Analysing electricity and water consumption in Townsville

The Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) has launched its latest initiative - a project that will allow researchers to examine trends in electricity and water consumption in Townsville.

The network is a federally funded National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) project that provides access to significant data relevant to Australia’s urban centres, which aims to help reduce consumption of water and electricity. The project involves a wide range of collaborators including James Cook University (JCU), which hosted the launch of the energy and water demonstration project at its Townsville City Campus.

Professor Ian Atkinson, the director of the JCU eResearch Centre, said researchers use households’ anonymous electricity and water data to help provide an insight into the energy/water usage in a tropical environment. The data will be analysed along with wider information such as socioeconomic status, land use and other data available within the AURIN portal.

The data will be used to develop models which will help “utilities plan water and electricity infrastructure in future developments”, said Professor Atkinson, both in Townsville and other tropical cities across Australia. He explained, “We need to understand the patterns of energy and water use in Australia’s largest tropical city to help long-term planning to increase sustainability and reduce cost.”

For more information about AURIN, visit www.aurin.org.au.