The Australian Research Council has released their Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2015 report called the “State of Australian University Research 2015-16” .

The ERA measures the quality of research produced by Australian universities against world standards and uses an expert review of research quality to provide ratings of discipline areas in each university. It was last undertaken in 2012.

Above: Statistics from the "State of Australian University Research 2015-16" report.

UNSW has retained a rating of “above world standard” in Built Environment and Design (Field of Research 12), making it one of the top three ranked groups nationally. This acknowledges the quality of research across many disciplines: planning, architecture, construction and design.

Research in urban and regional planning (Field of Research 1205), retained a rating of “well above world standard”, the highest possible, and matched by only one other university. This rating reflects the strength of urban planning studies at UNSW based primarily on the research of the City Planning Program and the City Futures Research Centre.

These ratings contributed to a strong overall performance by UNSW in ERA 2015.

Read more here about UNSW's overall rankings

Read the ERA 2015 report here