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Darwin-Living-Lab-Symposium-2019-Panel-Discussion-2-Global-Future-Cities-and-resilience-initiativesTranscript
Darwin Living Lab Symposium 2019. Panel Discussion 2_ Global Future Cities and resilience initiatives
[Image appears of the Panel members from left to right Jessica, Zee Kin Yeong, Jude Scott and Guy Barnett sitting on chairs on the platform facing the camera and Chris standing at the podium talking]
Chris: Who would like to start? Tim.
[Image changes to show the Panel and Chris inset on a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Tim: Yes, I’m not sure who this is directed at but we had a conversation around I guess looking at things from the past and what that might mean and just around the, I guess, the heat aspects of, you know, living in Darwin and things getting hotter. And I guess we had a conversation around siestas and, you know, maybe starting to think about being nocturnal creatures to some extent, coming out at night.
But maybe it’s a, maybe it’s just a question, I don’t know, Jessica, if you know, like just thinking about, you know, indigenous cultures and digging things up from the past and past experiences of living in the region here around Darwin, you know, are there any kind of, you know, hidden gems there in terms of the way that, you know, the indigenous population use to kind of live and any tips and bits of advice there? Maybe siestas are 50,000 years old, I don’t know.
[Image changes to show a close view of Jessica on the left talking into a hand held microphone while Zee Kin sits on the right listening]
Jessica: Thanks for your question. I think there’s a lot we can learn from looking back as well. And I guess a lot of the ranger groups around northern Australia have been trying to bring those land management activities back into practice. So that’s your carbon offset programmes with the fire burning, having that more traditional and cultural value in that. And I guess, yeah looking into weed management but yeah I don’t really have too much else on that one.
[Image shows Jessica passing the microphone to Zee Kin and then the image shows Zee Kin talking and Jessica listening on the left]
Zee Kin Yeong: Maybe, I share a bit about where I come from. It’s very similar weather patterns right. One of the things that struck me is architecture, how buildings are designed and how they’re built. When the British came and they started building the colony, bungalows and all those architecture, I thought they got it right because if you walked into one of these older buildings, high ceilings with ventilation at the top, right, you don’t need fans. They were not built for air conditioning but you felt cool within the building, right. And, and I had the privilege of working in an older Courts building which was built like that. It was seven stories tall, only the court rooms were airconditioned but in the atrium all the walkways outside, no air conditioning. You could be in a suit walking around, having conversations, going about your business and you did not feel warm.
And then I had the privilege of working in a newer building where it was a glasshouse, right, glass all around, built with air conditioning in mind, and if I went back on a weekend and the air conditioning wasn’t on it was impossible to stay in there for too long. So, I think that some of these buildings, the designs, I think do actually play a part and I’m wondering whether we lost something along the way or whether we changed some fundamental assumptions when we are planning for our cities and buildings nowadays where we rely a lot on technology, on air conditioning, and whether it might actually be worth thinking about, learning from the past and seeing whether some of these architectural features can come back and help and be part of our urban planning or urban cooling strategies.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated and Chris at the podium listening and then the image changes to being inset on the screen and a wave form appears across the bottom of the screen]
Penny Testoola: Hi, Penny Testoola again. Older person, interested citizen. I really take what you say with that Zee Kin and one of the questions that I was going to put and I was waiting for an appropriate time was really about the construction of the new Western Hotel that’s going to be going up on our boundary. And I wonder if there’s an opportunity maybe for this Darwin Living Lab to have some sort of input.
The architecture, there’s no windows, no balconies at all on the east facing side, enormous balconies on the… oh not enormous but every room has a balcony on the west facing side which that’s when the heat is going to be generated in the afternoon. There’s very few overhangs that I can see from any of the pictures and information that’s being sought.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated and Chris at the podium listening inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
It’s maybe been planned by architects from China. It’s a Chinese company where it’s not weather appropriate to what Darwin’s weather is and I wonder if maybe an association like the CSIRO Living Lab could look at the plans and say, “Hey, we can do a better, more tropical job with this”, more shade, balconies on the east. I mean sunrises here are magnificent and the mornings are beautiful to sit outside on your… I’ve got a west facing balcony which I can’t be on for three hours in the afternoon but in the mornings and right through until 3.00pm when the sun starts appearing over the edge of the apartment above me it is absolutely beautiful out there. I don’t need air conditioning in my place. I’ve got tremendous air flow. So, I just think that maybe sometimes when new companies come to town and want to stick their ideas on top they might need a bit of help. So, any architects in the room?
