Australia's 1998 University of the Year, the University of Queensland, is working closely with international partners to solve environmental management problems around the globe.
The University, one of Australia's oldest and most comprehensive, is often the first Australian institution contacted by agencies seeking expertise for environmental management projects.
Currently, these projects are as diverse as upgrading sewage treatment plants in Hong Kong; training Indonesian staff to provide world-standard environmental monitoring; to developing software programs to manage sanitation systems in emerging countries.
Within Australia, the University's projects include scientific management of one of the country's most significant environmental studies, the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay Wastewater Management Study.
University Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and Queensland Engineer of the Year Professor Paul Greenfield said that industry, government and the community had radically changed their assessment of the environment's importance in the past 10 years.
"Environmental management is now a mainstream matter, vying with economic management, industry policy, health, and education/science policy for public attention and informed decision-making," he said.
"The University of Queensland has impeccable environmental management credentials and is regarded as a ?one stop shop' for environmental management expertise."
The University, regarded as one of the top two of Australia's 37 universities for research, and one of the nation's leading producers of postgraduate students, has campuses in Brisbane, Gatton, and from 1999 at Ipswich, 40km to the west of Brisbane.
The University's facilities include its own mine, veterinary science and agricultural farms, earthquake monitoring stations as part of a global monitoring network and marine research stations at Heron Island and Low Isles on the Great Barrier Reef and at Stradbroke Island in Brisbane's Moreton Bay.
In 1996 the University of Queensland became the nation's first university to receive international certification for its environmental and quality management system standards.
The University is crtified under ISO-14001:1996 Environmental Management Systems and the Property and Facilities Division is certified under ISO 9001-Quality Management Systems by the National Association of Testing Authorities.
The certificates confirm that the University's environmental management systems and the quality of its facility management products and services conform to nationally and internationally recognised standards.
The University was among the first 20 to 30 Australian organisations, and the first 200 international organisations, to have had their environmental management system certified by an accredited certification body.
Certification against both standards is now recognised under mutual recognition agreements negotiated by the Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ), with its counterparts in the United Kingdom, Japan, Europe and America. There is also strong acceptances of these standards throughout Asia.
Benefits from certification for the University, its staff and students, include greater student involvement at both the graduate and undergraduate level. The development of EMS systems has also assisted the commercial aspects of University life, including closer links with the University's Technology Management Centre which hosts the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) for cleaner food production.
Last year the University's leadership in environmental management was recognised with the Banksia Finalist Award (1997), sponsored by the Banksia Environmental Foundation in Victoria. The other three national finalists were WMC (Olympic Dam Corporation) Pty Ltd, Western Power Corporation and ACTEW Corporation Ltd.
In teaching developments, the University is further expanding its range of environmentally-friendly courses. From 1999 it will offer a bachelor of environmental management degree at both its St Lucia and Gatton College campuses to prepare graduates with a range of decision-making and decision-support skills, with the focus being on integration of key disciplines.
The degree will produce graduates able to pursue careers as professional environmental managers in both the private and public sectors. Graduates will also have the chance to complete postgraduate studies towards graduate certificate, postgraduate diploma, masters and doctoral qualifications.
University of Queensland students have access to cutting-edge research in environmental management. Among management groups and researchers based at the University of Queensland specialising in this area are:
o The International Projects division of UniQuest Ltd, the University's technology transfer company, is managing a project training Indonesian students to provide world-standard monitoring of the Asian archipelago's environment.
University of Queensland staff are training people from 60 Indonesian laboratories, both in Australia and in Indonesia as part of the H43 project negotiated in association with Sydney company Labax Environmental Pty Ltd. The $32 million project is one of two environmental projects involving the University supported by AusAID.
The University, through the Chemical Engineering Department, and Labax will help develop 21 laboratories in 13 centres, while a sister project by the Japanese Government will develop 39 laboratories. Labax has contracted the University to supply the human resource development program component of the project.
Since last year, Indonesian students have been undertaking postgraduate diplomas in science (environmental monitoring) and masters programs at the University of Queensland. The University is also providing specific vocational training in Indonesia to more than 100 people in a series of short courses to target the specific equipment in the project and its application to environmental monitoring.
o University of Queensland researchers are providing scientific management services for the $5.2 million Brisbane River and Moreton Bay Wastewater Management Study - the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of the area.
The study has developed a water quality strategy for use by the Queensland State Department of Environment to formulate wastewater licensing conditions.
Professor Greenfield said the University's brief was to provide services for the overview, integration and co-ordination of the study's scientific activities.
"The University's role in the study was vital in linking science to management," he said. "The involvement of an institution of the calibre of the University of Queensland ensures the strategy is based on sound scientific understanding of Moreton Bay and our waterways.
"This strategy will result in the maintenance of water quality in the region and provide a certainty allowing local authorities to develop plans and budgetary arrangements for sewage disposal and urban development."
"This study is one of the most significant environmental studies ever carried out in Australia and is on a par with the Jervis Bay study in New South Wales and the Port Phillip Bay Environmental Study in Victoria."
In addition to the management role, University researchers from the Departments of Botany and Zoology led four of the study's 16 scientific projects or tasks and collaborated in one other.
o The University's Advanced Wastewater Management Centre is using world-class research to address industry issues.
Recently the Centre developed a novel decision support system (DSS) for appropriate sanitation options in emerging countries.
The provision of the two most fundamental human needs, safe water and sanitary human waste disposal is a widespread problem in emerging countries. The challenge is massive given that 85 percent of the world's population live in developing countries. The number of people lacking adequate sanitation services is estimated to amount to 2.5 billion by the year 2000.
