Sediment Research Project Update March 2019

The Task Force and other SRP sponsors thank Fraser for the valuable contribution he has made to this research, for his professionalism and leadership, and for his commitment to continue to be involved as SRP co-supervisor.

The SRP scholarship funds have been reallocated and Liam Presland and Yilin Li, Masters in Professional Engineering students from the University of Western Australia, commenced work in January. The monitoring equipment has been checked and reinstalled and site access has been again obtained from Satterleys.

Last season’s focus was on storm events (8 events were analysed to determine the magnitude of rainfall intensity). An additional 5 storm events are to be added to the data set. Nearmaps has been used to monitor construction site activity. There is a need to identify construction activity being undertaken during storms. Last season difficulty was experienced in keeping track of construction phases and activity due to the fast pace of work; this activity has now slowed down.

This season new monitoring points will be incorporated to capture building activity at vacant blocks during Satterley’s civil work program for Jan-July. The focus will now be on the channel (as the old site is now closed). Monitoring equipment is to be doubled to speed up the research.

The survey to the drain channel is to be completed by the end of March to produce a map of the drain geometry and changes of the geometry of the drain to determine sediment volume.

Additional storm events will be captured from April to July (rainy season) in new study sections of the drain. Drain modelling will completed by September and the final report delivered in November 2019, however this is weather dependent as additional rainfall event are required to be captured to finalise results.