[Image shows Jude handing the microphone to Guy while the Panel and Chris look on and then the camera zooms in on Guy talking into the microphone while Jude listens]
Guy Barnett: I think just a, just a quick response to that one. We’re going to hear in the, the next session talk about Your Tropical City website that’s being developed which, I guess, has at the heart of it the idea of capturing all that information and knowledge about, you know, passive design and appropriate, climate appropriate design for Darwin and making that information much more accessible to, to a range of different people. So, I won’t steal Steve’s thunder but he’s going to be talking about that in the next session.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated listening and Chris standing at the podium listening inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen at the bottom of the screen]
Shenna: I’m Shenna from City of Darwin. So, Zee Kin, this is a question for you and it relates to your presentation but also to your comment about the older style buildings and how they didn’t, they were designed specifically not for air conditioning because it wasn’t really around, and with the increased reliance on technologies, so big screens like this, computers, data centres, server rooms, I mean those are the things that require the cooling much more than humans do.
So, another person asked a question in an earlier session saying, you know, that humans, it’s quite pleasant to sit in a room and be at 24 degrees but computer server rooms generally require a lot less, and we all sit with little heat boxes on our desks that are computers. So, I’m just interested in your experience with the rise of data and technology in our workplaces and in our homes, how that sits then with a desire to move back towards more traditional forms of architecture that lend themselves to passive cooling?
[Image changes to show a close view of Zee Kin talking into the microphone on the right while Jessica sits listening on the left of the screen]
Zee Kin Yeong: Yep, thanks for the question. I, architecture isn’t really what I know. I was just commenting on the stuff I kind of like experienced growing up. Thank you for the question because it actually allows me to talk about two things that we are doing right, use of data for cooling. So, one of the things that you, you probably would kind of can guess if not know, there are lots of data centres in Singapore, lots and lots of data centres in Singapore.
So, one of the big problems of houses, how do we keep them cool? Right, you’re right, the optimal temperature, I’ve been into my own server room before right, they keep it below 20 degrees because that’s the best temperature to do it. So, I know that there were two exp… two things that we’ve been looking at, one, about three things. One, how do you design data centres, right, for the tropics?
[Image continues to show a close view of Zee Kin talking into the microphone on the right while Jessica sits listening on the left of the screen]
And when my friend first told me about these experiments and this research that he wanted to embark on I was surprised because you, you always think of data centres to be, you know, big, flat buildings, enclosed with air conditioning. But his idea was that, actually if you think about how to build it properly and optimise the air flow, you can reduce the amount of electricity that’s required to cool the place. So, there is an, there is a research going on about tropical data centres. I haven’t been updated since I had a conversation with him a year and a half ago but that’s, that’s the thing, building the centre.
The other thing that, that if you go on the IMDA website, you’ll be able to download a open source model, right, which was made available after we ran some projects on how to use AI monitor the cooling of data centres, present data centres, and we give urban model for managing the temperature. Right, so that’s again data driven, right, about what you can do to optimise the cooling of the data centre.
[Image continues to show a close view of Zee Kin talking into the microphone on the right while Jessica sits listening on the left of the screen]
But the last one I can talk about which I heard in some conversations was, well, what about floating data centres? So, it kind of like pushes us to think about that, right. If, if you have a data centre, you try to cool it, right, how do you cool it? You cool it with air conditioning but how is heat diverted, through coolings and eventually the heat is discharged through a reservoir and eventually goes into the sea. So, what about instead of trying to place data centres near the sea, what about in the sea? Right, can you do that, would that help with cooling?
So, again I know that there are some discussions talking about floating data centres and using the sea currents to cool, right. Now, I don’t know what this is but, where the extent of those research but I guess the point I want to bring out is really that there are certain design assumptions we can’t break away from and until we really get super-efficient compute power you still need to cool the CPUs. Right, data centres need to be cooled but if you thought about it, understood the science, understood the use of data, we can start being innovative about how we can be more efficient in the way we are planning for this kind of a, these kind of things.
[Image changes to show the Panel on the left seated listening and Chris can be seen talking at the podium]
Chris: Do we have any other questions, or answers to the questions that were asked earlier? I heard a lot of discussion. Was the discussion about answering the questions or getting to know each other?
