Associate Professor Shirley Gato-Trinidad

PhD candidate and honours supervision

Higher degrees by research

Accredited to supervise Masters & Doctoral students as Principal Supervisor.

PhD topics and outlines

A GIS Approach to an End-use Augmented Modelling of Zone Residential Water Demand: Water resources is limited thus, there is an urgent need to find ways of saving, reusing and recycling water and to develop methodologies to improve water resource management. This research aims to demonstrate an urban scale residential water demand modelling approach within a geographic information system that accounts for both the spatial and temporal characteristics of water demand.

Characterising Urban Demand through Panel Data Analysis: Water demand forecasting is the primary requirement for managing and planning of water supply systems. Many water utilities assume that demand is simply a product of per-capita demand and a population projection which is inadequate under changing conditions. It is recognized that for reliable demand forecast, it is important to evaluate, understand, and model the factors that influence water use.

Establishing relationship between peaking factors and maximum demand: The design of water and wastewater supply systems is traditionally based on maximum water demand which is a function of multiple factors. Understanding these factors and how these affect maximum water demand will lead to the estimation of appropriate peak design factors for a more cost effective design of water and wastewater supply systems. 

Impact of Urban Densification on Water Resources management: Population in the world is growing at a rate of around 0.91% per year in 2024 or an estimate of around 73 million people per year. This would consequently result to urban expansion or densification which would impact the way water supply systems are planned, designed and managed. This research aims to develop a decision support system to sustain liveable urban cities. 

Integration of household rainwater tanks in urban water management: The current focus on rainwater tanks are on savings, reliability & effective sizing. However, some of these studies are conducted hypothetically or based on limited available data. While previous researches show that water savings can be achieved, the effects on peaking factors for water supply system design & on peak flow rates & overland flows for flood mitigation have not been much studied

Operational optimization of Multiple source water supply systems using improved genetic alogrithm models: The progressive integration of alternative sources to existing water supply systems has generated the requirement to develop operational optimization models for multi-source water supply systems; examine & improve optimization methods; evaluate the potential applicability of novel optimization methods & further develop existing models to be able to handle large scale systems & uncertainties.

Honours

Available to supervise honours students.