Energy Policy requires SMARTer analysis

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Honorary Professorial Fellow Les Hosking

Everyday there are references in the print, electronic and social media regarding fossil fuels, renewable energy, carbon abatement, climate change, environmental effects, energy prices and the many impacts associated with these important topics. As a very simple overview of the dichotomy of opinions on these issues, there exists a fundamental debate as to why, how, when and at what cost should Australia respond by doing anything, or lead, or follow the world in transitioning from energy sourced from fossil fuel to energy sourced from renewable and sustainable energy sources. Continue reading →

Epistemic uncertainty is important: ask the Thanksgiving turkeys

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Graham Harris

As Dr Nick Winder has pointed out, since the 1970s we have found ourselves more and more having to comprehend and deal with recursive, open, non-stationary and evolving entities that we have come to call systems or “systems of systems.” Continue reading →

Is demography destiny?

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Garry Bowditch

Australia had a bonanza of major reports handed down in the past week commissioned by the Federal government on the challenges and opportunities for the nation to retain its position as one of the most liveable places on earth. Continue reading →

Interactive prototyping of interactivity

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Professor John Sören Petersson

In today’s world with ever more systems and services constantly released, designing human-machine interaction is a must. The problem with interaction design is not that we are not good at interaction. Social skills vary across individuals, but seeing two strangers, possibly even without a mutual language, making up a mutual understanding step-by-step clearly indicates the human ability to interact and thus to shape interaction. Continue reading →

Flexible Petrol Levy the solution to addressing congestion

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Honorary Professorial Fellow Gordon Noble

A flexible petrol levy that rises and falls with global petrol prices, is a better way to address congestion than the cost reflective road pricing model proposed by the Harper Competition Review. Continue reading →

Towards the next generation of traffic simulators: a strategic agents-based approach

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Associate Research Fellow Johan Barthelemy

Transportation plays a key role in societies. The transportation system of a country is closely related to development of its economy by meeting the travel demands of people, and allowing the transport and the exchange of resources. Nevertheless, transportation is also endowed with negatives effects: growth of transportation demand can lead to an increase of accidents, environmental issues such as air and noise pollution, and energy consumption. Understanding and predicting the dynamics of transportation systems has then naturally become a major research field since the beginning of computer assisted transport simulations in 1955. Continue reading →

Floods and Social Media: Coping with the Deluge 3

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Associate Professor Rodney Clarke

The usual approaches to analysing the content of Tweets involve, for example, statistics, as well as techniques from the artificial intelligence community, specifically text mining and machine learning. Statistical approaches generally involve the analysis of word frequencies and the use of visualisation aides like tag clouds to indicate which key words are significant. Often these techniques are used in combination to examine the occurrence and collocation of key words associated with flooding. Continue reading →

SMART Metadata System

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Tim Davies

Ever since the ceremonial turning of the sod, the SMART Infrastructure Facility has had its sights firmly fixed on establishing a National Infrastructure Data Centre. Policies were created, a framework was established and procedures with colourful flowcharts were produced. These tools were all well and good; however the vision of the National Infrastructure Data Centre was never going to be realised while all the data SMART had collected and produced remained hidden within the depths of its shared drives and databases; hidden in such a way that not even the SMART academics themselves knew the full extent of the SMART data collection. Continue reading →

Discussing regional employment estimations

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Ashkan Masouman, Associate Research Fellow

This was my second presentation at the Western Region Science Association (WRSA) Annual Meeting (first being in 2013). So far, WRSA has been the only conference I have attended which has two sessions dedicated to input-output techniques and innovations. The chair, Prof. Geoffrey Hewings, and many of the attendees were experts in this field, and they all provided useful feedback into my research. Continue reading →

Floods and Social Media: Coping with the Deluge 2

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Jessica Symonds

By Associate Professor Rodney Clarke

One of the problems of using social media during emergencies is being able to assess the various kinds of information that can be in them. Continue reading →

SMART Infrastructure Facility

Simulation, Modelling, Analysis, Research & Teaching