[Image changes to show the Panel seated listening and Chris listening at the podium inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Male 1: Yes so, I guess it’s like, so I used to work as a mechanical ventilation engineer for the Department of Infrastructure and I guess just to kind of answer some of the questions about data centres. In respect to cooling loads, the majority of it is driven by people, especially what I… I asked a question to, to Mat earlier about outdoor ventilation requirements for commercial spaces like for example, the school down the road, Darwin High School, it has a cooling load of maybe around 10 to 15 megawatts and that’s all trying to keep kids cool. That’s probably maybe the third or fourth biggest installation in Darwin in terms of cooling. So, I don’t think that data centres are really in terms of heat load is really that significant. I think you’re really looking at commercial spaces and outdoor ventilation requirements for humans.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated on the left on the stage and Chris talking at the podium on the right and gesturing towards the back of the room]
Chris: We’ve got one right up the back.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated listening and Chris standing at the podium inset on a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Lillee: Hi, Lillee from the Office of the Chief Minister. This is really driven by one of the comments that was brought up in a recent visit to Singapore where I was incredibly impressed by some of the examples around bio-mimicry in buildings. So, design concepts from nature which are integrated into architecture which mean that it’s extremely contextually relevant in terms of efficient buildings but also climate resilient cities. What examples have people on the Panel got in terms of bio-mimicry being integrated into resilient city design and is it a concept that’s spoken about a lot? I read about it a couple of years ago and I haven’t read a lot about it since so I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated and passing the microphone to Guy and Chris can be seen listening at the podium and the camera zooms in on Guy talking on the right and Jude listening]
Guy Barnett: Yeah, I can’t profess to be an expert in that area by, by any stretch of the imagination but it’s, it certainly is an interesting area and there, there are lots of conversations around it. There’s a related, sort of, concept of biophilia just around the connections between, sort of, people and nature. I don’t work specifically in kind of the, the building design space, so I’m not sure of, sort of examples of biomimicry in, in that case but there’s this notion of sort of regenerative design that’s coming in now as well which is kind of related.
So, it’s really about seeing the way that we sort of plan and design cities and build buildings, having a positive impact on the environment rather than, than a negative one and using sort of a range of different sort of technologies and approaches to be able to do that. So, I think there’s probably a few architects in the room that might have a better understanding of those sorts of issues than I. So, is there anyone on the floor that wants to respond to that as well from an architecture perspective?
[Image changes to show the Panel seated listening and Guy can be seen speaking into the microphone and Chris can be seen listening at the podium]
No. Yeah, well I’ll leave it there. I can’t add any more, sorry.
[Image changes to show the Panel and Chris listening inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen moving across the bottom of the screen]
Shar Molloy: Shar Molloy, the Environment Centre NT. This is not a political question at all, just a very curious one. So, I’m a member of a, a Facebook chat that’s about the weather and the weather in Darwin and the Northern Territory and there was a question yesterday on that Facebook with probably about 60 different responses and answers. But it would seem like, particularly in the build up time, that there’s less rain that makes it to Darwin. So, we kind of watch, you know, these amazing weather systems of rain come over near Berry Springs, and it looks like it’s going to head to Darwin and then it just kind of breaks off.
And there was some kind of, there was also some conjecture that once it actually reaches the airport as well, and so we saw before that the airport was one of those kind of heat zones. So, I’m curious if over time that the increased temperature of the heat zones around Darwin actually kind of impacts those rain events, particularly in the build up? I mean it’s a bit different in the monsoon because it’s coming from a different direction. So, yeah, has there been… I’m looking at Jude, so yeah has there been any data around that? Because it does seem like there’s less, less rain even just in you know the kind of few years I’ve been here in Darwin during that, that build up time.
[Image changes to show a close view of Jude talking into the microphone on the left while Guy sits on the right listening]
Jude Scott: Was it Pilco’s?
Shar Molloy: Yes.
Jude Scott: It’s, it’s not to do with heat. It is very much a factor. So, you will see that the average rainfall in Darwin in the build up is less than it is in remote areas because those storms form inland from the heat that’s generated really through solar warming rather than through, there wouldn’t be enough from the built atmosphere to generate the kind of storms that we see form. But it’s really, you can blame the sea breeze. Yep, so when the sea breeze pushes in from the north west, and that can happen as early as, you know, late morning, but more often than not it would be early in the afternoon and so the sea breeze really prevents those storms from coming any further towards Darwin. So, come the monsoon, that’s the time when Darwin and the northern suburbs catch up and the annual rainfall in rural areas and in Darwin City tends to even out.
