Awaiting Public Project Summary

In the planning process for high rise buildings, it is common practice to carry out physical or numerical simulations of the wind flow around such buildings, in order to establish the acceptability or otherwise of these wind conditions for a range of pedestrian activities such as sitting, slow walking, rapid walking etc. It is less common to assess the wind conditions in terms of pedestrian safety in high winds, and the safety of cyclists and light high sided vehicles is never usually considered. The need for such considerations has become tragically obvious in a recent incident in Leeds, where a pedestrian was killed after a lorry blew over due to winds around a new high rise structure. When pedestrian safety is considered, this is usually in terms of a simple wind speed criterion that does not take into account human behaviour and does not allow for a proper risk analysis. This project will consider these issues with a view to establishing a robust methodology for calculating the risk of a pedestrian, cyclist or high sided vehicle accident in high wind conditions around high rise building. Full scale measurements will be carried out around a high rise building on the University of Birmingham campus to measure the turbulent nature of the flow around such buildings, since it is these highly turbulent flows that are of relevance to the issue of safety rather than the mean wind flows. Wind tunnel tests and CFD calculations will be carried out of the same building to assess the adequacy of these techniques for predicting the highly turbulent flows of relevance to the problem under discussion. Trials will then be carried out using instrumented volunteers of a range of age and size, who will walk or cycle around the structure during windy periods, and their behaviour will be assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively, in order to develop probability distributions of the wind speed at which incipient instability of pedestrians occurs. In addition measurements will be made of the cross wind forces on scale models of typical high rise vehicles using the University of Birmingham moving model TRAIN rig, with highly turbulent cross wind conditions, again to develop probability distributions of wind speeds for incipient instability. The probability distributions thus obtained will then be used, with wind speed probability distributions, to develop a calculation methodology to determine the variation of accident risk around high rise structures.

Risks that affect the built environment and threaten human life are becoming major societal issues in the 21st century. Managing these risks and responding to emergencies such as fires, floods, and terrorist attacks is important and needs to be planned efficiently and effectively to ensure minimal impact on society. The government's White paper Our Fire and Rescue Service published in 2003 introduced reforms that refocused the role of the Fire and Rescue Service on the prevention of fires and broadened its role in dealing with other growing threats resulting from climate change and man-made disasters. As a result, a new statutory framework is now in existence that places a responsibility on the FRS to produce Integrated Risk Management Plans (IRMPs) to plan for, and respond to, a range of emergencies.The aim of IRMPs is to improve community safety and make a more effective use of FRS resources by: reducing the incidence of fires; reducing loss of life in fires and accidents; reducing the number and severity of injuries; safeguarding the environment and protecting the national heritage; and providing communities with value for money . The White paper also highlighted that new ideas for the fire and rescue service must be based on evidence from rigorous research based on the review of technologies and underpinning science on fire prevention, detection and suppression.The work in this proposal is part of the joint national initiative between the EPSRC and the Communities and Local Government (CLG) to encourage and support research on how to identify, measure and mitigate the social and economic impact that fire and other emergencies can be expected to have on individuals, communities, commerce, industry, the environment and heritage . This is in response to the government's drive to introduce changes for the Fire and Rescue Service making this proposed research timely as it contributes to the CLG's efforts to implement the FRS reforms. There has been a great deal of research on risk assessment and risk management within the context of fire and other emergencies, most of this work focused on estimating the probability of risks and their impact quantified in terms of damage and loss by modelling fire growth and spread. However the integration of the performance and effectiveness of prevention and protection measures used in buildings while developing risk management plans to allocate fire and rescue resources has received little attention. Recent efforts within the CLG, the home Office, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister investigated risk assessment as part of the development of a process for planning Fire Service Emergency Cover (FSEC). Part of this work resulted in the development of a toolkit to assess risk, plan response, and model the consequences of resource deployment. However the new requirements of IRMPs that need a holistic and integrated approach and focus on prevention are introducing further research challenges, these can be summarised as follows: 1. lack of evidence based methods for the assessment of the effectiveness of prevention and protection measures used in buildings; 2. difficulties in assessing and predicting property, heritage, and human loss; 3. the need for decision making tools for the cost effective allocation of prevention and protection resources. The main aim of the research in this proposal is to build on the work by the CLG and investigate the value and effectiveness of prevention and protection measures and activities used in commercial, public and heritage buildings with the view of improving decision making on the allocation of resources within the context of IRMP. The main outcome of he research will be the development of tools that will support the FRS in decision making regarding: the value of prevention and protection measures in the built environment; and the allocation of resources for fire safety interventions.

