Water researchers win Engineering award

Dec 20, 2006

Two University of Wollongong researchers have won a prestigious Engineering award for their work on predicting flooding in a wide range of catchments.

Associate Professor Michael Boyd from UOW’s School of Civil, Mining & Environmental Engineering and his PhD student Dr Nanayakkara Bodhinayake have been awarded the 2006 GN Alexander Medal by the Institution of Engineers Australia.

The Medal honours the eminent hydrologist GN Alexander, a pioneer in statistical hydrology. The GN Alexander Medal is awarded at each Hydrology & Water Resources Symposium of the Institution of Engineers for the best paper published in the field of Water Engineering since the previous symposium.

This year, more than 200 papers were eligible and eight were short-listed for the award.

Professor Boyd and Dr Bodhinayake’s award was for the paper WBNM Runoff Routing Parameters for South and Eastern Australia, published in the Australian Journal of Water Resources in early 2006.

The paper analysed a large amount of flood data from the eastern states of Australia, and investigated relations between flood parameters and a range of catchment physiographic and climatic properties.

The paper also brought together information from a range of diverse sources to confirm these relations.

The results will allow computer models to be used to predict flooding in a wide range of catchments. The computer model used in the study, WBNM, was previously developed by a team led by Professor Boyd.