[Image changes to show the Panel and Chris inset listening in a blue screen while a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Shar Molloy: Has there been a change in that sea breeze though [17.24] or has that always…?
[Image changes to show a close view of Jude talking into the microphone on the left and Guy listening on the right]
Jude Scott: Look it’s, the, the sea breeze, it’s really just to do with the variability year on year of the weather and that’s going to be driven by the climate factors that are at play in any given year. So, for example whether we’ve got an El Niño, La Niña event or as we have at the moment a very strongly positive Indian Ocean dipole, which is the Indian Ocean version of ENSO, and so that is driving the much hotter than average conditions, certainly that we’re experiencing, but also through Australia and has been for the past, since kind of June, July was when the impacts of Positive IOD kicked in.
So, it’s more the individual climate drivers that are causing those different weather patterns year on year. And as far as the, the impact of the, you know, changing, changing world, we… I did have a read up on this before I came. So, the, there will be, the prediction with climate change is that we will see more Positive IOD events because that’s based on the sea surface temperature in two parts of the world and as that changes it creates a mass wide air circulation that drives our weather. So, positive IODs are bad news for Australia.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated listening and Chris standing at the podium and then the image changes to show the Panel and Chris inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen]
Steve Newland: Hello, Steve Newland, Department of Trade, Business and Innovation. One hundred and eighty years ago, HMS Beagle came into the Darwin Harbour and consequently we have Darwin where it is now. If we could have gone back to then with the knowledge we’ve got today, did they make a good choice on siting the capital of the Northern Territory where it is considering artificial intelligence now, what we know about renewable energy, etc.? Any comments on that?
[Laughter can be heard and the image changes to show the Panel seated on the stage looking at each other and laughing and the camera zooms in on Jude and Guy]
[Image shows Jude talking into the microphone on the left and Guy listening on the right]
Jude Scott: Well, with the pattern, it depends what you’re looking for I guess. If you were hoping for a little bit more rainfall then we could have been sort of a little bit south west of where we are in a coastal spot would probably have been, would have been better in terms of rainfall because at the build-up time of year anyway because a lot of the winds, the steering winds of the storms come from the east. So, that’s another reason why you see the storms kind of form inland and then travel east, just missing the Darwin City peninsula, Darwin City and the northern suburbs. So, perhaps a little bit, sort of yeah, south west would have been better. Anyone else?
[Image shows Chris adjusting the microphone at the podium on the right and talking while the Panel listen while seated on the left of the screen]
Chris: Any other questions from the floor? Nerida.
[Image changes to show the Panel and Chris inset listening in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Nerida: Thank you Chris. Yeah, I had a question for Jess actually. The question that you posed to the floor was about using more traditional methods of knowing, ways of knowing and integrating those into sort of urban development. I’m just wondering if you had, if you wanted to share some ideas that you might have about what that might look like and how we might go forward to do that?
[Image changes to show a close view of Jess talking into a handheld microphone on the left and Zee Kin on the right listening]
Jessica: Yep, I guess there’s been, what’s the word I’m looking for? There’s been demonstrations in other countries around the world with the indigenous communities. I guess the, not so much going back to the traditional ways but adapting to the changing climate and that’s, there’s been some examples, I think, in Bangladesh where villages are doing floating vegetation to protect from flooding, and there’s been examples in Vietnam, Vietnam, where communities are planting more mangoes to stop from storm surges. But, yeah I guess that’s something that needs a bit more collaboration.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated on the left of the screen and Chris talking into the microphone at the podium on the right of the screen]
Chris: Alright, I think actually… no we have another one, yes.
[Image changes to show the Panel and Chris listening inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Tom: Sorry, my name’s Tom. I’m from, because I am an architect so I don’t actually have any comment on biomimicry sorry. I don’t actually know too much about it so I don’t want to pretend. My question maybe is for Jess as well. With the recent fires down south, whether there’s anything we can learn from indigenous fire management if, you know, if we can have any lessons from that to sort of prevent some huge burns that are happening down there at the moment.
