QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Queensland Government

Queensland International Fellowships

The building boom of the ’80s has left Brisbane (and much of Australia) with a bunch of ageing commercial buildings – and lessons to be learned from the rebuilding challenges which Germany has already faced. Crunch time to ‘re-life’ old buildings, finds QUT researcher

QUT construction researcher Professor Jay Yang has said that, with the average age of Queensland’s office buildings at around 29 years, they had reached a critical time for major upgrading and refitting for ongoing use. Left as they are, he said, “they may not cope with changing business operating patterns.” “ Re-lifing old buildings makes better use of existing assets instead of acquiring more land for new ones and has a lower carbon footprint than demolition and new build. Today, because we have an increased awareness of the importance of the office environment for the psychological and physical health of its occupants, optimising floor space and the work environment, which often involves gutting the building and starting again, also needs to be done. This will require new approaches to managing construction waste.” The decision-making on key issues and project management processes to underpin solutions to these sustainability challenges will be investigated by Professor Yang, in partnership with researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, under a 2012 Queensland International Fellowship. Professor Yang said the infrastructure Queensland was building on the back of the resources boom to meet burgeoning population needs could one day be obsolete or underutilised as the resource market dried up and people moved elsewhere for work. He said Germany led the world in decision-making on ageing buildings and highway infrastructure that was past its use-by date. “The country has already faced many of these problems when the buildings from the massive rebuilding of cities that followed World War II came of age. Germany’s population is decreasing and there have been population shifts that have left their motorways – for example parts of the Autobahn – still incurring maintenance and running costs, but carrying far fewer cars than they were originally designed for. “It’s important that we learn from Germany’s experience for the Queensland context so we don’t overdevelop, prepare for reuse and other alternatives, and think about minimising waste now. Future-thinking is integral to construction sustainability,” he said. “In partnership with Professor Dr Frank Schultmann from KIT, our research will focus on the critical factors in the evaluation of ageing built assets and multi-criteria decision making in their redevelopment linking it to regional planning issues and sustainability principles.”

QUT’s Professor Jay Yang believes Queensland has much to learn from Germany’s rebuilding program after World War II and the challenges of reunification. Image and article courtesy of QUT.

2010 WINNERS

Dr Evan Stephens, Institute for Molecular Bioscience > Kruse Research Group, University of Bielefeld “Targeting key obstacles to commercialisation of algalbiofuels in Australia” Dr Ross Cunnington, QBI, University of Queensland > MR Centre of Excellence, Medical University of Vienna “The planning and readiness for voluntary movement“ Dr Nicole Webster Australian Institute of Marine Science > Department of Microbial Ecology, University of Vienna “Exploring the impact of climate change on a model marine symbiosis “ Dr Michael Schmidt, DSITIA “Tracking woody vegetation dynamics and change using hypertemporal satellite imagery” Dr Peter Scarth, DSITIA > University of Trier “Improving rangeland management using high temporal resolution satellite image sequences” Dr Qiao Sun, University of Queensland > Max Planck Institute, Mulheim an der Ruhr and The University of Heidelberg “Function and mechanism in the far-red fluorescent 2009 WINNERS

protein HcRed: a computational study” Dr Zhen Li, University of Queensland > University of Hamburg “Fluorescent Semiconductor Nanowires”

science.qld.gov.au

279