paper and PDF plans with digital files based on a national standard. ePlan has been operational in Victoria for 2D (nonbuilding) plans since 2013 and several services such as validation, visualisation and digital data download have been built within the Victorian land authority - Land Victoria - systems. The Victorian ePlan project is faced with some challenges that will impact the uptake of this initiative among the cadastral surveyors, e.g. surveyors acceptance of adopting a new method of producing plans, quality of the visualisation service which converts the ePlan LandXML file into PDF as the legal title diagram and support for 3D building subdivision plans. In order to overcome the identified challenges, Land Victoria has defined several research programs. An ‘ePlan Engagement Program’ has commenced and aims to gain a greater understanding of surveying firms’ subdivision processes and how ePlan can fit into them and also means surveyors are participating in ePlan’s development. The design and development of a new online tool is also under investigation which aims to enable surveyors to improve the quality of the visualised PDF and define sheets, exaggerations and enlargements when required. Another ongoing research program is related to the technical aspect of a 3D digital cadastre for Victoria including 3D data modelling, validation and visualisation components. This paper aims to explore the current status of the Victorian ePlan implementation and discuss the identified challenges and ongoing investigations.
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ItemThe current status and ongoing investigations of 2D and 3D digital cadastre (ePlan) in Victoria, Australia(CEUR, 2017-01-01)EPlan is a collaborative program between the Australian land authorities and the surveying industry, in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM) which aims to replace paper and PDF plans with digital files based on a national standard. ePlan was introduced in Victoria in 2011 and has been operational in this jurisdiction for 2D (non-building) plans since 2013. On average, one ePlan application is currently submitted to a digital plan lodgement portal every fortnight. The low uptake of ePlan is caused by a number of challenges which includes surveyors acceptance of adopting a new method of producing plans, the quality of the visualisation service which converts the ePlan LandXML file into PDF as the legal title diagram, and support for 3D building subdivision plans. This paper aims to explore the current status of ePlan implementation in Victoria and discuss the ongoing research programs developed to address the aforementioned challenges.
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ItemA novel approach for 3D neighbourhood analysis(Copernicus GmbH, 2017-09-26)Population growth and lack of land in urban areas have caused massive developments such as high rises and underground infrastructures. Land authorities in the international context recognizes 3D cadastres as a solution to efficiently manage these developments in complex cities. Although a 2D cadastre does not efficiently register these developments, it is currently being used in many jurisdictions for registering land and property information. Limitations in analysis and presentation are considered as examples of such limitations. 3D neighbourhood analysis by automatically finding 3D spaces has become an issue of major interest in recent years. Whereas the neighbourhood analysis has been in the focus of research, the idea of 3D neighbourhood analysis has rarely been addressed in 3 dimensional information systems (3D GIS) analysis. In this paper, a novel approach for 3D neighbourhood analysis has been proposed by recording spatial and descriptive information of the apartment units and easements. This approach uses the coordinates of the subject apartment unit to find the neighbour spaces. By considering a buffer around the edges of the unit, neighbour spaces are accurately detected. This method was implemented in ESRI ArcScene and three case studies were defined to test the efficiency of this approach. The results show that spaces are accurately detected in various complex scenarios. This approach can also be applied for other applications such as property management and disaster management in order to find the affected apartments around a defined space.
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Item3D Digital Cadastre Journey in Victoria, Australia(Copernicus GmBH, 2017-10-23)Land development processes today have an increasing demand to access three-dimensional (3D) spatial information. Complex land development may need to have a 3D model and require some functions which are only possible using 3D data. Accordingly, the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM), as a national body in Australia provides leadership, coordination and standards for surveying, mapping and national datasets has developed the Cadastre 2034 strategy in 2014. This strategy has a vision to develop a cadastral system that enables people to readily and confidently identify the location and extent of all rights, restrictions and responsibilities related to land and real property. In 2014, the land authority in the state of Victoria, Australia, namely Land Use Victoria (LUV), has entered the challenging area of designing and implementing a 3D digital cadastre focused on providing more efficient and effective services to the land and property industry. LUV has been following the ICSM 2034 strategy which requires developing various policies, standards, infrastructures, and tools. Over the past three years, LUV has mainly focused on investigating the technical aspect of a 3D digital cadastre. This paper provides an overview of the 3D digital cadastre investigation progress in Victoria and discusses the challenges that the team faced during this journey. It also addresses the future path to develop an integrated 3D digital cadastre in Victoria.
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ItemA TWO-STEP CLASSIFICATION APPROACH to DISTINGUISHING SIMILAR OBJECTS in MOBILE LIDAR POINT CLOUDS(ISPRS, 2017-09-12)Nowadays, lidar is widely used in cultural heritage documentation, urban modeling, and driverless car technology for its fast and accurate 3D scanning ability. However, full exploitation of the potential of point cloud data for efficient and automatic object recognition remains elusive. Recently, feature-based methods have become very popular in object recognition on account of their good performance in capturing object details. Compared with global features describing the whole shape of the object, local features recording the fractional details are more discriminative and are applicable for object classes with considerable similarity. In this paper, we propose a two-step classification approach based on point feature histograms and the bag-of-features method for automatic recognition of similar objects in mobile lidar point clouds. Lamp post, street light and traffic sign are grouped as one category in the first-step classification for their inter similarity compared with tree and vehicle. A finer classification of the lamp post, street light and traffic sign based on the result of the first-step classification is implemented in the second step. The proposed two-step classification approach is shown to yield a considerable improvement over the conventional one-step classification approach.