[Image changes to show a close view of Jess talking into the microphone on the left and Zee Kin listening on the right]
Jessica: Yep, I guess there’s been a lot of talk about with the drought and how that’s not been helping with anything but I guess it’s just going back to the traditional burning and early burning of that and I know a lot of the states have already been implementing that. So, yeah I guess it just makes it an extra layer of difficulty with the changing climate and droughts.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated on the left listening and Chris talking into the microphone at the podium on the right]
Chris: OK, I think we’re in the afternoon slump and that people need some caffeine and some sugar. And so, what we might actually do is release you all to get some caffeine and sugar but take the opportunity to maybe play some of the videos that we didn’t actually play earlier. So, please grab something to keep you going but come back and actually see some of the excellent videos that our colleagues from overseas produced. Oh, and eat the fruit, apparently that’s healthier for us and we’ll learn more about that this afternoon.
[Image changes to show a black screen and text appears: To find out more, visit research.csiro,au/darwinlivinglab]
[Image changes to show a white screen and the CSIRO logo and text appears: CSIRO, Australia’s National Science Agency]
[Image appears of the Panel members from left to right Jessica, Zee Kin Yeong, Jude Scott and Guy Barnett sitting on chairs on the platform facing the camera and Chris standing at the podium talking]
Chris: Who would like to start? Tim.
[Image changes to show the Panel and Chris inset on a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Tim: Yes, I’m not sure who this is directed at but we had a conversation around I guess looking at things from the past and what that might mean and just around the, I guess, the heat aspects of, you know, living in Darwin and things getting hotter. And I guess we had a conversation around siestas and, you know, maybe starting to think about being nocturnal creatures to some extent, coming out at night.
But maybe it’s a, maybe it’s just a question, I don’t know, Jessica, if you know, like just thinking about, you know, indigenous cultures and digging things up from the past and past experiences of living in the region here around Darwin, you know, are there any kind of, you know, hidden gems there in terms of the way that, you know, the indigenous population use to kind of live and any tips and bits of advice there? Maybe siestas are 50,000 years old, I don’t know.
[Image changes to show a close view of Jessica on the left talking into a hand held microphone while Zee Kin sits on the right listening]
Jessica: Thanks for your question. I think there’s a lot we can learn from looking back as well. And I guess a lot of the ranger groups around northern Australia have been trying to bring those land management activities back into practice. So that’s your carbon offset programmes with the fire burning, having that more traditional and cultural value in that. And I guess, yeah looking into weed management but yeah I don’t really have too much else on that one.
[Image shows Jessica passing the microphone to Zee Kin and then the image shows Zee Kin talking and Jessica listening on the left]
Zee Kin Yeong: Maybe, I share a bit about where I come from. It’s very similar weather patterns right. One of the things that struck me is architecture, how buildings are designed and how they’re built. When the British came and they started building the colony, bungalows and all those architecture, I thought they got it right because if you walked into one of these older buildings, high ceilings with ventilation at the top, right, you don’t need fans. They were not built for air conditioning but you felt cool within the building, right. And, and I had the privilege of working in an older Courts building which was built like that. It was seven stories tall, only the court rooms were airconditioned but in the atrium all the walkways outside, no air conditioning. You could be in a suit walking around, having conversations, going about your business and you did not feel warm.
And then I had the privilege of working in a newer building where it was a glasshouse, right, glass all around, built with air conditioning in mind, and if I went back on a weekend and the air conditioning wasn’t on it was impossible to stay in there for too long. So, I think that some of these buildings, the designs, I think do actually play a part and I’m wondering whether we lost something along the way or whether we changed some fundamental assumptions when we are planning for our cities and buildings nowadays where we rely a lot on technology, on air conditioning, and whether it might actually be worth thinking about, learning from the past and seeing whether some of these architectural features can come back and help and be part of our urban planning or urban cooling strategies.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated and Chris at the podium listening and then the image changes to being inset on the screen and a wave form appears across the bottom of the screen]
Penny Testoola: Hi, Penny Testoola again. Older person, interested citizen. I really take what you say with that Zee Kin and one of the questions that I was going to put and I was waiting for an appropriate time was really about the construction of the new Western Hotel that’s going to be going up on our boundary. And I wonder if there’s an opportunity maybe for this Darwin Living Lab to have some sort of input.
