Research powerhouse to help guide Super City

Auckland University is building a powerhouse of infrastructure research which it hopes will guide decision-making in the Super City. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Auckland University is building a powerhouse of infrastructure research which it hopes will guide decision-making about hefty public investments in the new Super City and the rest of New Zealand.

After two years of gestation, the Centre for Infrastructure Research will be launched at Parliament this afternoon with an address from Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and a panel discussion with industry experts.

Based at the university's civil and environmental engineering department, its research tentacles will tap into disciplines and expertise throughout academia and industry, with a primary focus on water and transport infrastructure.

Post-graduate students at the centre are already working on research projects for clients, including the Transport Agency and the Auckland Motorway Alliance, but founders Dr Jim Bentley and Professor Bruce Melville believe the advent of the Super City will highlight a growing need for its services to cope with the region's growth.

"It is not coincidental that the centre is trying to get a stronger profile at the time of the genesis of the Super City," said Professor Melville, head of the civil and environmental engineering department.

Dr Bentley, who is the centre's inaugural director and heads the Synergine consulting group, is a former Metrowater chief executive.

He said yesterday that his experience as an infrastructure provider left him aware of "a gap in our knowledge that could be filled by better research targeted at our needs".

With a background in research and consulting, combined with operational and investment experience, he saw a need to bring together many "strands of thinking" to help infrastructure planners make better decisions.

Projects already completed by centre students have included a system to prioritise upgrades of Metrowater's pipes, which have since been taken over by Watercare, and provision for the former Waitakere City Council of a code of practice for developers to supply new subdivisions with low impact stormwater systems.

Senior transportation engineering lecturer Doug Wilson, meanwhile, has students investigating conditions around crashes on the Southern Motorway, as well as tapping into data from Transport Agency traffic management computers.

The centre has a fibre-optic link to the agency's traffic management unit, which co-ordinates intersection signals throughout the region, and he says it offers a wealth of historical data for research projects to improve its efficiency.

Dr Wilson welcomed the establishment of Auckland Transport as a single agency with an improved ability to design and provide proper infrastructure across the region.

Town planners needed early assistance from transport engineers so the provision of infrastructure led urban development, rather than the reverse, which often caused problems that were costly to fix.

He said development pressures on Auckland and other northern population centres in coming decades would increase the need to gain best value under constrained budgets.