Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications
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ItemWhole-life baseline carbon assessment of residential building stock – A Victorian case study(Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society (ALCAS), 2023-07-19)Assessing residential building decarbonisation opportunities requires a whole-life approach, given the increasing share of embodied carbon as housing becomes more energy efficient. Since most of the projected housing stock would consist of existing buildings, emissions from renovation should also be included in determining both embodied and operational carbon in the residential building sector. A bottom-up typology framework was developed to estimate carbon emissions for existing and new housing up to 2050, scalable from local government area (LGA) to state-level jurisdiction which allows for granularity in testing scenarios for the future. Housing typologies were developed for existing, new, and renovation housing stock based on census data. Operating carbon was obtained using building energy simulation while embodied carbon data was accounted from localised life cycle construction datasets. The state of Victoria along with its corresponding LGAs was used as a case study for said framework. Heating load comprised most of the operating energy demand for most typologies while external walls and floors contributed significant embodied carbon for new residential buildings, particularly for detached houses. For Victoria, detached houses built prior to 1991 contributed most of the operational carbon, however with high construction rates set for most LGAs, new housing may contribute more GHG emissions in 2050. Brick veneer housing yielded more embodied carbon from the external wall compared to timber homes while concrete slabs used in floors also incurred a large amount of embodied carbon for the residential building stock. Renovating existing housing has the potential to reduce operating energy demand while emitting less embodied carbon, thus policies on this should be considered in developing decarbonisation pathways. Using the bottom-up typology whole-life carbon framework offers granularity in analysing individual-level carbon impact which can be expanded to LGA and state level.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA ROADMAP TO A SHARED VISION FOR PLATFORMS: THE MOTIVATIONS AND ROLES OF STAKEHOLDERS IN THE TRANSFORMATION FROM PROJECTS TO PLATFORMS(Budapest University of Technology and Economics, 2023)In recent years, 'platform' has emerged as a buzzword for business. Despite widespread usage, there remains ambiguity in its meaning. Strategically, platforms capitalize on the advantages of commonality and have been successfully applied across multiple industries to deliver mass-customized products, increasing customer choice while maintaining efficient and effective production methods. It is known that the early involvement of stakeholders enables the platform logic, however that requires redefining their roles and motivations in the platform ecosystem. This paper aims to envisage redefined roles for each stakeholder in the construction value chain to create a shared vision roadmap by understanding their motivations for moving towards a platform ecosystem and how their engagement model will be changed. Four enterprises in Australia, that represent key stakeholders of the construction value chain, were selected for knowledge elicitation through individual discussions. The perspective pitches for the primary stakeholders comprise developers, general and specialized contractors, designers and engineers, while the rest of the value chain is grouped under associated stakeholders. In an attempt to define the new roles for the different stakeholders of the platform ecosystem, there emerged a shared vision that might enable a shift towards the platform approach. The intent for moving value-adding products and services upstream, expanding contribution to the value chain, continuous improvement through data-driven insights, seamless collaboration in a partnering environment and early prototyping were shared across stakeholder groups. A changed nature of engagement was observed where the general contractor ceased to be the single point of engagement with the associated supply chain actors; this role was most likely to be taken up by the developer or the platform consultant. For a longer study, the value chain actors in terms of financiers (upstream) and asset managers (downstream) are required to be included in the value chain and their motivations and roles explored.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableBalancing Private Investment and Community Expectations in Privately Financed Infrastructure Projects: A Novel Approach for Evaluating Long-Term Value(Diamond Congress Ltd., 2023)Balancing private investment and community expectations is crucial in privately financed infrastructure projects, such as schools, housing, and hospitals. Evaluating the value of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) requires governments to accurately assess costs, risks, and benefits through their Public Sector Comparator (PSC). The Public Sector Comparator (PSC) focuses on the economic benefits and tangible value offered by bidders, such as whole-of-life financing costs, capital costs, operation, maintenance costs, and risk allocation as proposed by the government. Non-monetized benefits, which are important in social infrastructure delivery, are typically evaluated subjectively by comparing the specific solutions proposed by bidders. Assessing uncertainties in government requirements and materialized risks when comparing a bid to the Public Sector Comparator (PSC) using discounted cost techniques at a specific point in time is challenging. This paper proposes a new approach for evaluating investments that takes into account both monetary and non-monetary benefits over a project’s life cycle, based on the risks and benefits seen in recent social PFI projects. Engineering reliability analysis is preferred to emphasize the performance reliability of investment decisions. The proposed reliability-based approach considers not only cost uncertainty and non-monetary benefits based on project observations, but also allows for time-based decision-making by being used at multiple points in time, to be incorporated into the original investment decision. An Australian school project was used to demonstrate that the proposed approach allows for predicting long-term value by using a performance reliability index to measure the robustness of the original investment assumptions such as demand projections and future sustainability outcomes.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableExploring the role of Industry 4.0 in the Building Industry: A case study of emerging Business Models in the Australian construction ecosystem(Diamond Congress Ltd., 2023)As the building industry is a significant contributor to Australia's economy, understanding the impact of Industry 4.0 on this sector is crucial for its continued growth and competitiveness. This creates a need to explore the interdependencies between the implementation of an industrial and digitally enabled building industry and business model and value chain innovation to shape a digitally mediated platform ecosystem configuration. As the building industry faces challenges in adopting manufacturing techniques and technologies, the paper examines significant yet understudied implications of Industry 4.0 along industrial value chains. This study aims to understand how the building industry in Australia can adapt to the shift towards industrialised-digitalisation by exploring the opportunities for innovation in business models and value chains. The research approach will draw on a literature review, and a series of workshops in four Australian cities to understand perspectives determining business model innovation. Examining integration, servitization, and expertization the paper illuminates the impact of digital connectivity, information exchange, and design value on the industry. The paper's framework focuses on assessing dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring) and the ecosystem lifecycle (birth, expansion, leadership, self-renewal) to comprehend business model innovation in the Australian construction ecosystem. It also uncovers how diverse stakeholders, including developers, contractors, consultants, supply chain actors, and digital platform owners, create value and progress through these phases. Identifying prospects in offsite manufacturing, standardization, technological advances, and value chain integration allows developers, clients, and contractors to enhance efficiency and results. Consultants can utilize their design value and project management know-how to promote cooperation among stakeholders. Additionally, digital platform proprietors can access multi-sided marketplaces for direct communication and efficient procedures. Ultimately, implementing these insights assists industry participants in adapting to changing market dynamics, encouraging innovation, and bolstering the competitiveness of the Australian construction industry.
