Australian infrastructure audit

Examines the drivers of future infrastructure demand, particularly population and economic growth. Summary The Australian Infrastructure Audit takes a strategic approach to assessing our nation\u27s infrastructure needs. It examines the drivers of future infrastructure demand, particularly population and economic growth. The Audit provides a top-down assessment of the value-add, or Direct Economic Contribution of infrastructure; considers the future demand for infrastructure over the next 15 years, and delivers an evidence base for further gap analysis, long term planning and future investment priorities. The Australian Infrastructure Audit has found that without action Australia\u27s productivity and quality of life will be tested, with population and economic growth set to cause increasing congestion and bottlenecks. Major reforms are needed to improve the way we plan, finance, construct, maintain and operate infrastructure to ensure it can underpin gains in Australia\u27s productivity in the decades ahead, and contribute to economic growth

National remote and regional transport strategy: consultation draft

On 22 May 2014, the Northern Territory hosted the National Remote and Regional Transport Infrastructure and Services Forum in Alice Springs, attended by 120 industry, government and community representatives from all areas of Australia. Following the Forum, the Council agreed for the Northern Territory to lead the development of the National Remote and Regional Transport Strategy, in collaboration with the South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland and Commonwealth governments. The Strategy will propose specific actions to address issues faced in remote and regional areas in relation to transport infrastructure, services and regulation. On 22 May 2015, the Council approved the release of the draft Strategy for public consultation. As part of the consultation period, stakeholders are invited to provide feedback on the draft Strategy and its proposed actions. For more information on the Strategy, or to make a submission, please visit the following link: www.transport.nt.gov.au/nrrts. Please note the closing date for submissions is 5pm Friday 31 July 2015 (ACST). Transport – A Vital Role The availability and quality of transport infrastructure and services impacts on every part of our society and wellbeing. Good transport systems provide a platform for improving productivity and driving social and economic growth for all Australians. Remote and Regional Areas – Supporting all of Australia The remote and regional area of Australia covers 85 percent of the Australian land mass, however has only 15 percent of the Australian population. But significantly, this area is responsible for 40 percent of Australia\u27s GDP due to its considerable resource sector and primary industries. Transport Challenges Remote and regional areas face specific transport challenges which do not apply to the highly populated eastern seaboard of Australia – all influenced by vast distances, a small population, climatic extremes, and demanding geography. It is for this reason that a one size fits all approach to transport regulation and infrastructure and service delivery just doesn\u27t work for the remote and regional areas of Australia. The Need for a National Strategy The aim of the National Remote and Regional Transport Strategy is to provide some practical solutions to the issues and challenges faced by transport system providers and users so that this important area of Australia can continue to grow and contribute to Australia\u27s wellbeing. The Council will discuss the final Strategy and its implementation at its meeting in November 2015

National road safety action plan 2015–2017

The Action Plan outlined in this document is intended to support the implementation of the National Road Safety Strategy 2011–2020 (NRSS). It addresses key road safety challenges identified in a recent review of the strategy (NRSS Review) and details a range of priority national actions to be taken by governments over the three years 2015 to 2017. The Action Plan was developed cooperatively by Commonwealth, state and territory transport agencies, and was endorsed by Ministers of the Transport and Infrastructure Council in November 2014. It does not replace the broader 10-year agenda of the NRSS, but will help to ensure that national efforts in the next three years are focused on strategically important initiatives

