Wollongong Uni to open world class infrastructure centre

The Smart centre, which stands for Simulation, Modelling, Analysis, Research and Training, will have 150 research staff and 200 PhD candidates, with 12,000sq m dedicated lab space housing30 laboratories.

 

SMART has already attracted international interest, establishing partnerships with Virginia Tech, which has a leading infrastructure complex modelling centre, Stamford University in California and the Brookings Institute in Washington DC.

 

The crowning feature of the centre is a simulation and visualisation centre, built in the middle of the facility. This will act as a hub to collect data from all over the facility, utilising a visualisation wall for real time modelling.

 

The simulation centre can generate powerful and scalable models of various infrastructure services and the interactions between these networks. It is supported by a peak computing facility, with high end computational and visualisation capabilities, for looking at the bio-physical characteristics of any given network, from rail to communication systems.

 

In regards to resources, SMART can use real-time models to simulate a remote mine operation, including the interdependencies of its port and transport needs, skilled labour requirements, housing needs for its workforce and internal metallurgical processing requirements. This will help to identify possible bottlenecks and optimise productivity.

 

Garry Bowditch, founding executive director of peak industry body Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, is now director and chief executive of the new facility. Bowditch has extensive industry experience working in the private sector with Tenix and vmax consulting and in the public sector as a senior Commonwealth Treasury official for seven years. He is backed by an advisory panel of distinguished public and private sector players, with former NSW premier Nick Greiner in the chair.

 

SMART was funded to the tune of $35mby the federal government, with $16m from Wollongong University and $10m from the NSW Government through RailCorp. Bowditch said Wollongong University’s vice chancellor Gerard Sutton lead the winning pitch for Wollongong, showcasing the University’s inter-disciplinary capabilities, with prominent health, engineering, commerce and science faculties.

 

“We pitched our concept to Canberra, in particular to the higher education endowment fund, and we went up against other universities, the Melbournes and Sydneys of the world and we won. That was partly because of the uniqueness of our proposition. I think others were poking and prodding but didn’t nail it like we did,” Bowditch said.

 

Bowditch explained that SMART would focus on “big system dynamics, looking at how do infrastructure systems show characteristics of interdependencies? How do you manage those complex systems? What are their interconnections?”

 

There is no doubt SMART comes at an opportune time, with debilitating gaps and bottlenecks impacting the bulk commodities sector. Grain, coal and iron ore infrastructure are prominent examples.

 

Bowditch said SMART would be key to plugging these gaps. “Our role in life is to develop a new avenue of research called integrated infrastructure planning and management. We want to understand how to extract better synergy from the network, how to create greater resilience in the network.”

 

Previously, Bowditch said, governments in Australia had a simplistic attitude to infra-structure planning. “Build the road; build the power station, but there wasn’t a whole lot of attention given to the interconnection of these networks.

 

“At SMART we are identifying significant opportunities to improve both capacity and performance of the network. I think this is a very important point, because it is the governments of today that will be funding much of this infrastructure improvement, and they expect that the existing infrastructure be used very effectively and to work it hard and sweat the infrastructure.

 

“We have got a number of models –system and optimisation and behavioural models –which look at how you can do that (optimise infrastructure usage). We are bringing insight to that issue and also to where the existing infrastructure can be improved.”

 

Bowditch emphasised that even small upstream improvements could bring exponential benefits downstream. “It may turn out that if you make a 5% improvement to the network, you get an 80% improvement to the overall performance. We are really looking at the potent interventions that are needed to remove bottlenecks and pinch points in the network.

 

“We want to understand how to extract better synergy from the network, how to create greater resilience in the network and also, within that proposition of resilience, how you manage things like cascading. That is when one part of the network goes down –whether that is a road block due to flooding or whether that is a major base load power station which goes down, how you get the rest of the network up and running when a part of the network collapses.”

 

Given his background, Bowditch is keen to push public-private partnerships for infrastructure development. “There is a growing role for private ownership of infrastructure. It is something we will see more of rather than less. For example, at the moment our funding is split about 60/40 between the government and private sector.”

 

Bowditch said that even in this preliminary phase, “SMART is working on a range of projects which are based on helping network owners. Whether they are government or business, they need to look at their networks differently, so they can squeeze more out of it and make sure their investments are developed with the best possible timing to synchronise with their other activities. That is where our complex modelling comes into its own, because you can look at the system in its entirety to understand the implications of your decisions.

 

“We help our clients visualise their networks. Part of that visualisation is the language of collaboration, because these networks run with a number of stakeholders and a number of those stakeholders often don’t speak to each other, or have an understanding that they actually share a network. If you have analytical tools to show what happens when something occurs to the net-work, you create a better understanding of the consequences of each party’s actions.”

 

Bowditch said SMART will play a key role in providing the complex modelling that can satisfy the needs of infrastructure and governments.

 

“I think if we are going to do better in infrastructure in this country in part in bulk handling we need to understand that we are all connected and there are wide implications from our actions. Governments have shown their hand on these large infrastructure projects, saying they will only consider them when they are convinced the existing network is used to its fullest capacity.”

 

SMART’s capabilities and facilities will no doubt fuel collaboration between what are the sometimes disparate entities of academia, government and research organisations. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Geoscience Australia and the Federal Department of Infrastructure and Transport will be available to the facility.