Aura is Australia’s largest ever masterplanned community under single ownership and it will become the first new city in Australia to be designed and constructed to some of the world’s highest and most stringent environmental and sustainability standards.  The project will take some 30 years to implement and will see the creation of more than 20,000 homes as well as a city centre and retail hub, significant urban parkland areas, elite sporting and performance precincts, numerous schools and education centres and two business and enterprise parks.

Water Technology personnel have been closely involved in the conceptualisation and design of the integrated water cycle management (IWCM) regime that is being implemented at Aura.  This involvement has included initial desktop opportunity and constraint assessments, subsequent prototype modelling using the eWater CRC Urban Developer software package and finally a rigorous systems analysis of the complete water and wastewater network at Aura.  The systems analysis, conducted with Prof Peter Coombes of Urban Water Cycle Solutions, assessed a range of potential water management configurations, including ‘conventional’ water supply/wastewater, a ‘third pipe’ recycled water system and various alternatives of the proposed site IWCM configuration.