The architecture, there’s no windows, no balconies at all on the east facing side, enormous balconies on the… oh not enormous but every room has a balcony on the west facing side which that’s when the heat is going to be generated in the afternoon. There’s very few overhangs that I can see from any of the pictures and information that’s being sought.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated and Chris at the podium listening inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
It’s maybe been planned by architects from China. It’s a Chinese company where it’s not weather appropriate to what Darwin’s weather is and I wonder if maybe an association like the CSIRO Living Lab could look at the plans and say, “Hey, we can do a better, more tropical job with this”, more shade, balconies on the east. I mean sunrises here are magnificent and the mornings are beautiful to sit outside on your… I’ve got a west facing balcony which I can’t be on for three hours in the afternoon but in the mornings and right through until 3.00pm when the sun starts appearing over the edge of the apartment above me it is absolutely beautiful out there. I don’t need air conditioning in my place. I’ve got tremendous air flow. So, I just think that maybe sometimes when new companies come to town and want to stick their ideas on top they might need a bit of help. So, any architects in the room?
[Image shows Jude handing the microphone to Guy while the Panel and Chris look on and then the camera zooms in on Guy talking into the microphone while Jude listens]
Guy Barnett: I think just a, just a quick response to that one. We’re going to hear in the, the next session talk about Your Tropical City website that’s being developed which, I guess, has at the heart of it the idea of capturing all that information and knowledge about, you know, passive design and appropriate, climate appropriate design for Darwin and making that information much more accessible to, to a range of different people. So, I won’t steal Steve’s thunder but he’s going to be talking about that in the next session.
[Image changes to show the Panel seated listening and Chris standing at the podium listening inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen at the bottom of the screen]
Shenna: I’m Shenna from City of Darwin. So, Zee Kin, this is a question for you and it relates to your presentation but also to your comment about the older style buildings and how they didn’t, they were designed specifically not for air conditioning because it wasn’t really around, and with the increased reliance on technologies, so big screens like this, computers, data centres, server rooms, I mean those are the things that require the cooling much more than humans do.
So, another person asked a question in an earlier session saying, you know, that humans, it’s quite pleasant to sit in a room and be at 24 degrees but computer server rooms generally require a lot less, and we all sit with little heat boxes on our desks that are computers. So, I’m just interested in your experience with the rise of data and technology in our workplaces and in our homes, how that sits then with a desire to move back towards more traditional forms of architecture that lend themselves to passive cooling?
[Image changes to show a close view of Zee Kin talking into the microphone on the right while Jessica sits listening on the left of the screen]
Zee Kin Yeong: Yep, thanks for the question. I, architecture isn’t really what I know. I was just commenting on the stuff I kind of like experienced growing up. Thank you for the question because it actually allows me to talk about two things that we are doing right, use of data for cooling. So, one of the things that you, you probably would kind of can guess if not know, there are lots of data centres in Singapore, lots and lots of data centres in Singapore.
So, one of the big problems of houses, how do we keep them cool? Right, you’re right, the optimal temperature, I’ve been into my own server room before right, they keep it below 20 degrees because that’s the best temperature to do it. So, I know that there were two exp… two things that we’ve been looking at, one, about three things. One, how do you design data centres, right, for the tropics?
[Image continues to show a close view of Zee Kin talking into the microphone on the right while Jessica sits listening on the left of the screen]
And when my friend first told me about these experiments and this research that he wanted to embark on I was surprised because you, you always think of data centres to be, you know, big, flat buildings, enclosed with air conditioning. But his idea was that, actually if you think about how to build it properly and optimise the air flow, you can reduce the amount of electricity that’s required to cool the place. So, there is an, there is a research going on about tropical data centres. I haven’t been updated since I had a conversation with him a year and a half ago but that’s, that’s the thing, building the centre.
The other thing that, that if you go on the IMDA website, you’ll be able to download a open source model, right, which was made available after we ran some projects on how to use AI monitor the cooling of data centres, present data centres, and we give urban model for managing the temperature. Right, so that’s again data driven, right, about what you can do to optimise the cooling of the data centre.
[Image continues to show a close view of Zee Kin talking into the microphone on the right while Jessica sits listening on the left of the screen]
But the last one I can talk about which I heard in some conversations was, well, what about floating data centres? So, it kind of like pushes us to think about that, right. If, if you have a data centre, you try to cool it, right, how do you cool it? You cool it with air conditioning but how is heat diverted, through coolings and eventually the heat is discharged through a reservoir and eventually goes into the sea. So, what about instead of trying to place data centres near the sea, what about in the sea? Right, can you do that, would that help with cooling?
