Water Research: Cross-Disciplinary Opportunities II
A second meeting on Water Research took place at the IAS on 20th March 2008 to discuss further potential research opportunities with a particular focus on projects involving academics from the medical faculties. Again, Professor Malcolm Anderson (PVC for Research) outlined the context for the meeting and this was followed by three brief presentations:
Professor Paul Bates, School of Geographical Sciences
University of Bristol Water Research in the Non-Medical Faculties
Powerpoint presentation, 2.4MB*
Professor Alan Emond, Centre for Child & Adolescent Health
University of Bristol Water Research in the Medical Faculties
Powerpoint presentation, 2.9KB*
Dr Simon Gray, Research & Enterprise Development
Funder Priorities & How a 'Longer & Larger' Type Grant Proposal Might be Structured
Powerpoint presentation, 1.8MB*
A structured session followed in which everyone present was asked to briefly outline his or her research with a view to locating points of contact between those present. A final discussion analysed the results to identify potentially productive links between researchers and to consider how to take things forward. A summary of the meeting, including outputs and future actions, is available below:
Water Research 08 Summary - Word Document, 80KB
Conveners
Professor Malcolm Anderson, School of Geographical Sciences
Professor Paul Bates, School of Geographical Sciences
Dr Simon Gray, Research Development Manager, Research & Enterprise Development
Professor Tim Peters, Research Director, faculty of Medicine & Dentistry
Professor Martin White, The Provost, Institute for Advanced Studies
Attendees
Dr Alexandre Anesio, School of Geographical Sciences
Professor Ian Cluckie, Department of Civil Engineering
Professor Alan Emond, Department of Community Based Medicine
Professor David Gordon, School for Policy Studies
Dr Stephen Gundry, Engineering Management Group
Dr Dawei Han, Department of Civil Engineering
Dr Patricia Lucas, School for Policy Studies
Dr Chris Metcalfe, Department of Social Medicine
Dr Katerina Michaelides, School of Geographical Sciences
Dr Robert Morley, Health Protection Agency
Professor David Muir Wood, Department of Civil Engineering
Professor Chris Probert, Clinical Science at South Bristol
Professor Vala Ragnarsdottir, Department of Earth Sciences
Dr Robert C Spencer, Health Protection Agency
Professor Colin Taylor, Department of Civil Engineering
Professor Martyn Tranter, School of Geographical Sciences
Professor Paul Valdes, School of Geographical Sciences
Dr Lorna Colquhoun, Head of Research Development, Research & Enterprise Development
Dr Lindsey Gaunt, Research Development Manager, Research & Enterprise Development
Dr Susan Jim, Research Development Manager, Institute for Advanced Studies
Dr Jenny Knapp, Research Development Manager, Research & Enterprise Development
Academics and their Research Interests
| Name | Department | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
|
Dr Alexandre Magno Anesio Lecturer in Low Temperature Biogeochemistry |
Bristol Glaciology Centre | My background is in microbiology and aquatic ecology and my research has mainly concentrated on carbon cycling, biogeochemistry and aquatic microbial ecology of lakes and the cryosphere. |
| Professor Paul Bates Professor of Hydrology |
School of Geographical Sciences | Since commencing his PhD in 1989, his primary research focus has been to improve the prediction of reach scale flood inundation. This has been achieved through the active development of new numerical models and better techniques for model calibration, validation and uncertainty analysis, with particular emphasis on the use of remotely sensed data. He has held Visiting Scientist positions at Princeton University, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratoire National d'Hydraulique, Paris and the EU Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy. He also undertakes significant International collaboration, including work with the French National Space Agency (CNES), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia in Brazil, as well as numerous universities in the US and Europe. He is currently Editor in Chief of the Journal of River Basin Management (www.jrbm.net). |
| Professor Ian Cluckie, FREng Professor of Hydrology & Water Management |
Water & Environmental Management Research Centre (WEMRC) | WEMRC acts as an umbrella for water research interests in the Engineering Faculty and where it has been useful, it has also provided a critical mass for researchers outside Engineering and across the University. It is a multi-disciplinary research centre and operates across predominantly the physical sciences and Engineering but has also interacted with Ecology, Water Quality, Public Health and Social interests. Strong collaboration currently exists with the Hydrology Group in Geographical Science (Professor Paul Bates) and the AI Group in Engineering Mathematics (Dr Jonathan Lawry). The new IAS research centre on Water and Health effectively grew from WEMRC activities led by Dr Steven Gundry. Key members of the group are Professor Kenneth Iwugo, Dr Dawei Han, Dr Miguel Rico-Ramirez, Dr Steven Gundry, Dr Alan Feest, etc. The group also interacts with Professor Joe Guerini and his team from Mechanical Engineering. The group has predominantly focused on Flood Risk Management. This has been particularly concerned with real-time flood forecasting systems. WEMRC systems currently operate in the EA National Flood Forecasting System (NFFS) in the South West and North West of England as well as overseas. This has meant that the exploitation of Weather Radar for the measurement of precipitation has been an important area of research for many years. The group have designed, built