Dawlish railway in a storm

During

ADAPT: smart approaches to influencing sustainable behaviour change.

University of Leeds

June 2016 – June 2021

WATCH THIS SPACE: It is likely that 80% of the world’s population will live in urban centres by 2050. As transport is a very significant contributor to global carbon emissions, as well as road congestion and urban air quality problems, it is important that everyone is encouraged to rethink their personal mobility behaviour.

Research Council: EPSRC

Aquatic Micro Aerial Vehicles (AquaMAV): Bio-inspired air-water mobility for robotics

Imperial College London

2014 – 2018

Water-monitoring flying robots to help rapidly respond to accidents and improve management of water resources. The AquaMAV has sufficient battery capacity for 14 minutes of flight in air at 10m/s, which corresponds to a 5km range at which the robot can dive into water and return to base with a collected water sample.

Research Council: EPSRC

Emergency flood planning and management using unmanned aerial systems

University of Exeter

2017 – 2018

UASs can be easily deployed – often hand launched – to assess damage across large areas, and provide emergency responders with the opportunity to assess situations quickly: this allows prioritisation of resources and effective deployment. One aspect of the research focuses on addressing challenges in flying UASs in non-ideal situations, for example, maintaining performance during adverse weather conditions, during intermittent loss of communication with the base station, overcoming the loss of operator visuals, providing the ability to recover the vehicle without a runway and avoiding potential collisions with unexpected obstacles.

Research Council: EPSRC

Evaluating the resilience of critical infrastructure for emergency response to extreme flood events in Leicester City

Loughborough University

2015

Whilst in the possession of a wealth of data and abundant local knowledge, emergency responders often find it challenging to apply existing flood ‘hotspot’ data to assist strategic planning and operational response. An interdisciplinary team of researchers with project partners from the City of Leicester, UK, evaluated the resilience of emergency response during extreme flood events, including the accessibility of the city to emergency responders during extreme flooding. The results uncovered aspects of flooding that stakeholders were unaware of, i.e. the ‘hotspot’ areas which would directly become inundated, and the indirect, cascading impacts of flood events of different magnitudes on emergency response times at a cityscale.

Research Council: NERC

Safe & SuRe: towards a new paradigm for urban water management

University of Exeter

March 2013 – August 2018

Property level surface water management:

  • What measures can you apply to your own property? James Webber
  • Achieving resilience to extreme events through effective emergency planning – Sarah Bunney

Research Council: EPSRC

Smart forecasting: joined-up flood forecasting (FF) infrastructure with uncertainties

University of Sheffield

July 2016 – June 2021

WATCH THIS SPACE: Reliable and comprehensive flood forecasting is crucial to ensure resilient cities and sustainable socio-economic development in a future faced with an unprecedented increase in atmospheric temperature and intensified precipitation.

Research Council: EPSRC