IoT-enabled water distribution systems - a comparative technological review

Water distribution systems are one of the critical infrastructures and major assets of the water utility in a nation. The infrastructure of the distribution systems consists of resources, treatment plants, reservoirs, distribution lines, and consumers. A sustainable water distribution network management has to take care of accessibility, quality, quantity, and reliability of water. As water is becoming a depleting resource for the coming decades, the regulation and accounting of the water in terms of the above four parameters is a critical task. There have been many efforts towards the establishment of a monitoring and controlling framework, capable of automating various stages of the water distribution processes. The current trending technologies such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the potential to track this spatially varying network to collect, process, and analyze the water distribution network attributes and events. In this work, we investigate the role and scope of the IoT technologies in different stages of the water distribution systems. Our survey covers the state-of-the-art monitoring and control systems for the water distribution networks, and the status of IoT architectures for water distribution networks. We explore the existing water distribution systems, providing the necessary background information on the current status. This work also presents an IoT Architecture for Intelligent Water Networks - IoTA4IWNet, for real-time monitoring and control of water distribution networks. We believe that to build a robust water distribution network, these components need to be designed and implemented effectively

Hawkesbury Harvest : panacea, paradox and the spirit of capitalism in the rural hinterlands of Sydney, Australia

This study presents a phenomenological exposition of Hawkesbury Harvest (Harvest), a community‐based, not‐for‐profit that formed in the year 2000 to address the systemic threats to farming in the Sydney Basin, threats to farm viability, and community health issues related to changes in the food system. Revealed from the perspectives of its four longest‐serving actors and taking a grounded inductive stance within an emancipatory research paradigm, the study documents and interprets Harvest’s archeo‐legacies in the Sydney development dialogue. Within institutional settings there were no linkages between policy and action and the challenges Harvest actors recognized affecting agriculture, food, farming and health. The ‘panacea’ that tourism is promoted to be by government gave Harvest access to neo‐liberal programs of support capable of creating the links, the nexus between Sydney’s future and a future for farming, and so Harvest’s first funded initiative was a Farm Gate Trail. Harvest began a process of communicative action expressed through a range of economic initiatives which created agri‐tourism, open farms, farmer markets and food events. These engaged the wider Sydney community through experiential animations in a critical and paradoxical dialogue about urban development, food, health and farming with a core message that farming in the Sydney Basin needed to be retained and protected, for the sake of both rural community and city dwellers. A repertoire of messages developed that are contingent on a dynamic engagement with Sydney’s development discourse, messages that have evolved and self‐reference Harvest in the prosecution of its dialectic. This phenomenology presents empirical evidence for Harvest as a ‘carrier’ (after Weber) of moral imperatives in support of agriculture in the Sydney Basin. As a place‐based reaction to global forces it made possible the expression of its actors’ personal ‘calling’ into service for a greater good and mobilized discourses about local food systems, regional identity, cultural landscape and local farming mythology as components in its agri‐cultural economic initiatives. This placist dialectic activated and harnessed the classic Weberian conundrum of formal versus substantive rationality, and gave expression to Weber’s own concession about rationality, that without a teleology, a values‐informed rationality, it simply reinforces what he famously described as the Iron Cage of modernity. Harvest’s mechanisms make available the expression of a spirit in capitalism, one Weber believed would be snuffed out in a secularized world, but one which we can still find in the small places that throw up resistance to the Iron Cage in forms like Hawkesbury Harvest

RFID Technology in Intelligent Tracking Systems in Construction Waste Logistics Using Optimisation Techniques

Construction waste disposal is an urgent issue for protecting our environment. This paper proposes a waste management system and illustrates the work process using plasterboard waste as an example, which creates a hazardous gas when land filled with household waste, and for which the recycling rate is less than 10% in the UK. The proposed system integrates RFID technology, Rule-Based Reasoning, Ant Colony optimization and knowledge technology for auditing and tracking plasterboard waste, guiding the operation staff, arranging vehicles, schedule planning, and also provides evidence to verify its disposal. It h relies on RFID equipment for collecting logistical data and uses digital imaging equipment to give further evidence; the reasoning core in the third layer is responsible for generating schedules and route plans and guidance, and the last layer delivers the result to inform users. The paper firstly introduces the current plasterboard disposal situation and addresses the logistical problem that is now the main barrier to a higher recycling rate, followed by discussion of the proposed system in terms of both system level structure and process structure. And finally, an example scenario will be given to illustrate the system’s utilization

