Newcastle University

Between 7th and 12th September Newcastle University hosts the British Science Festival: over 250 events presenting cutting edge research, family workshops, comedy, science busking and more! The School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences is offering several activities during the event, including one member of staff delivering the prestigious Joseph Lister Award Lecture.

Social Media Mapping at Newcastle University

http://www.youtube.com/embed/7aK7xFOXea8

This short video introduces systems developed in Newcastle University to capture information on how people use social media, and how this might have applications for collecting real time data about events such as flooding. Phil James, Senior Lecturer in Geoinformatics, and Hayley Fowler, Professor of Climate Change Impacts explain more about the project here. You can also see Hayley deliver the Joseph Lister Award Lecture at the Festival on Wednesday 11 September, 2pm, Northern Stage: Climate change, extreme rainfall and flooding: What is happening to our weather? (http://www.britishscienceassociation....)

Civil Engineering - when science and ingenuity combine

Also in the festival's Young People's Programme, Sean Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer in Structural Engineering, and Beth Barnes, a recent graduate from our MEng Civil Engineering course now working with Capita Symonds, are teaming up with engineers from Durham University and the Institution of Civil Engineers to present an introduction to the science behind civil engineering. A virtual journey along the River Tyne, from source to mouth, is being used to show how scientific principles underpin successful civil engineering projects such as Kielder Dam and Reservoir, the New Tyne Crossing, and treating and preventing pollution along the river.

The Blue Line

Visitors to the campus during the Science Festival will see a horizontal blue line around a number of building and structures, and some large blue arrows on the ground. The lines represents the flood levels that may occur from an extreme rainfall event in Newcastle (100mm in an hour, more than twice the intensity of the June 2012 'Toon Monsoon'), and the arrows show the main flow directions. The flood levels were generated from our computer model (CityCat) that is used to help design sustainable solutions to reduce flood risk. QR codes displayed along the line may be scanned to show photographs of flooding from the June 2012 flooding, and reconstructions based on the computer generated flood levels. For information about this project and our research into flooding and climate, visit http://ceg-morpethflood.ncl.ac.uk/blueline/. The Blue Line was created by Geoff Parkin, Senior Lecturer in Hydrology, with Vedrana Kutija, Lecturer in Computational Hydraulics, and Vasillis Glenis, Research in Water Resources.

Extreme Flooding
 
Also in the festival's Young People's Programme, Geoff Parkin, Senior Lecturer in Hydrology, Vedrana Kutija, Lecturer in Computational Hydraulics, Phil James, Senior Lecturer in Geoinformatics, and Hayley Fowler, Professor of Climate Change Impacts, are running an event for 14-16 year olds every day from Mon-Thurs to look at our changing climate and extreme weather events. They will demonstrate how researchers use ‘crowdsourcing’ to collect images and experiences of floods based on last years “ToonFlood” and kids can have a go at collecting and computer-modelling flood data.

What goes down must come up

PhD students Grace Nield and Stuart Andrews will be presenting in the Festival's Young People's Programme. Their talk explores the geophysics of melting ice caps and sea level rise, from the satellite technology that allows us to measure changes in sea level, to exploring glacio-isotastic adjustment and why sea-level rise would not be uniform across the globe. The audience will even explore what the effect of changing sea level might be on Tyneside. The talk will give an excellent insight in to cutting edge research that has a truly real world setting.

More information about the festival can be found at: http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/british-science-festival/newcastle-2013