Infrastructure

A multi-disciplinary team bringing together science, sustainable building design and architecture may soon develop the first living algae buildings in Australia.

A vision of how we could live more sustainably into the future is being realised in a quiet pocket of Sydney’s western suburbs. Opened in 2016, Fairwater was heralded as one of the country’s most progressive, environmentally-friendly community developments: 800 homes set in a landscape including wetlands and waterways, and with the largest geothermal heating and cooling system in the southern hemisphere.

Despite negative public perception, government regulation may have an important role to play in supporting collaborative models of leadership.

Seawater desalination has been hailed as the way of the future for meeting our ever-expanding water needs, but current methods are inefficient and environmentally destructive. In a world first, an international team of researchers has developed a method for extracting more fresh water from the process, and recovering valuable resources from the by-products.

New technology being developed by UTS scientists in Australia – the world’s driest inhabited continent – is recovering water from unconventional sources that include saline groundwater, wastewater from mine sites and human urine from city lavatories.

Researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Futures have produced the first national data on urban tree cover, helping us understand why certain urban areas are much hotter than others, and more importantly, what we can do about it.

A collaborative project led by the Knowledge Economy Institute and the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) is using data science to deliver new insights into Sydney’s urban environment.