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Australian Runoff Quality

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Australian Runoff Quality (ARQ) is a design guideline that provides an overview of current best practice in the management of urban stormwater in Australia. It is an initiative of the Institution of Engineers, Australia's National Committee on Water Engineering, and contains:

Overview

Recent major Australian receiving water quality management initiatives such as the Port Phillip Bay Study, Perth Coastal Waters Study, South East Queensland Regional Water Quality Management Strategy and (Sydney) Clean Waterways program have identified a need for greater attention to be paid to the way we deal with, and manage, urban stormwater quantity and quality. To date, practitioners have been able to look to Chapter 14 of Australian Rainfall and Runoff for some advice with respect to urban stormwater quantity management, however it has been identified that there is a need to provide additional design and implementation assistance in this regard, and to provide greater detail on managing urban stormwater quality.

As well as this issue being viewed from a receiving water quality perspective, it is also important to note that all major Australian urban areas have experienced raw water supply shortages in recent years, and that the potential synergies between stormwater quantity management/reuse and potable water use minimization have been identified by the industry as a priority issue.

Successful approaches in regard to the above will require various spatial scales (e.g. lot, precinct and region) of integration of urban drainage planning with the design elements of urban hydrology, ecologically sustainable development, land use planning, urban landform and asset life cycle economics. The fundamental understanding of the following issues will be imperative in this regard:

To assist with the above, the National Committee on Water Engineering has brokered a project to publish Australian Runoff Quality (ARQ), a document aimed at providing an overview of current best practice in the management of urban stormwater in Australia. ARQ will provide:

The document draws on the latest findings and recommendations from Australian and International research. Recognised experts in relevant fields have been invited to prepare relevant sections of ARQ under the guidance and supervision of Associate Professor Tony H.F. Wong (Monash University and CRC for Catchment Hydrology).

November 2005 Workshop

The following lsit contains links to PDF copies of presentations that were given at the November 2005 workshop to launch ARQ.

How To Get A Copy

Australian Runoff Quality was released at a workshop held in Sydney on Monday 28 November 2005. Attendees of the workshop received a copy of ARQ.

ARQ is available from Engineers Media in either hard copy of electronic format.