Working together with technology to enhance fieldwork learning

Enhancing Fieldwork Learning (EFL) is a multidisciplinary team across three institutions working together with the aim of identifying, evaluating and disseminating good teaching practice in fieldwork environments. We focus on the integrated use of mobile technologies within pedagogic frameworks to develop innovative teaching and learning approaches for students. This chapter sets out our history, team development, achievements and view for the future. Inter-institutional and multidisciplinary working has allowed our project to have broad relevance and impact on higher education (HE). We provide some insight into how informal learning spaces can build confidence for students and staff to enhance fieldwork learning with mobile technologies

Creative Business in Australia Learnings from the Creative Industries Innovation Centre, 2009 To 2015

As the largest ever Australian government investment in creative industries development, the Creative Industries Innovation Centre delivered tailored business services to more than 1500 creative businesses from 2009 to 2015 and provided industry intelligence and advice for public policy and peak sectoral activity. This collection gives an overview of the current ‘state of business’ in Australia’s creative industries – both as an industry sector in its own right and as an enabling sector and skills set for other industries – and reflects on business needs, creative industries policy and support services for the sector. With contributions from the Centre’s team of senior business advisers and from leading Australian researchers who worked closely with the Centre –including experts on design-led innovation and the creative economy – and case studies of leading Australia creative businesses, the book is intended as and industry-relevant contribution to business development and public policy

International networking: education, training and change

The decision to inaugurate the International Networking Conference to focus on education, training and change was a direct result of the Higher Education/UNESCO Conference which was held in Cyprus in 1992. I was given the opportunity of delivering a paper on some of the problems associated with managing an internationally respected performing arts institution in the most remote capital city in the world-Perth, Western Australia. Upon my return to Perth I broached the notion of conducting an international conference in Western Australia which would highlight issues and problems relative to higher education programs in Australia, Asia and the Indian Ocean rim. With the support of UNESCO, the University\u27s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roy Lourens, and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brian Lawrence, agreed that the project was one that would be a significant one for Edith Cowan University. They provided substantial financial and moral support...

Right Research

"Educational institutions play an instrumental role in social and political change, and are responsible for the environmental and social ethics of their institutional practices. The essays in this volume critically examine scholarly research practices in the age of the Anthropocene, and ask what accountability educators and researchers have in ‘righting’ their relationship to the environment. The volume further calls attention to the geographical, financial, legal and political barriers that might limit scholarly dialogue by excluding researchers from participating in traditional modes of scholarly conversation. As such, Right Research is a bold invitation to the academic community to rigorous self-reflection on what their research looks like, how it is conducted, and how it might be developed so as to increase accessibility and sustainability, and decrease carbon footprint. The volume follows a three-part structure that bridges conceptual and practical concerns: the first section challenges our assumptions about how sustainability is defined, measured and practiced; the second section showcases artist-researchers whose work engages with the impact of humans on our environment; while the third section investigates how academic spaces can model eco-conscious behaviour. This timely volume responds to an increased demand for environmentally sustainable research, and is outstanding not only in its interdisciplinarity, but its embrace of non-traditional formats, spanning academic articles, creative acts, personal reflections and dialogues. Right Research will be a valuable resource for educators and researchers interested in developing and hybridizing their scholarly communication formats in the face of the current climate crisis.

Right Research

"Educational institutions play an instrumental role in social and political change, and are responsible for the environmental and social ethics of their institutional practices. The essays in this volume critically examine scholarly research practices in the age of the Anthropocene, and ask what accountability educators and researchers have in ‘righting’ their relationship to the environment. The volume further calls attention to the geographical, financial, legal and political barriers that might limit scholarly dialogue by excluding researchers from participating in traditional modes of scholarly conversation. As such, Right Research is a bold invitation to the academic community to rigorous self-reflection on what their research looks like, how it is conducted, and how it might be developed so as to increase accessibility and sustainability, and decrease carbon footprint. The volume follows a three-part structure that bridges conceptual and practical concerns: the first section challenges our assumptions about how sustainability is defined, measured and practiced; the second section showcases artist-researchers whose work engages with the impact of humans on our environment; while the third section investigates how academic spaces can model eco-conscious behaviour. This timely volume responds to an increased demand for environmentally sustainable research, and is outstanding not only in its interdisciplinarity, but its embrace of non-traditional formats, spanning academic articles, creative acts, personal reflections and dialogues. Right Research will be a valuable resource for educators and researchers interested in developing and hybridizing their scholarly communication formats in the face of the current climate crisis.