So, again I know that there are some discussions talking about floating data centres and using the sea currents to cool, right. Now, I don’t know what this is but, where the extent of those research but I guess the point I want to bring out is really that there are certain design assumptions we can’t break away from and until we really get super-efficient compute power you still need to cool the CPUs. Right, data centres need to be cooled but if you thought about it, understood the science, understood the use of data, we can start being innovative about how we can be more efficient in the way we are planning for this kind of a, these kind of things.
[Image changes to show the Panel on the left seated listening and Chris can be seen talking at the podium]
Chris: Do we have any other questions, or answers to the questions that were asked earlier? I heard a lot of discussion. Was the discussion about answering the questions or getting to know each other?
[Image changes to show the Panel seated listening and Chris listening at the podium inset in a blue screen and a wave form can be seen travelling across the bottom of the screen]
Male 1: Yes so, I guess it’s like, so I used to work as a mechanical ventilation engineer for the Department of Infrastructure and I guess just to kind of answer some of the questions about data centres. In respect to cooling loads, the majority of it is driven by people, especially what I… I asked a question to, to Mat earlier about outdoor ventilation requirements for commercial spaces like for example, the school down the road, Darwin High School, it has a cooling load of maybe around 10 to 15 megawatts and that’s all trying to keep kids cool. That’s probably maybe the third or fourth biggest installation in Darwin in terms of cooling. So, I don’t think that data centres are really in terms of heat load is really that significant. I think you’re really looking at commercial spaces and outdoor ventilation requirements for humans.
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Chris: We’ve got one right up the back.
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Lillee: Hi, Lillee from the Office of the Chief Minister. This is really driven by one of the comments that was brought up in a recent visit to Singapore where I was incredibly impressed by some of the examples around bio-mimicry in buildings. So, design concepts from nature which are integrated into architecture which mean that it’s extremely contextually relevant in terms of efficient buildings but also climate resilient cities. What examples have people on the Panel got in terms of bio-mimicry being integrated into resilient city design and is it a concept that’s spoken about a lot? I read about it a couple of years ago and I haven’t read a lot about it since so I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts.
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Guy Barnett: Yeah, I can’t profess to be an expert in that area by, by any stretch of the imagination but it’s, it certainly is an interesting area and there, there are lots of conversations around it. There’s a related, sort of, concept of biophilia just around the connections between, sort of, people and nature. I don’t work specifically in kind of the, the building design space, so I’m not sure of, sort of examples of biomimicry in, in that case but there’s this notion of sort of regenerative design that’s coming in now as well which is kind of related.
So, it’s really about seeing the way that we sort of plan and design cities and build buildings, having a positive impact on the environment rather than, than a negative one and using sort of a range of different sort of technologies and approaches to be able to do that. So, I think there’s probably a few architects in the room that might have a better understanding of those sorts of issues than I. So, is there anyone on the floor that wants to respond to that as well from an architecture perspective?
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No. Yeah, well I’ll leave it there. I can’t add any more, sorry.
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Shar Molloy: Shar Molloy, the Environment Centre NT. This is not a political question at all, just a very curious one. So, I’m a member of a, a Facebook chat that’s about the weather and the weather in Darwin and the Northern Territory and there was a question yesterday on that Facebook with probably about 60 different responses and answers. But it would seem like, particularly in the build up time, that there’s less rain that makes it to Darwin. So, we kind of watch, you know, these amazing weather systems of rain come over near Berry Springs, and it looks like it’s going to head to Darwin and then it just kind of breaks off.
And there was some kind of, there was also some conjecture that once it actually reaches the airport as well, and so we saw before that the airport was one of those kind of heat zones. So, I’m curious if over time that the increased temperature of the heat zones around Darwin actually kind of impacts those rain events, particularly in the build up? I mean it’s a bit different in the monsoon because it’s coming from a different direction. So, yeah, has there been… I’m looking at Jude, so yeah has there been any data around that? Because it does seem like there’s less, less rain even just in you know the kind of few years I’ve been here in Darwin during that, that build up time.
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Jude Scott: Was it Pilco’s?
Shar Molloy: Yes.
