Engineering education providers should foresee the potential of digital transformation of teaching and skill-developing activities so that graduating engineers can find themselves highly aligned with the demands and attributes needed by prospective industrial employers. The advancement of industrial revolutions towards hybridisation of the enabling technologies recognised by Industry 4.0, Society 5.0, and Industry 5.0 have transformed the components of the engineering higher education system remarkably. Future workforce requirements will demand an employee’s multidisciplinary skill mix and other professional qualities. Implementing human-centric decision-making based on insights from the Digital Twin (DT) systems, sustainability, and lean systems is necessary for further economic growth. Recent barriers identified by the Australian Council of Engineering Deans, the development of teaching capabilities, and affordable and digitally transformed learning facilities by education providers were all considered. This paper explores the role of Digital Twins (DTs) in enhancing engineering higher education by incorporating Industry 4.0 components and other industrial advances. By reviewing curricula, pedagogy, and the evolving skill requirements for engineering graduates, this study identifies key benefits of DTs, such as cost-effectiveness, resource management, and immersive learning experiences. This paper also outlines challenges in implementing DT-based labs, including IT infrastructure, data quality, privacy, and security issues. The findings indicate that engineering education should embrace DTs to foster multidisciplinary skills and human-centric decision-making to meet future workforce demands. Collaboration with industry is highlighted as a crucial factor in the successful transformation of teaching practices and in offering real-world experiences. The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the adoption of DT technologies, demonstrating their utility in minimising educational disruptions. While this paper acknowledges the high potential of DTs to prepare engineering students for future industry demands, it also emphasises the need for professional development among educators to ensure effective and balanced implementation.

While online courses provide opportunities for a range of assessment tools and resources, little is known about how lecturers might best provide assessment cues to support diverse cohorts. This study explored how lecturers communicate messages about assessment expectations to first-year students in two courses at an Australian regional university (Nursing, n = 323; Engineering, n = 153), and how students accessed the assessment resources. A comparative case study methodology was used. Data included interviews with course coordinators to identify the assessment cues provided, course online content related to assessment and data recording student access of assessment resources. Diverse messaging systems were observed and verbal and written cues were abundant and embedded throughout both courses; however, not all students accessed all cues. What remains unclear is how students might bring together these cues in a productive way. Further research must explore the extent to which students can be better supported to improve their learning.

With rapid urbanization, the generation of municipal solid waste is growing, placing ever-increasing pressure on cities to close, remediate and repurpose landfill sites in environmentally sustainable and climate-adaptive ways. Traditional landfill final covers such as compacted clay and geosynthetic systems are intended to limit infiltration; yet their conceptual designs often fail in performance longevity due to effects such as desiccation, settlement, root intrusion, freeze–thaw cycling and extreme rainfall. Phytocapping, or evapotranspiration/store-and-release cover technology is the use of vegetated soil profiles to provide storage for percolating rainfall, return water to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration and support biologically mediated oxidation of methane. Phytocapping is a green-inclusive nature-based climate adaptation strategy for urban landfill closure. This study explores hydrological performance, methane mitigation, ecological co-benefits, economic feasibility, climate sensitivity, monitoring requirements and regulatory barriers linked to phytocapping systems. Field evidence is strongest in Australia and the United States, especially through ACAP- and A-ACAP-style programs, while evidence from humid tropical, monsoon, freeze–thaw and low-resource urban contexts is comparatively lacking. As reported in published studies, well-designed phytocaps can result in reduced percolation compared to traditional clay caps. Reported publications also mention considerable construction-cost savings, depending on site conditions and design assumptions. Methane-related outcomes vary by measurement method and site context, with studies reporting surface flux reductions, methane oxidation and landfill gas attenuation as distinct performance indicators. These advantages are counter-balanced by design uncertainties that vary from site to site, limited long-term monitoring data, climate transferability concerns, and regulatory systems still firmly anchored in prescriptive low-permeability barriers. This review proposes a policy-oriented analytical framework that bridges the gap between technical performance evidence, urban co-benefits, staged monitoring and performance-based landfill closure regulation. As such, phytocapping should be considered not as a general-purpose substitute for engineered covers, but as a climate-responsive nature-based solution that can complement urban waste servicing infrastructure, ecological restoration and adaptive governance of landfills when properly designed, monitored and regulated.

An Australian national approach is presented to predict monthly patterns of local domestic external water demand from climatic indices of daily rainfall and maximum temperature. The model, which can be rapidly applied to potentially any location in Australia, has been verified by measured monthly external water demand at Adelaide, Bundaberg, Emerald, Fraser Coast, Gold Coast, Mackay, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth and Toowoomba. The survey data represents demands in periods prior to, during and after the millennium drought of 2001–2005 by discontinuously spanning 25 years from 1985 to 2010. The model avoids local calibration through a national regression of parameters. A demand index is produced that predicts daily proportions of annual demand. Results show that the model is capable of identifying 90% of the spatial and temporal variability in water demand, based on daily index summations by month. This research is useful for reliability estimates of intermittent water supplies, such as rainwater harvesting.

Stormwater treatment systems play an integral part in achieving sustainable urban development. The performance of these systems is likely to be impacted by potential changes in climatic patterns, including precipitation. This project investigates the simulated impacts of climate change on the performance of stormwater treatment systems used as a part of Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD). Townsville and the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, were selected for the study to investigate tropical and sub-tropical climates experienced by cities across the globe adjoining sensitive coastal environments such as wetlands and coral reefs. The daily precipitation output projected by Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate models was downscaled to pluviograph input into the Model for Urban Improvement Conceptualisation (MUSIC). The treatment performance of bioretention systems and constructed wetlands was variable across both locations, with some models showing little to no change or improvement. Worsening of treatment performance was more prominent in the tropical climate, with numerous models reaching a decline of up to 16%. However, the highest observed reduction from a single model output occurred in the sub-tropical climate location. To make the WSUD treatment system effective under the future climate scenarios, physical modification is necessary to increase the treatment area or depth. Increasing the area in the worst-case scenario could incur a cost increase of 20% to 30% and present challenges due to development constraints. Increasing the depth could be a viable alternative for bioretention systems but is likely impractical for constructed wetlands.