School of Commerce
Centre for Comparative Water Policies and Laws
Centre for Comparative Water Policies and Laws
A brief CV is available as a PDF (112Kb - download Adobe Acrobat).
Dr John Pisaniello graduated from the University of South Australia with a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering in 1993 and a Doctoral degree in 1998. John's PhD focused on the safety of privately owned dams and the flood risks associated with these structures.
The PhD program was transdisciplinary in nature, combining the fields of engineering and the law, and was supervised by Associate Professor John Argue (engineering) and Associate Professor Jennifer McKay (law). The research primarily involved analysis and modelling of private dam safety assurance policy and flood capability design/review procedures, and established cost-effective mechanisms which promote consistency and uniform standards.
During his postgraduate years, John Pisaniello also worked for B. C. Tonkin & Associates on a range of projects including the Happy Valley Reservoir and Sturt River extreme flood hydrology studies. Following completion of his PhD, John worked one year as a Research Engineer for Urban Water Resources Centre (UWRC) with Professor Argue on a range of “cutting-edge” projects in the areas of “water sensitive” urban drainage design and on-site retention of storm water, commonly known as source control.
Dr Pisaniello is currently a Research Fellow and Director of Engineering Law Research in the School of Commerce, in the Centre for Comparative Water Policies and Laws at the University of South Australia working with Professor McKay in the areas of water management and resource sharing, safety assurance policy, environment and the law.
John has also worked effortlessly with Professor McKay to educate State Government Representatives in Australia on the latent issues and associated policy needs in the area of private dam management and flood safety: this has led to securing core funds from the ARC (Discovery Grant), RIRDC, DNRE Vic, DLWC NSW and SA Catchment Boards to undertake further necessary pilot research.
John is currently working on developing a cost-effective flood capability design/review procedure and safety assurance policy for private dams in both Victoria and NSW which is in line with his PhD work. John in future is looking to extend this work throughout Australia and abroad; he is currently undertaking a large project for the World Bank to extend the technology to developing nations.
John is also currently undertaking a Law Degree at the University of Adelaide. Since 1995 Dr Pisaniello has authored numerous journal and conference papers and industry reports (see publication listing for full description of these).
Dr Pisaniello has published extensively on issues of water policy
