June 2, 2015

Malaysia targets UOW for its water supply and water quality expertise

Malaysian engineers seeking a solution to water problems within their country have turned their sights on research being undertaken by water engineering experts at UOW.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) Professor Judy Raper and Mr Lim Sim Poh.

Malaysia has been assessing different methods of providing their local water supply including desalination and water diversion before concluding that UOW’s technology of coastal reservoirs may provide the answer.

Associate Professor Shuqing Yang from UOW’s School of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering, is a world pioneer who helps advocate the technology of coastal reservoirs, which can pump freshwater from the sea without desalination as the coastal reservoir is a freshwater reservoir built inside the sea and collects the runoff from a river.

Coastal reservoirs are located in the sea at the mouth of a river with a sustainable annual river flow. Coastal reservoirs have an impermeable barrier between the fresh river water and the salty sea water.

Professor Yang said the technology has already attracted significant interest from Shanghai in China and Singapore. Chinese media has highlighted how coastal reservoirs may dominate the future water supply to sustain coastal and marine zones like Shanghai.

Associate Professor Siva Sivakumar from the School of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering is an international expert in water quality engineering and modelling. His area of expertise is critical in the design of sustainable water and wastewater treatment systems.

Professor Sivakumar said that all future water infrastructures must include sustainable engineering design practices at the planning stage of development and research undertaken at UOW can significantly contribute such sustainable designs.

Now one of the top three consultant engineering companies in Malaysia, the G&P Engineering Group, has yesterday (1 June) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UOW to develop staff and student collaborations with the view to tap UOW expertise in the area of water and environmental engineering.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation), Professor Judy Raper, signed on behalf of the University with the Managing Director, Mr Lim Sim Poh, signing on behalf of Malaysia’s G&P Engineering Group. The signing took place in the Innovation Campus of UOW.

Attending the signing ceremony was the UOW’s water environmental engineering group (Professor Siva Sivakumar, Professor Shuqing Yang, and higher degree research students Yahong Kuang, Ying Zhang, Samuel Kelly and Nadeeka Sajeewani) along with Senior Engineer from Cardno, Brad Elliott, and from UOW’s Innovation and Commercial Research Unit Dr George Tomka and Stuart Parker.