Elaine Wong - Young Tall Poppy Winner
Elaine Wong’s childhood curiosity about how things work led her to a career that has already generated multiple publications and awards, research grants and fellowships. Dr Wong received a Young Tall Poppy award on September 17.
Dr Wong is a Senior Lecturer in Electrical Engineering and her part in research into the safety of amplified laser light will potentially benefit every household in Australia as the National Broadband Network is rolled out.
Read more about Young Tall Poppy Award winners in the Melbourne School of Engineering
Research Spotlight
Managing Australia’s Water Resources: Automated Demand Scheduling and Supply Control Systems for Large Scale Irrigation Networks
Staff: Erik Weyer, Michael Cantoni, Peter Dower, Iven Mareels, Yuping Li, Nadia Bedjaoui
Sponsors: Rubicon Systems, Australian Research Council
Email Contact: ewey@unimelb.edu.au
Key Phrases: modeling and control; distributed control; hierarchical control systems; irrigation networks;
Water is an increasingly precious resource and as such, it is important to manage it well. Large-scale networks of irrigation channels supply farmers with water from rivers and reservoirs, and in Victoria alone there are several thousand kilometres of irrigation networks. The water losses in these channels are large, and it is estimated that as much as the equivalent of Melbourne's total water consumption is lost in irrigation channels in Victoria. In most cases, the losses are due to the tendency to oversupply resulting in the release of more water than is necessary from rivers and reservoirs. In this project we have developed automatic control systems which command automated gates along the channels to regulate the flows and water levels on the basis of on-line measurements.