•Urban development and 1D-2D hydrodynamic modelling were coupled to assess flood risk.•Flood risk was driven by climate change as well as urban development.•The efficiency of adaptation measures ...depended on climate and population scenario.•Urban planning policies were efficient for reducing flood risk.
We present a new framework for flexible testing of flood risk adaptation strategies in a variety of urban development and climate scenarios. This framework couples the 1D-2D hydrodynamic simulation package MIKE FLOOD with the agent-based urban development model DAnCE4Water and provides the possibility to systematically test various flood risk adaptation measures ranging from large infrastructure changes over decentralised water management to urban planning policies. We have tested the framework in a case study in Melbourne, Australia considering 9 scenarios for urban development and climate and 32 potential combinations of flood adaptation measures. We found that the performance of adaptation measures strongly depended on the considered climate and urban development scenario and the other implementation measures implemented, suggesting that adaptive strategies are preferable over one-off investments. Urban planning policies proved to be an efficient means for the reduction of flood risk, while implementing property buyback and pipe increases in a guideline-oriented manner was too costly. Random variations in location and time point of urban development could have significant impact on flood risk and would in some cases outweigh the benefits of less efficient adaptation strategies. The results of our setup can serve as an input for robust decision making frameworks and thus support the identification of flood risk adaptation measures that are economically efficient and robust to variations of climate and urban layout.
Five tephra layers named BRH1 to 5 were sampled in an ice cliff located on the north-eastern flank of Mount Melbourne (northern Victoria Land, Antarctica). The texture, componentry, mineralogy, and ...major and trace element compositions of glass shards have been used to characterize these layers. These properties suggest that they are primary fall deposits produced from discrete eruptions that experienced varying degrees of magma/water interaction. The major and trace element glass shard analyses on single glass shards indicate that Mount Melbourne Volcanic Field is the source of these tephra layers and the geochemical diversity highlights that the eruptions were fed by compositionally diverse melts that are interpreted to be from a complex magma system with a mafic melt remobilizing more evolved trachy-andesitic to trachytic magma pockets. Geochemical compositions, along with textural and mineralogical data, have allowed correlations between two of the englacial tephra and distal cryptotephra from Mount Melbourne, recovered within a marine sediment core in the Edisto Inlet (~ 280 km northeast of Mount Melbourne), and constrain the age of these englacial tephra layers to between the third and the fourth century CE. This work provides new evidence of the intense historical explosive activity of the Mount Melbourne Volcanic Field and better constrains the rates of volcanism in northern Victoria Land. These data grant new clues on the eruptive dynamics and tephra dispersal, and considerably expand the geochemical (major and trace elements) dataset available for the Mount Melbourne Volcanic Field. In the future, this will facilitate the precise identification of tephra layers from this volcanic source and will help define the temporal and spatial correlation between Antarctic records using tephra layers. Finally, this work also yields new valuable time-stratigraphic marker horizons for future dating, synchronization, and correlations of different palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic records across large regions of Antarctica.
For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Melbourne's Little
Lonsdale Street - locally known as 'Little Lon' - was notorious as
a foul slum and brothel district, occupied by the itinerant and the
...criminal. The stereotype of 'slumdom' defined 'Little Lon' in the
minds of Melbournians, and became entrenched in Australian
literature and popular culture.
The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne tells a different
story. This groundbreaking book reports on almost three decades of
excavations conducted on the Commonwealth Block - the area of
central Melbourne bordered by Little Lonsdale, Lonsdale, Exhibition
and Spring streets. Since the 1980s, archaeologists and historians
have pieced together the rich and complex history of this area,
revealing a working-class and immigrant community that was much
more than just a slum. The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne
delves into the complex social, cultural and economic history of
this forgotten community.
