Simulation, Modelling and Analysis for Research and Teaching (SMART)

SMART is a world-class $61 million comprehensive Research and Training Infrastructure Facility of integrated laboratories that will transform the way that infrastructure-related disciplines are taught and researched.

It will promote research collaboration across traditional disciplines; increase and expand research capacity; stimulate collaboration with industry, government and research institutions; and provide an independent, comprehensive, multi-disciplinary facility for holistic and evidence-based evaluation of infrastructure.

The University of Wollongong will also apply its acclaimed practices for teaching excellence to a new multi-disciplinary model for educating the next generation of infrastructure professionals at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional levels.

Complex questions

Crucial to Australia’s social, economic and environmental prosperity is the reliable operation of its complex web of interdependent infrastructure (rail, air, telecommunications, road, shipping, power, water, etc). Although these systems constitute the basic fabric of our society, their complexities and interdependencies (physical, cyber, geographical or logical) are often poorly understood and rarely researched or taught comprehensively. 

Yet, improved attention is clearly required to evaluate infrastructure performance, improve research, identify and develop opportunities, optimise priorities for investment and produce graduates skilled to meet the challenges of infrastructure. The University is establishing a facility that, through its teaching and research programs, addresses these infrastructure opportunities and provides for efficient, innovative and smart solutions, for the present and into the future.

The provision of resilient infrastructure is one of the most critical challenges facing the developed world. As shown, for example, on the Engineers Australia’s 2005 Australian Infrastructure Report Card.

This report card is against a backdrop of additional issues - climate change, security concerns and the specific problems of our rural and regional areas. 

Awareness of these issues, and a commitment to address them, is growing but the education sector, including universities, has only provided piecemeal responses. Several Australian universities have expertise in infrastructure (which we define as a holistic field of study encompassing Engineering, ICT, Science, Commerce etc) but all tend to be specialists in niche areas and none has sought to address its complex interdependent nature. 

Even research, with its subsequent promotion of specific solutions, runs counter to the pursuit of an integrated response.

The Problem

Each institution may be able to contribute to solving a very specific problem but no individual institution addresses the issues holistically. Even the sector as a whole is not well positioned to address infrastructure challenges of the future. 

Read more about the problem.

The Solution

The University of Wollongong, with the support of the Higher Education Endowment Fund, is filling this gap by integrating infrastructure teaching and research. 

Read more about the solution.