Australian practice (in urban stormwater management)

Australian practice (in urban stormwater management)

Urban stormwater management in Australia is quite advanced, due to the high level of development and infrastructure standards. The level of knowledge of designers is good, and there is extensive technical support in the form of education, manuals and software, particularly for the quantitative, flood prevention aspects of stormwater management. There are good links to international practice. Historically, Australia lagged behind the U.S. and Canada in coping with stormwater pollution, but extensive data gathering and investigative work on pollution treatment devices has been undertaken since the middle 1980s. Through the efforts of the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, eWater and others, Australia is a leader in water sensitive urban design. It also excels in software development for urban drainage systems.

Since almost all Australian stormwater drainage systems are separated from sanitary sewers, the nature of the systems and their problems are different from those of the combined systems common in older cities of Europe and North America. Sewerage and separate sewer overflows are mainly the concern of water supply and sewerage authorities.

While Australian Rainfall and Runoff is the primary manual, there are many others produced by municipalities, environmental regulators, road authorities and organisations such as Standards Australia.  These cover hydrological and hydraulic design, urban stormwater pollution control and planning issues.  Significant among them are:

  1. The Queensland Urban Drainage Manual (2016)
  2. Argue, J.R. (editor) (2004)  WSUD: Basic Procedures for 'Source Control' of Stormwater, University of South Australia Water Resources Centre, Adelaide
  3. Ball, J., Babister, M., Nathan, R., Weeks, W., Weinmann, E., Retallick, M. and Testoni, I. (editors) (2019) Australian Rainfall and Runoff, A Guide to Flood Estimation, Commonwealth of Australia
  4. Institution of Engineers, Australia (2005)  Australian Runoff Quality, a Guide to Water Sensitive Urban Design (Editor in Chief: T.H.F. Wong), Canberra

Engineers, Australia (formerly the Institution of Engineers, Australia, IEAust),  Stormwater Australia, and occasionally the Australian Water Association (AWA) present conferences and publications on stormwater issues. The Institute of Public Works Engineering, Australia (IPWEA) is also active in the field, taking a leading role in asset management.


Association Websites:

  1. www.ieaust.org.au
  2. www.stormwaternsw.asn.au
  3. www.ipwea.org.au

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