This fellowship will create a academic team to lead a new research theme dedicated to manufacturing the future. It focuses research on geometrical product specification and verification (GPS) systems to control geometrical variability in manufactured products that facilitate emerging industrial requirements in 21st century. For example, geometrical products used in: next generation freeform optics, interfaces in fluid-dynamics (energy-efficient jet engines, aircraft fuselages and wings), long life human-joint implants, microelectronics and MEMS/NEMS devices in nanotechnology applications. The UK frontier industry is seeking next generation of products having much higher functional capabilities with much lower manufacturing costs. This is driving manufactured products to have more integrated properties but more complex geometries. Without the tools to specify, optimise and verify the allowable geometrical variability, the ability to manufacture complex geometries is not possible. This Fellowship is to explore the mathematical fundaments for the decomposition of geometry (i.e. size, shape and texture) and create ground-breaking technology to control geometrical variability in manufactured products. The novel approach is to link fundamental geometrical mathematics direct to key component's design, manufacturing and verification from different industrial sectors (i.e. aerospace, optics, healthcare and catapult centre). In this case, the different types of geometrical decompositions (at the ultimate causation level via information content) to specified geometrical surface requirements (spectrum, morphological and segmentation decompositions). This fellowship attempts to establish this emerging new theme that has never happened before, that requires sophisticated industrial manufacturing skills with in depth fundamental academic knowledge. In practice no surface is manufactured perfectly: there is always some variability in the surface. Tolerance zones only control the size of this variability and not its shape. The approach proposed for the Fellowship is to break up (decompose) the surface variability, for each of the symmetry classes, to enable the shape to be controlled. The challenge is to produce a complete range of geometrical decompositions (together with the associated theory and practical algorithms) that will solve the mathematical grand challenge. For example contact (mechanical, electrical, thermal, etc.) requires the surface envelope to be decomposed. Other functions require decomposition into surface features ('hills and dales') at different scales. This system aims to provide the necessary mathematical foundations for a toolbox of techniques to characterise geometric variability: going far beyond simple tolerance zones as currently defined in national and international standards. The eight letters of support from different sectors: Rolls-Royce, NPL (Engineering Measurement), NPL (Mathematics and Modeling), Taylor Hobson, British Standards Institute, Catapult - Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, UCL (Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Science: Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital), Prifysgol Glyndwr (OPTIC) all highlight that there is an urgent need for the proposed technology from a point of view of wide UK industry.

The development and modernisation of UK infrastructure requires the ubiquitous use of concrete, but conventional casting methods are inefficient, inflexible and dangerous. The UK Industrial Strategy White Paper identifies that the UK has insufficient skilled labour to undertake the next 10 to 20 years of essential infrastructure development, to deliver the £600Bn National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline. Hence, the development of world-leadership in automation of key parts of the construction supply chain is critical. 3DCP removes the need for conventional moulds or formwork, by precisely placing and solidifying specific volumes of cementitious material in sequential layers under a computer controlled positioning process. This represents a radical 'mould-breaking' change, that challenges the implicit mind-sets of architects and engineers, where for millennia casting has required moulds, which in turn constrain the form, geometry and variety of building components and systems. 3DCP technology implicitly binds design and manufacture in contrast to current practice where designers and constructors are separated organisationally, institutionally and professionally. 3DCP is creating worldwide interest from the construction sector and lends itself to using readily available robotic arms as positioning tools for clever material deposition devices, which enable the manufacture of components to be digitally driven. However the required pull into commercialisation requires architects and engineers to engage their clients with designs suitable for the manufacturing process. However the underlying science as it relates to concrete composite materials simply does not exist. This project will be the first in the world to systematically investigate the interrelationships between rheology, process control, design geometry and reinforcement design in relation to there impact on the hardened properties of the final material. The project goes further and makes the first steps towards encoding the rules learnt into a software environment that will seed the development of new design software in the future.