Taking product from farm to market in Australia can involve distances of hundreds of kilometres and high freight costs. A group of NSW and Queensland councils has turned to computer modelling to work out where local infrastructure bottlenecks are, and how they could be fixed.
“It doesn’t matter how many fire hoses you have, you can’t be everywhere at once.” So how do you plan ahead for all the decisions you might need to take in the midst of catastrophe? That includes when and where to take shelter.
What truck drivers do in clicks, scientists have done in data – tracking the great distances travelled by Australian produce from farm gate to market. It’s all to make for better infrastructure investment and make those long journeys more efficient and reliable.
Like it or not, climate change has introduced new levels of unpredictability into the business of producing and transporting goods to market.
Portugal has again been in the grip of wildfires this northern summer. The devastating human and financial toll of bushfires is felt across the globe. In Australia, CSIRO is using expert knowledge and the latest technology to pinpoint areas at risk so they can be better managed into the future.
Lifestyles of some 78 million people worldwide depend on small scale fisheries; that includes the communities of the Torres Strait and the suitably-named ornate rock lobster. Managing those small fisheries for future sustainability has been a long-term, and on-going, project.
Counting the costs of physical damage wrought by Cyclone Debbie in Queensland and subsequent floods in northern NSW has already begun. The focus now shifts to how communities invest in infrastructure before the storms. Critical is understanding the multiple impacts and the interdependence of infrastructure.
CSIRO’s new Water Cloud tool is set to disrupt time and resource-intensive water resource planning processes – and The World Bank has taken notice.