The Australian Research Council has announced $5 million in funding for the ARC Research Hub in the Internet of Things for Water to be based at QUT.
QUT’s Professor Yang Liu, as Hub director, will lead the $11.8 million ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub, which will involve six universities and 42 partner organisations.
Along with Professor Liu, the proposal was co-led by QUT’s Professor David McCarthy, Professor and Chair in Sustainable Urban Water Management.
Professor Liu said the ARC Research Hub in the Internet of Things for Water aimed to position Australia as a global leader in digital technologies for the water sector.
“The Hub expects to transform Australian capabilities by delivering cutting-edge technologies, and novel visualisation and analytics methods, supported by new business models,” Professor Liu said.
“We aim to enhance capabilities to secure water for industry, society and the environment, and improve our productivity through new water management techniques.”
Professor McCarthy said real-time monitoring and control technologies through IoT opened new possibilities for the water sector and could empower consumers to become part of the solution to the challenge of water management.
“The objectives of the ARC Research Hub in the Internet of Things for Water include: developing new sensor technologies; developing advanced visualization and data analytics; and developing algorithms for real-time control of water systems, including water supply, wastewater and stormwater,” Professor McCarthy said.
The QUT researchers involved in the hub as chief investigators are:
- Faculty of Engineering Executive Dean Professor Ana Deletic
- Professor McCarthy and Associate Professor Prasanna Egodawatta, from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Associate Professor Ajay Pandey and Dr Maryam Haghighat from the Faculty of Engineering’s School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Professor Raja Jurdak, a Professor of Distributed Systems and Chair in Applied Data Sciences, and Professor Yanming Feng from the Faculty of Science’s School of Computer Science
- Associate Professor Sara Khalifa from the Faculty of Science’s School of Information Systems.
The industry partners come from across the water sector, including technology developers and manufacturers, telecommunications providers and cybersecurity service providers.