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ItemA simplified sustainable circular economy evaluation for end-of-life photovoltaic(Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society (ALCAS), 2023-07-19)Sustainability and circular economy in the photovoltaic (PV) industry has been gaining increasing traction. Yet, it is still in its infancy. Sustainability is not synonymous to circularity. The correlations between the two paradigms vary case-by-case. PV panel waste has become one of the fastest growing electronic waste. The potential economic and environmental benefits through recycling and other recircularity initatives have been confirmed. However, there is still an urgency to delineate End-of-Life (EoL) PV management practice that is both sustainable and circular. Private PV stakeholders play a prominent role in achieving best practice. However, the exhaustive nature of life cycle impact studies and their data gathering may deter PV producers and recyclers to consider sustainability and circularity performance in their decision-making. This work aims to propose a framework to evaluate sustainability and circular economy performance of discarded PV processing in an integrated manner for private sector users. Sustainability will be assessed through life cycle assessment for environmental impacts, life cycle cost for economic impacts, and industry stakeholder survey to compensate for the lack of social impacts data. Circularity will be evaluated using selected sets of existing product-level circularity indicators. The two paradigms will be reconciled through a joint analysis via multi-criteria decision making.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEXTENDING CITYGML 3.0 TO SUPPORT 3D UNDERGROUND LAND ADMINISTRATION(COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH, 2022-01-01)Abstract. Rapid development of underground space necessitates the efficient management of underground areas. Data modelling plays an underpinning role in integrating and managing underground physical and legal data. The physical data refers to semantic and spatial data of underground assets such as utilities, tunnels, and basements, while the legal data comprises the ownership information and the extent of underground legal spaces and the semantic and spatial relationships between legal spaces. Current Underground Land Administration (ULA) practices mainly focus on representing only either legal spaces or the physical reality of subsurface objects using fragmented and isolated 2D drawings, leading to ineffective ULA. A complete and accurate 3D representation of underground legal spaces integrated with the 3D model of their physical counterparts can support different use cases of ULA beyond underground land registration, such as planning, design and construction of underground assets (e.g. tunnels and train stations), utility management and excavation. CityGML is a prominent semantic data model to represent 3D urban objects at a city scale, making it a good choice for underground because underground assets such as tunnels and utilities are often modelled at city scales. However, CityGML, in its current version, does not support legal information. This research aims to develop an Application Domain Extension (ADE) for CityGML to support 3D ULA based on the requirements defined in the Victorian state of Australia. These requirements include primary underground parcels and secondary underground interests. This work extends CityGML 3.0, which is the new version of this model. In CityGML 3.0, UML conceptual models as platform-independent models are suggested to express ADEs. Thus, the ADE proposed in this study will be based on UML. The findings of this study show that extending CityGML to support legal information can be a viable solution to meet the requirements of a 3D integrated model for ULA. The CityGML ADE proposed in this study can potentially provide a new solution for 3D digital management of underground ownership rights in Victoria, and it can be used to implement an integrated 3D digital data environment for ULA.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableImproved Pump Setpoint Selection Using a Calibrated Hydraulic Model of a High-Pressure Irrigation System(Elsevier, 2022-01-01)This paper presents a case study of the operational management of the Robinvale high-pressure piped irrigation water delivery system (RVHPS) in Australia. Based on datasets available, improved pump setpoint selection using a calibrated hydraulic model is investigated. The first step was to implement pre-processing of measured flow and pressure data to identify errors in the data and possible faulty sensors. An EPANET hydraulic simulation model was updated with calibrated pipe roughness height values by using the processed pressure and flow data. Then, new pump setpoints were selected using the calibrated model given the actual measured demands such that the pressures in the network were minimized subject to required customer service standards. Based on a two-day simulation, it was estimated that 4.7% savings in pumping energy cost as well as 4.7% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved by applying the new pump setpoints.