and operated at least five specialised weather radars at both X-Band and C-Band frequencies. These have been unique devices designed to take extremely high-resolution measurements inside flood producing storms and have been exploited all over the world, most recently in Poland and Jersey, and shortly in Singapore and South China. The group currently derives most of its funds from NERC and EPSRC and the NERC FREE program that is looking at extreme storms and floods has WEMRC involved in researching the use of Numerical Weather Model (NWP) based ensembles in an attempt to characterise uncertainty in real-time forecasting. The group are members of the international HEPEX (Hydrological Ensemble Prediction Experiment) consortium. In FREE, the group are in particular using the ERA-40 re-analysis data set to reconstruct historical storms in the context of coastal flooding (i.e. Wave overtopping, Beach Erosion and Tidal Surge Forecasting). In the EPSRC Flood Risk Management Research Consortium (FRMRC) the group is involved in fundamental work on Dual Polarisation Radar technology, Land use Management and Storm Tide Forecasting (the group lead the FRMRC consortium that is the de facto UK national research network). WEMRC has always been involved in EU research and was the lead academic member of the EU FP5 FLOODRELEF STREP. It has lead EU consortia in every FP programme until FP5 and is currently working on a consortia bid under FP7 in the Sustainable Cities part of the EU ICT initiative. The group is active in research associated with the possible Severn Barrage and is supporting RSA efforts at public participation on behalf of the relevant government departments. It is also a key partner in the new Bristol Risk Centre bid to EPSRC/Defra. WEMRC has strategic relationships with China (Sun Yat-Sen), Mexico (IMTA), IAHS (ICRS), IAHR (Hydroinformatics), UNESCO (TIGER), WMO, WHO and the World Bank. It has exchange links with Ghana, Cuba and Germany. |
| Professor Alan Emond Professor of Community Child Health |
Department of Community Based Medicine | Alan Emond is a clinical paediatrician who has been working in Bristol since 1985. He is a Professor of child Health at the Univeristy of Bristol, head for the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health in Bristol and consultant paediatrician at North Birstol Trust and United Bristol Healthcare Trust. Professor emond's research experience is in epidemiology and health service evaluation, including work on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC - Children of the Nineties). He has extensive overseas experience, in Jamaica, Ethiopia and Brazil, including community-based research projects which have evaluated improvements in water quality and impact on child health. The Centre for Child and Adolescent Health is a joint initiative between the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, creating a multi-disciplinary academic group undertaking research and teaching in community child health. |
|
Dr Mhairi Gibson
Lecturer in Biological Anthropology |
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology | The demographic impact of labour-saving development technologies. I’m interested in the population and health issues in the developing world. Funded by the ESRC & Wellcome Trust, my research has focused on the unforeseen demographic consequences of a labour-saving water supply scheme on a rural agricultural district in Southern Ethiopia. In the absence of family planning, a reduction in women’s water-carrying workloads has increased fertility. Higher birth rates combined with improved child survivorship has resulted in larger family sizes, and increases in childhood malnutrition. |
| Dr Stephen Gundry Senior Lecturer in Enterprise & Entrepreneurship |
Engineering Management Group | Stephen Gundry is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Management and is a member of the faculty's Water and Environmental Management Research Centre. His research interests are related to drinking water quality and child health in developing countries, particularly rural areas of Africa. He was coordinator of an EU-funded research project 'AQUAPOL' that looked at the policy implications of contamination of water between source and point of use (see www.bristol.ac.uk/aquapol). This project provided the background for a new project 'AQUATEST' - a preparatory study for a low cost water test for developing countries. This project is again funded by the EU, under the Global Change and Ecosystems theme of Framework 6. Participants include WHO, Oxfam, Universities of Southampton, North Carolina and Cape Town, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and several research labs/commercial companies. The principal deliverable, in mid-2007, will be a full proposal to fund the R&D of the test device and associated management systems. More details at: www.aquatest-research.org. |
| Dr Dawei Han Lecturer in Civil Engineering |
Department of Civil Engineering | Real time flood forecasting, hydroinformatics, hydrological modelling, water resource management. Dr. Dawei Han is currently participating in projects investigating weather radar rainfall, flood forecasting, hydroinformatics, and weather ensemble modelling. He is also interested in applying hydroinformatics in ecohydrology under the human and natural influences. |
| Dr Patricia Lucas Lecturer in Early Childhood |
School for Policy Studies | Patricia is leading the School for Policy Studies contribution to the Aquatest Project. SPS are joining with the Centre for Child and Adolescent Health (UoB) and the School of Public Health (UC Berkeley) to deliver the study design for the Aquatest field trials, together with an analysis of the research evidence for policy in water safety testing. Her background is in the evidence base for social interventions in childhood. |