Centre researchers developed an expert system software SANEX? to provide support during the project selection stage by comparing sanitation alternatives ranging from simple latrines to conventional sewerage. The system assesses sociocultural, technical, and economic criteria to rate the implementability and sustainability of alternatives. It uses a knowledge base with around 80 sanitation alternatives, costing functions to estimate the capital and recurrent costs of each alternative, and a comprehensive encyclopaedia.
The Centre recently completed a bench-scale study to determine the design and operating criteria to upgrade the Shek Wu Hoi sewage treatment plant in Hong Kong for nitrogen removal. A second Hong Kong project investigated at pilot scale a wastewater treatment process for the largest pig abattoir in south-east Asia at Sheung Shui.
In Australia, one recent Centre leading-edge project aimed to design and operate prefermenters, a new and increasingly popular unit operation in biological nutrient removal (BNR) wastewater treatment systems. The Centre has developed a commercial software package; DSP-Dynamic Simulator for Prefermenters. This work has been done in collaboration with the CRC for Waste Management and Pollution Control in which the University is a strong research partner.
Other recent Advanced Wastewater Management Centre projects include expanding knowledge of Nitrospira, a key bacterium in nitrogen removal recently identified in a world-first discovery at the AWMC.
Together with the Brisbane City Council the Centre is also conducting studies to develop biological treatment methods for leachates at several Brisbane landfills.
o Associate Professor Victor Rudolph and the University's Chemical Engineering Department are participants in a $15 million research project examining how energy can be harnessed from bagasse - the straw-like residue left behind once sugar is extracted from sugarcane.
Over 10 million tonnes of bagasse are burnt each year, mostly for disposal. This could generate up to 3400MW or 60 percent of Queensland's electricity demand. Since the power is generated from renewable, waste biomass, it represents a Greenhouse gas credit
equivalent to nearly 10 percent of Australia's emissions from stationary energy plant.
A joint venture between the University, the Sugar Research Institute, the Queensland Department of Mines and Energy and Austa Energy, the project will develop and demonstrate technology for co-generation of electric power for the grid, and steam to drive the sugar mills.
Dr Rudolph also heads a research project harnessing methane from solid municipal waste. A pilot plant consisting of rubber-lined steel tanks, pumps and heaters has been constructed at the University's Veterinary Science Farm in Brisbane.
Rubbish from 100 households is being fed into the tanks and the resultant methane recovered for use in either a gas-powered electrical generator or as the liquid fuel methanol for cars of the future.
The initial phase of this research was supported by the University's node of the Co-operative Research Centre for Waste Management and Pollution Control.
o Chemical Engineering Department researcher Dr Steve Reid is developing biopesticides using a fermentation process similar to that used to brew beer.
Dr Reid said current chemical pesticides used to control Heliothis armigera - a caterpillar infesting Australasian cotton, sorghum and sweetpea crops - were potentially harmful to the environment because dosages had to be constantly increased to overcome insects' growing resistance.
The fermentation method developed by Dr Reid with funding from the Grains Research and Development Corporation is a low-cost way to destroy the caterpillar with its own naturally occurring viruses.
o Geographical Sciences and Planning Department researcher Dr Stuart Phinn is developing and refining state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques for examining environments as diverse as tropical wetlands, coral reefs and urban areas. His research aims to provide a scientific basis for the effective use of the "next generation" of satellite and airborne imaging systems to be launched in the next five years.
In four separate projects, Dr Phinn is examining the efficacy of remote sensing from both satellite and aircraft in a variety of environments. He said the advantages of the new techniques were that they could provide information about the biological and physical properties of terrestrial and oceanic environments, and their changes over time. The aim of these techniques is to divulge information about the condition and dynamics of each environment, for example, changes in vegetation biomass or coral density over time.
The projects include developing techniques to monitor the structure and condition of wetland vegetation communities in Kakadu National Park; forested areas in northern and southern Queensland (including koala habitats); the health of Queensland's coral reefs; and changes to the environment in rapidly urbanising coastal areas.
o Associate Professor Craig Moritz of the University's Zoology Department is conducting genetic surveys of wildlife populations to protect and restore endangered Australian species and their habitats.
Dr Moritz is director of the University of Queensland's Centre for Conservation Biology and is also a program leader in the Co-operative Research Centre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology Management.
"In the past decade our ability to measure genetic variation between species has increased exponentially," he said.
"New technologies such as DNA sequencing and fingerprinting provide the opportunity to understand the history as well as current dynamics of populations, but it is not clear how best to interpret and use this information.
o The University's Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation (CMLR) involves 11 departments across four faculties with 18 full-time research staff and more than 20 postgraduate research students working on industry-funded mine rehabilitation projects.
Its director Dr David Mulligan is keen to promote the partnership between environmental scientists and the engineering disciplines.
"There is an evolution going on. At corporate level there is a lot of commitment but the real impacts will be made at site level. Mines are obviously production driven and the high cost of rehabilitation can eat into profits. In the past when commodity prices have fallen, spending on environmental issues were the first to drop off the list but fortunately that's not happening anymore," he said.
"The culture has changed and much of that is due to an increased awareness of the issues by site management."
Dr Mulligan said a move towards flexible delivery of postgraduate coursework degrees through the University's Sir James Foots Institute of Mineral Resources was "the future" of training for the industry.
"The Centre is already well-known throughout the mining industry for producing quality outcomes and very well-trained postgraduate research students," he said.
"Many environmental professionals in the mining industry in Australia have been through this University."
Dr Mulligan said the new courses through the Institute would provide a comprehensive coverage of the latest developments and current "best practice" for dealing with environmental and rehabilitation issues across the industry and would target both recent graduates and mining professionals, as well as international students.
For further information about environmental management research and study opportunities at the University of Queensland, contact the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), telephone 61 7 3365 3870, email: odvcr@mailbox.uq.edu.au
