Welcome

Welcome to the Proceedings of ACOUSTICS 2012. This volume contains papers presented at the 2012 Annual Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society held in Fremantle, WA in November 2012. This annual conference of the Society has a long and distinguished history, providing an important forum for the dissemination of information relating to the science and practice of acoustics in Australia.

The title for this conference, Acoustics, Development and the Environment, is broad yet relevant to current issues in both state and national contexts. Locally in many respects, Western Australia is a leader in the regulation and research of both marine and terrestrial environmental noise issues, and continues to experience unprecedented levels of development. Nationally and abroad, major development and environmental noise issues continue to present across many industry sectors, regardless of whether these are considered to reside in analysis, assessment, implementation or regulatory frameworks.

Referred to as one of the most remote cities in the world, getting to and from Perth is certainly not a short exercise, particularly for our international guests. Yet the response to our campaign on both domestic and international fronts has been outstanding, with over 160 abstracts received across many current topics of interest. Following an extensive blind peer review process, the initial interest expressed in these abstracts has been converted into a record number of papers accepted. At time of writing, the final technical program for the conference included 121 papers, a near 20% increase on last year.

Although it proved a difficult challenge to fit into an already tight program timing, two plenary presentations, four keynote presentations and three forums were programmed to facilitate discussion and debate of issues that continued to feature within Society activities this year. Western Australian Division conferences have always had a large marine / underwater acoustics contingent, and with over 45 papers, and 3 keynote addresses on this topic of interest, this year is no different. Three specialist workshops prior to the conference were also convened; Active Noise Control by Jie Pan (University of Western Australia); Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring and the Impacts of Underwater Noise on Marine Fauna by Alec Duncan, Rob McCauley, Christine Erbe (Centre for Marine Science & Technology, Curtin University), and Advanced Machine Diagnostics and Condition Monitoring by Gareth Forbes (Curtin University) and Bob Randall (UNSW).

The increased profile of our national conference is also reflected in attendance at the opening from the State Minister for Environment and Water, the Hon. William (Bill) Marmion MLA, and Western Australia’s Chief Scientist, Professor Lyn Beazley AO FTSE, and we thank them for their interest and contributions.

The organising committee wishes to thank our plenary speakers Ross Chapman of the University of Victoria in Canada, and Irene Van Kamp of the Centre for Environmental Noise Research in the Netherlands. We also thank our keynote presenters Doug Cato, Emma Charlton, Chris Fuller and Boris Katnelson; our specialist workshop convenors Colin Tickell, John Macpherson and Marion Burgess. We greatly appreciate the participation and input from all authors and delegates in attendance for their efforts.

Commercial interest and industry support in the conference has also been excellent. We thank our event sponsors and partners in making this event not only successful in its own right but in supporting future activities of the Society within Western Australia.

Last, but certainly not least, I wish to acknowledge the outstanding efforts of the organising committee, notably Alec Duncan, Terrance McMinn, Kingsley Hearne, Ben Farrell, John Macpherson, Gareth Forbes, Pam Gunn and Norm Broner. Since we began preparations 15 months ago, the committee has put in incredible amounts of time and effort into this conference and we look forward to a successful ACOUSTICS 2012.

Luke Zoontjens
Conference Convenor
November 2012