The importance of the event was summed up by Arup principal Dr Richard Sharp on Thursday night when was asked to give a vote of thanks on Dr Catherine Ball’s presentation about the use of drone technology. Dr Sharp said a key theme from day one was the challenge of making wise decisions around infrastructure provision and management.

“One of the particularly compelling numbers was..from the UN in terms of what is required for infrastructure investment over the next 15 years in order to meet the sustainable development goals that they have set out. That number is in excess of $80 trillion. So infrastructure is a huge technical challenge. But it is also a people challenge because there is no good infrastructure unless it is in service of community,” he said.

SMART Infrastructure Facility chief operating officer Tania Brown said the first day had been a really engaged dialogue. “It is such a brave new world. We have heard so much today about the Internet of Things and we just heard about drone technology. We have got to be amongst it and Wollongong already is,” she said.

“We have set up the SMART facility and people out there and engaging. New technology is going to change peoples lives”.

Ms Brown said having the chance to host the international symposium put the city ant the University of Wollongong in a great position to keep at the forefront of such development.

“We have international partners from the University of Oxford, Virginia Tech, University College London and Delft University of Technology,” she said.

“They are all coming to Wollongong to continue that conversation about inspiring the next generation of practitioners. We have had government people here today, researchers and industry. That conversation has to happen with everyone. It can’t happen in a silo. We have heard so many times today about the need for multi-disciplinary. And that is why I am so proud that SMART embodies that. To be part of this international cohort is just wonderful recognition.”

The International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure is now in its fourth year.

It was in Washington last year, Vienna the year before that and UCL has announced it will be held in London in 2017.

It is all about global practitioners and scholars having a global conversation about the world we live in, according to Ms Brown.

“One of the comments made today was that we only look at things through the lens from which we are trained. So if you don’t have a group of people together with a different skill set you are never going to solve the problem. So bringing a unique cohort together allows you to look at things in a different way, use new disruptive technologies like drones and can actually change the big infrastructure problems.”