State of Australian cities 2014-2015: progress in Australian regions

Provides insight into the vital role that Australian cities play in the growth of the countries economy and tracks the overall progress made in Australia\u27s major centres. Summary Since 2010, the State of Australian Cities reports have examined the progress being made in our major cities. These reports have provided insight into the vital role that Australian cities play in the growth of our economy and have tracked the overall progress made in Australia\u27s major centres. The State of Australian Cities 2014–2015 once again looks at the drivers behind some of the public policy issues facing the country today and into the future. Australia is a highly urbanised country. The populations of Australia\u27s major cities are at record levels, as is the number of people employed. It is in our cities that the overwhelming majority of jobs are located and where the most new jobs are being created. The economic output of our major cities has grown and their national importance remains extremely high. However, alongside that growth there is more demand on transport systems in Australia than ever before. This report examines population growth, economic growth and the increased traffic flows through our ports and airports and on our roads and rail lines. Issues of space and the potential conflicts of the usability of cities with the utility and long term capacity of freight hubs, ports and airports and the movement of goods and people in cities is a challenge for policy makers. This report provides the evidence base for policy makers at all levels of government to consider those challenges now and into the future

Developing an e-infrastructure for social science

We outline the aims and progress to date of the National Centre for e-Social Science e-Infrastructure project. We examine the challenges faced by the project, namely in ensuring outputs are appropriate to social scientists, managing the transition from research projects to service and embedding software and data within a wider infrastructural framework. We also provide pointers to related work where issues which have ramifications for this and similar initiatives are being addressed

Numerical Relativity Injection Infrastructure

This document describes the new Numerical Relativity (NR) injection infrastructure in the LIGO Algorithms Library (LAL), which henceforth allows for the usage of NR waveforms as a discrete waveform approximant in LAL. With this new interface, NR waveforms provided in the described format can directly be used as simulated GW signals ("injections") for data analyses, which include parameter estimation, searches, hardware injections etc. As opposed to the previous infrastructure, this new interface natively handles sub-dominant modes and waveforms from numerical simulations of precessing binary black holes, making them directly accessible to LIGO analyses. To correctly handle precessing simulations, the new NR injection infrastructure internally transforms the NR data into the coordinate frame convention used in LAL.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures, technical repor

Institutions, infrastructure, and trade

We examine the influence of infrastructure, institutional quality, colonial and geographic context, and trade preferences on the pattern of bilateral trade. We are interested in threshold effects, and so emphasize those cases where bilateral country pairs do not actually trade. We depart from the institutions and infrastructure literature in this respect, using selection-based gravity modeling of trade flows. We also depart from this literature by mixing principal components (to condense our institutional and infrastructure measures) with a focus on deviations in the resulting indexes from expected values for given income cohorts to control for multicollinearity. We work with a panel of 284,049 bilateral trade flows from 1988 to 2002. Matching bilateral trade and tariff data and controlling for tariff preferences, level of development, and standard distance measures, we find that infrastructure, and institutional quality, are significant determinants not only of export levels, but also of the likelihood exports will take place at all. Our results support the notion that export performance, and the propensity to take part in the trading system at all, depends on institutional quality and access to well developed transport and communications infrastructure. Indeed, this dependence is far more important, empirically, than variations in tariffs in explaining sample variations in North-South trade

Seeing the invisible: from imagined to virtual urban landscapes

Urban ecosystems consist of infrastructure features working together to provide services for inhabitants. Infrastructure functions akin to an ecosystem, having dynamic relationships and interdependencies. However, with age, urban infrastructure can deteriorate and stop functioning. Additional pressures on infrastructure include urbanizing populations and a changing climate that exposes vulnerabilities. To manage the urban infrastructure ecosystem in a modernizing world, urban planners need to integrate a coordinated management plan for these co-located and dependent infrastructure features. To implement such a management practice, an improved method for communicating how these infrastructure features interact is needed. This study aims to define urban infrastructure as a system, identify the systematic barriers preventing implementation of a more coordinated management model, and develop a virtual reality tool to provide visualization of the spatial system dynamics of urban infrastructure. Data was collected from a stakeholder workshop that highlighted a lack of appreciation for the system dynamics of urban infrastructure. An urban ecology VR model was created to highlight the interconnectedness of infrastructure features. VR proved to be useful for communicating spatial information to urban stakeholders about the complexities of infrastructure ecology and the interactions between infrastructure features.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102559Published versio