Jude Scott: It’s, it’s not to do with heat. It is very much a factor. So, you will see that the average rainfall in Darwin in the build up is less than it is in remote areas because those storms form inland from the heat that’s generated really through solar warming rather than through, there wouldn’t be enough from the built atmosphere to generate the kind of storms that we see form. But it’s really, you can blame the sea breeze. Yep, so when the sea breeze pushes in from the north west, and that can happen as early as, you know, late morning, but more often than not it would be early in the afternoon and so the sea breeze really prevents those storms from coming any further towards Darwin. So, come the monsoon, that’s the time when Darwin and the northern suburbs catch up and the annual rainfall in rural areas and in Darwin City tends to even out.
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Shar Molloy: Has there been a change in that sea breeze though [17.24] or has that always…?
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Jude Scott: Look it’s, the, the sea breeze, it’s really just to do with the variability year on year of the weather and that’s going to be driven by the climate factors that are at play in any given year. So, for example whether we’ve got an El Niño, La Niña event or as we have at the moment a very strongly positive Indian Ocean dipole, which is the Indian Ocean version of ENSO, and so that is driving the much hotter than average conditions, certainly that we’re experiencing, but also through Australia and has been for the past, since kind of June, July was when the impacts of Positive IOD kicked in.
So, it’s more the individual climate drivers that are causing those different weather patterns year on year. And as far as the, the impact of the, you know, changing, changing world, we… I did have a read up on this before I came. So, the, there will be, the prediction with climate change is that we will see more Positive IOD events because that’s based on the sea surface temperature in two parts of the world and as that changes it creates a mass wide air circulation that drives our weather. So, positive IODs are bad news for Australia.
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Steve Newland: Hello, Steve Newland, Department of Trade, Business and Innovation. One hundred and eighty years ago, HMS Beagle came into the Darwin Harbour and consequently we have Darwin where it is now. If we could have gone back to then with the knowledge we’ve got today, did they make a good choice on siting the capital of the Northern Territory where it is considering artificial intelligence now, what we know about renewable energy, etc.? Any comments on that?
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Jude Scott: Well, with the pattern, it depends what you’re looking for I guess. If you were hoping for a little bit more rainfall then we could have been sort of a little bit south west of where we are in a coastal spot would probably have been, would have been better in terms of rainfall because at the build-up time of year anyway because a lot of the winds, the steering winds of the storms come from the east. So, that’s another reason why you see the storms kind of form inland and then travel east, just missing the Darwin City peninsula, Darwin City and the northern suburbs. So, perhaps a little bit, sort of yeah, south west would have been better. Anyone else?
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Chris: Any other questions from the floor? Nerida.
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Nerida: Thank you Chris. Yeah, I had a question for Jess actually. The question that you posed to the floor was about using more traditional methods of knowing, ways of knowing and integrating those into sort of urban development. I’m just wondering if you had, if you wanted to share some ideas that you might have about what that might look like and how we might go forward to do that?
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Jessica: Yep, I guess there’s been, what’s the word I’m looking for? There’s been demonstrations in other countries around the world with the indigenous communities. I guess the, not so much going back to the traditional ways but adapting to the changing climate and that’s, there’s been some examples, I think, in Bangladesh where villages are doing floating vegetation to protect from flooding, and there’s been examples in Vietnam, Vietnam, where communities are planting more mangoes to stop from storm surges. But, yeah I guess that’s something that needs a bit more collaboration.
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Chris: Alright, I think actually… no we have another one, yes.
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Tom: Sorry, my name’s Tom. I’m from, because I am an architect so I don’t actually have any comment on biomimicry sorry. I don’t actually know too much about it so I don’t want to pretend. My question maybe is for Jess as well. With the recent fires down south, whether there’s anything we can learn from indigenous fire management if, you know, if we can have any lessons from that to sort of prevent some huge burns that are happening down there at the moment.
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Jessica: Yep, I guess there’s been a lot of talk about with the drought and how that’s not been helping with anything but I guess it’s just going back to the traditional burning and early burning of that and I know a lot of the states have already been implementing that. So, yeah I guess it just makes it an extra layer of difficulty with the changing climate and droughts.
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Chris: OK, I think we’re in the afternoon slump and that people need some caffeine and some sugar. And so, what we might actually do is release you all to get some caffeine and sugar but take the opportunity to maybe play some of the videos that we didn’t actually play earlier. So, please grab something to keep you going but come back and actually see some of the excellent videos that our colleagues from overseas produced. Oh, and eat the fruit, apparently that’s healthier for us and we’ll learn more about that this afternoon.
[Image changes to show a black screen and text appears: To find out more, visit research.csiro,au/darwinlivinglab]
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