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Waste is a symbol of inefficiency in modern society and represents misallocated resources.This paper outlines an ongoing interdisciplinary research project entitled ‘Integrated ETWW demand forecasting and scenario planning for low-carbon precincts’ and reports on first findings and a literature review. This large multi-stakeholder research project has been designed to develop a shared platform for integrated ETWW (energy,transport, waste, and water) planning in a low-carbon urban future, focusing on synergies and alternative approaches to urban planning. The aim of the project is to develop a holistic integrated software tool for demand forecasting and scenario evaluation for residential precincts covering the four domains (ETWW), using identified commonalities in data requirements and model formulation. The authors of this paper are overseeing the waste domain, while other researchers in the team have expertise in the remaining domains.A major component of the project will be developing a method for including the impacts of household behaviour change in demand forecasting. In this way the overall carbon impacts of urban developments or redevelopments of existing precincts can be assessed effectively and efficiently. The resulting tool will allow urban planners,municipalities, and developers to assess the future total demands for energy, transport,waste, and water while in the planning phase. The tool will also help to assess waste management performance and materials flow in relation to energy and water consumption and travel behaviour, supporting the design and management of urbansystems in different city contexts. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Prefabricated engineered solid wood panel construction systems can sequester and store CO2. Modular cross-laminated timber (CLT, also called cross-lam) panels form the basis of low-carbon, engineered construction systems using solid wood panels that can be used to build residential infill developments of 10 storeys or higher. Multi-apartment buildings of 4 to 10 storeys constructed entirely in timber, such as recently in Europe, are innovative, but their social and cultural acceptance in Australia and North America is at this stage still uncertain. Commercial utilisation is only possible if there is a demand and user acceptance. This paper explores the opportunities offered by an innovative low carbon construction system using cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels to improve the design and delivery of urban infill housing. CLT construction has been developed around 1996 in Austria: layers of timber boards are glued crosswise in different directions to increase loadbearing capacity. The paper describes a multi-disciplinary research project into cross-laminated timber panels which aims to transform the Australian construction and development industry, involving a range of key partners. This project will introduce cross-laminated timber panels as a way to build with a lightweight prefabricated low-carbon construction system that is advantageous for urban infill and residential buildings in the range of 4 to 8 stories height. The challenges, research questions and advantages of this new engineered timber system are explained, and a detailed research methodology for further research is presented. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Arup, the global design, engineering, and business consultancy, is the creative force behind many of the world's most innovative and sustainable buildings and transport and civil engineering projects. Founded over 60 years ago, Arup has operated in China for more than three decades, and almost a quarter of their worldwide staff of 9,000 is based in Hong Kong and China. Arup was initially commissioned by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation in 2006 to put forward concept proposals for a new sustainable city: Wanzhuang Eco-City, located in Hebei Province. Plans for the 80 sq km site are now being guided by a Development Strategy, the Preliminary Control Plan and Sustainability Design Guidelines. British engineer Peter Head has been a director at Arup since 2004 and is based in London. He is chairman of global planning and leads the company's planning and integrated urbanism business, which includes development planning, economics and policy, integrated urbanism, transport and environmental consulting and sustainable development. In his early career, Peter worked at the forefront of steel bridge technology, and in 1998 he was awarded an OBE for his services to bridge engineering. He is also chairman of the Steel Construction Institute. Peter was appointed a Commissioner on the London Sustainable Development Commission in 2002, representing the construction sector. There, he was a member of the group that drafted the Sustainable Development Framework for London, which led an initiative to create a voluntary code of practice for sustainable planning, design, and construction of London's built environment. For the last decade or so, Peter has been dedicated to overthrowing the notion that urbanization is inevitably the fast track to environmental collapse. Specifically, he is fighting to ensure that a growing number of the world's mega cities, and the associated mega projects, embrace sustainability principles from the outset. From 2004 to 2008 he was project director for the Dongtan Eco-City project near Shanghai, a project that has recently stalled. Over the last five years, Peter Head has lectured all over the world on sustainable development and the transformation of cities. He gave the 2008–9 Brunel Lecture Series for the Institution of Civil Engineers, titled “Entering the Ecological Age,” which he presented in twenty countries. The Brunel Lecture looked, in detail, as to whether there is a model that would enable 9 billion people to live sustainably on Earth in 2050. It asked which policies and investments would be needed to achieve this and whether it could be done without damaging the economy. In focusing on this ecological transition Pet Steffen Lehmann met with Peter Head at the IGBC Conference in Singapore in October 2009 (where they were both speakers) that discussed the world crises caused by climate change, food and water shortages, and resource constraint problems. Steffen asked Peter what the planner's and engineer's role will be in the cities' transformation to sustainable urbanism. Particularly, how such urban concepts and technologies could be scaled to fit the world's most populous country, China? Here are excerpts from their conversation.

This is a research paper with a focus on technical aspects of timber and on recent case studies, discussing the use of timber as multi-frame for multi-level residential buildings in Europe. The authors see this as a relevant topic within the context of the current environmental debate and the use of sustainable materials and construction methods. The conclusion suggests that timber is a high performance construction material adequate for multi-storey residential buildings, even in an urban context.