Blog

Forecaz helps students gain practical experience

Sizztech and Unitywater have helped University of the Sunshine Coast town planning and engineering students gain practical experience by providing data, software and real-life infrastructure scenarios as part of their course work.

photo of Nicholas Patorniti, Bradley Rasmussen and Chris Teitzel.

Students undertaking ENP336 Strategic Infrastructure Planning have been able to merge their studies with industry-specific information and solve problems using a simplified version of Unitywater’s demand forecasting models.

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Employment density projections

group of workers

A key metric produced from an urban growth model is the future projections of employment/jobs for the region being model. These employment projections normally inform the region’s strategic plan and are often quoted by elected officials.  It is important these employment projections are realistic and the employment density assumptions utilised by the model are well documented.

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Time for urban farming in cities to reduce obesity

urban farm

In 2005 over 40 {1897c8b751ad578bd9a969480021909bcd327853590acbf66d5abd5e194cce96} of the Earth’s land was given over to agriculture. This is an area of roughly 4.6 billion hectares, about the size of South America.  A further 3.2 to 3.6 billion hectares is being used to raise livestock. By 2050 up to 80{1897c8b751ad578bd9a969480021909bcd327853590acbf66d5abd5e194cce96} of the earth’s population will live in urban centres. If food is to be produced and consumed in the same inefficient way as is today, we will need further arable farm land the size of Brazil to support this population.

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Is the postcode dead?

Sydney operaLondon-based start-up what3words (w3w) has devised a new addressing system.  The system divides the entire world into a grid of 3m by 3m squares — 57 trillion of them in total. Each square has been labelled with a three word sequence. Although GPS services can already accurately pinpoint any location on earth, the w3w system provides a three-word code that makes it easier to remember and communicate with people over using complicated latitude and longitude coördinates.

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High density without occupancy

High density housingThe article High density housing’s biggest myth by Ross Elliott published on The Pulse, suggests many high-rise apartments recently constructed or being constructed contain numerous apartments that are vacant or not occupied, particularly in the inner city areas. We have observed this trend with high density residential properties when developing urban growth models.  This trend imposes the requirement for urban models to provide for properties in some locations not being fully occupied. In some cases this can be as low as 20{1897c8b751ad578bd9a969480021909bcd327853590acbf66d5abd5e194cce96} occupancy. These low percentages are normally seen in holiday areas such as the Gold Coast or Sunshine Coast.

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Beware the faults

tilting houseThe Digital Cadastral DataBase (DCDB) can be utilised to give you the number of units in building covered by group title. The cadastre can identify the common property, normally “Lot 0”, and each individual unit in the building, including the unit area and external shape. This is very useful when you have multiple floors in a building and the aerial photography or satellite view make it very difficult to identify the number of floors and number of units per floor in that building.

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