Profile

Andrea Turner

• Chief Investigator
• University of Technology Sydney

Andrea is a chartered civil engineer with a postgraduate degree in environmental engineering from Imperial College, London. She has over 25 years of international research and engineering experience in water, wastewater and organic waste resource management having worked in the UK, Hong Kong and Australia.

Since joining the Institute, Andrea has managed and been the key researcher on a wide range of projects for industry partners across Australia and internationally and written numerous publicly available reports, guides and papers to aid knowledge transfer.

She has been involved in all stages of strategic planning and decision making using integrated resource planning/least cost planning for water service provision. These including for example: strategic long term and drought response planning; survey design and analysis; detailed demand forecasting using sector and end use analysis; efficiency options design, analysis and costing; development of pilot studies, implementation/budget plans; and evaluation of savings from implemented efficiency programs. Andrea has worked with water service providers in most major cities and many regional centres as well as the international and national water associations to develop guides, training, models and tools to aid the water industry.

Andrea has also been involved in research more broadly, leading projects associated with smart meters, energy efficiency, distributed systems and water recycling. Over recent years Andrea has shifted her attention to research in food waste and broader urban organic waste management including the emerging circular economy and convergence of the water and solid waste sectors. She has worked with the NSW EPA/DPIE, Sydney Water, Flow Systems, Inner West Council, City of Sydney and anaerobic digestor and vacuum specialists on collaborative research projects. These have ranged from building scale feasibility studies, resource mapping and options design and assessment for council areas to industry workshops on how to transition to more sustainable urban organics waste management. She has authored several industry reports on urban organic waste management and the circular economy and presented the research in multiple industry fora to aid knowledge sharing as part of her current PhD research.