Work on Wildfires is Finalist of the 2008 SET Awards

Ross Roxburgh (MEng student working on wildfires) was finalists for the The Bentley Motors Award for the Best Mechanical Engineering Student in the 2008 SET Awards: http://www.setawards.org

Ross has also been awarded the Institute of Mechanical Engineering Project Prize and the John McKenzie Newton Prize to present his paper at the International Conference Forest Fires 2008 in Toledo. The title of his thesis was "Study of Wildfire In-draft Flows for Counter Fire Operations" and the lucky supervisor was Dr Rein.

Awards and Papers at the 9th International Symposium on Fire Safety Science

The 9th Symposium of the International Association of Fire Safety Science was celebrated in Karlsruhe, Germany in Sept 2008. The Edinburgh fire group presented 8 papers and more than 20 posters. The papers were:

.A Comparative Analysis of the Use of Different Zone Models to Predict the Mass Smoke Flow for Axisymetric and Spill Plumes

.The Effect of Model Parameters on the Simulation of Fire Dynamics

.An Architecture for an Integrated Fire Emergency Response System for the Built Environment

.Calculation Methods for the Heat Release Rate of Materials of Unknown Composition

.Collapse of tall buildings in multi-storey fires

.FIRESTRUC - Integrating advanced three-dimensional modelling methodologies for predicting thermo-mechanical behaviour of steel and composite structures subjected to natural

.Sensor-linked fire simulation using a Monte-Carlo approach



.Investigation of the Fertilizer Fire aboard the Ostedijk


Some of the papers are also freely accessible in ERA and some of the posters here.

Best Poster Award
Rory Hadden and Guillermo Rein received the Best Poster Award Audience Choice. The poster on Coal Mine Fires is accessible here.

FORUM Student Travel Award
The student Sung-Han Koo received the FORUM Student Travel Award which was introduced this new this year to assist students with travel-related expenses toward their attendance at the 9th IAFSS Symposium in Karlsruhe, Germany.
The award consists of a plaque and a USD $2,000 cash payment to assist the recipient with travel-related expenses. FORUM Student Travel Award nominees must be lead author on a paper accepted for presentation at the 9th IAFSS Symposium and be enrolled in an academic course of study. Sung-Han Koo presented the paper "Sensor-linked fire simulation using a Monte-Carlo approach".

Ben Lawers ascent

We climbed Ben Lawers!

Statue of James Braidwood, first fire fighter

The statue of firemaster James Braidwood is already on the Royal Mile, Edinburgh.



From his Wikipedia entry:
"James Braidwood (1800 - 1861) founded the world's first municipal fire service in Edinburgh in 1824, and was the first director of the London Fire Brigade and is credited with the development of the modern municipal fire service."