| Dr Chris Metcalfe Lecturer in Medical Statistics |
Department of Social Medicine | My interests are in the design and statistical analysis of both randomised trials and epidemiological studies. I am particularly interested in cluster randomised trials, and epidemiological studies where individuals are clustered together in households, villages etc. |
| Dr Katerina Michaelides Lecturer in Physical Geography |
School of Geographical Sciences | My research interests focus on hillslope and catchment hydrological processes and modelling, and the hydrological effects on soil erosion and nutrient transport in order to understand processes of land degradation. Main research activities: 1. Flow pathways and hydrological connectivity in catchments 2. Rainfall-runoff modelling of catchments - uncertainty relating to spatial patterns using geostatistics approach 3. Dryland hydrological and geomorphological processes 4. Soil-erosional processes: (a) experimental work on sediment transport and deposition using chemical tracers, and (b) field and experimental work on water- and erosion-driven nutrient dynamics in dryland and temperate-agricultural landscapes 5. Manager of TRACE (Test Rig for Advancing Connectivity Experiments) laboratory, which is located in Fenswood Farm, Long Ashton. |
| Professor Vala Ragnarsdottir Professor of Environmental Sustainability |
Department of Earth Sciences | Vala Ragnarsdottir has a PhD in aqueous geochemistry and over 25 years of experience in working on environmental issues, including fate and transport of pollutants in soil and groundwater. At the moment she has two PhD students that are working on using photocatalytic reactions of mineral surfaces for water purification. More recently she has started working on soil related issues - focusing on the rate of soil formation, soil erosion prevention and the whole life cycle of soils. This she has extended into linking soil geochemistry and health and future work will link the ecologic services of soils with the economic value of natural resources. Current water projects: RISKBASE - Towards Risk-Based Management of European River Basins. Coordination Action, 1.5 million Euro. Two PhD projects - funded by Marie Curie Early Stage Training Network. One is on using photocatalytic properties of oxide surfaces to purify water (Marco Bonato) and the other is on using UV light to oxidise hormones in water. |
|
Dr Jean-Philippe Renaud
Senior Research Fellow in Physical Geography |
School of Geographical Sciences | Groundwater flow and solute transport in both the saturated and unsaturated zone, exchanges of water and solutes between surface and subsurface, hillslope hydrology. My current research has focused on developing two- and three-dimensional numerical models for water and solute transport. The models have been used mainly to look at the feasibility of a underground nuclear waste repository in France. |
| Dr Robert C Spencer Consultant Medical Microbiologist |
Health Protection Agency | As far as the Health Protection Agency Regional Microbiology Network Laboratory is concerned, we process waters mainly with regard to the presence of Legionella spp and total viable counts in healthcare water systems. In addition, we look at water quality with regard to hospital water pools in physiotherapy departments and quality of rinse water with regard to automated endoscopic reprocessors. In a nutshell, we do service work for water quality rather than research work as far as water is concerned. |
| Dr James Stuart Senior Clinical Lecturer in Social Medicine |
Department of Social Medicine | My background is as a consultant epidemiologist in infectious disease for the Public Health Laboratory Service and the Health Protection Agency for the last 10 years. I have an honorary contract with the Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol. My research related to water and infection has involved investigation of outbreaks of water borne disease (swimming pools and other recreational water) and of risk factors, including drinking water, for Giardia and Cryptosporidiium. |
| Professor Colin Taylor Professor of Earthquake Engineering |
Department of Civil Engineering | My water related interests, and those of the earthquake engineering research centre, are mainly related to the seismic performance of dams and associated structures, including management of natural hazard impacts on complete dam/water supply systems. I'm beavering away on the Severn Barrage to position us (i.e. the University not just Civil Engineering) to take advantage of the forthcoming feasibility studies. This meeting would be timely for me to report on progress and to gather together an interest group. We need to put together a University-wide capability statement on the Severn Barrage. I had been discussing this with Peter Ereaut with a view to holding a similar meeting. Also, we are positioning ourselves to take advantage of DEFRA's dam safety research agenda, soon to be published. I am working towards a large EPSRC responsive mode proposal (possibly up to £2m) to pick up some of the DEFRA identified issues that require academically driven research. |
| Professor Martyn Tranter Professor of Physical Geography |
School of Geographical Sciences | (1) Water quality in cold regions; (2) Nutrient cycling in cold regions; (3) Subglacial lake biogeochemistry; (4) Low level analytical techniques for inorganic major ions and nutrients; (5) Low level determination of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nutrients (DON and DOP), and (6) Stable isotopes and biogeochemical processes. Current Areas of Expertise in Advisory and Specialist Consultancy Work: (1) Biogeochemical processes in cold regions. |