Melbourne is facing a severe drought having its 12th consecutive below average rainfall year. Water authorities have been forced to impose rigorous water restrictions including voluntary per capita ...water use targets after more than 20
years of unrestricted water supply. The current severe drought and dwindling water resources have accelerated the use of alternative water sources including domestic rainwater. There is a large variation in average annual rainfall in the Greater Melbourne area ranging from 1050
mm in the east to 450
mm in the west. Hence, there is a significant difference in the tank size required in the west and the east of Melbourne to meet a similar demand and to provide the same supply reliability. The paper presents a novel methodology and a relationship for optimal sizing of rainwater tanks considering the annual rainfall at the geographic location, the demand for rainwater, the roof area (catchment area) and the desired supply reliability. The characteristic of the developed dimensionless curve reflects these variables and paves the way for developing a web based interactive tool for selecting the optimum rainwater tank size.
•A novel model was developed to examine the impact of climate change on water demand for mid-term.•The model has been developed from Combining Singular Spectrum Analysis with Neural Networks.•Monthly ...climatic factors and water consumption were used as inputs and output in the model for the period (2006–2015).•The results present that the model is skilfully and reliable to predict water demand.•The findings of this study support the view that water demand is driven by climatological variables.
Valid and dependable water demand prediction is a major element of the effective and sustainable expansion of municipal water infrastructures. This study provides a novel approach to quantifying water demand through the assessment of climatic factors, using a combination of a pretreatment signal technique, a hybrid particle swarm optimisation algorithm and an artificial neural network (PSO-ANN). The Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) technique was adopted to decompose and reconstruct water consumption in relation to six weather variables, to create a seasonal and stochastic time series. The results revealed that SSA is a powerful technique, capable of decomposing the original time series into many independent components including trend, oscillatory behaviours and noise. In addition, the PSO-ANN algorithm was shown to be a reliable prediction model, outperforming the hybrid Backtracking Search Algorithm BSA-ANN in terms of fitness function (RMSE). The findings of this study also support the view that water demand is driven by climatological variables.
Streets play a vital role in cities, yet there is little understanding of how their characteristics influence the use of different transport modes, particularly in activity centres. Using ...measurements of people concentration (people/km) from 57 activity centre locations across Melbourne, Australia, this research significantly contributes to understanding how street and activity centre characteristics are associated with the use of each of the following: walking, cycling, buses, trams, cars, car parking, trucks and motorbikes. Fractional logit regression models including the estimation of marginal effects were developed. Street-related characteristics that were significant included: presence of bicycle lanes, exclusive general traffic lanes, clearways, car parking charges, public transport services, in addition to footpath width, public transport service frequency, and movement and place classifications. Activity centre-related characteristics found to be significant included: size of the activity centre, network distance to various facilities and the CBD, intersection density, employment density and car ownership. The findings from this research can be used to support activity centre planning to achieve broader transport and land use objectives, particularly those related to local living such as 20-minute neighbourhoods.
•People concentration (people/km) analysed at 57 activity centre locations in Melbourne.•Total of 42 street and activity centre characteristics compiled for each location.•Fractional logit regression models developed with marginal effects estimated.•Both street and activity centre characteristics influence use of each transport mode.•Findings can be used to better support planning and design of activity centres.
•The distribution of green space within Melbourne is skewed towards wealthier areas.•Population mobility is reinforcing inequality in access to green space over time.•Urban planning has not succeeded ...in countering urban inequality trends.
Economically disadvantaged communities living in neighborhoods with low access to green space are known to experience a heightened burden of health issues, leading to intergenerational well-being problems. However, relatively little is known about the extents and causes of green space inequalities among different social communities. To explore this in the metropolitan Melbourne area, we use the 2016 Census data of equivalised household income and calculate local indicators of spatial association (LISA) between low-income proportion and green space access at a suburb level. We show that the distribution of green space in Melbourne favors more affluent communities, meaning that there are lower concentrations of low-income households in greener areas. The Mann–Whitney U statistics applied to LISA clusters also indicates statistically significant inequity in access to green space for low-income communities. Secondly, the paper shows that low-income households’ relocation and provision of human-modified green space exacerbate inequality in green space access over time. Mobility patterns show the movement of low-income people from high-green areas to low-green areas over time. The spatial analysis of green space types reveals that the location of human-modified green spaces has a significant correlation with (non-randomly distributed) natural green spaces.
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