Interview for Peruvian magazine Seguridad & Gerencia (in Spanish)

Prof. Torero was interviewed in the Peruvian magazine "Seguridad & Gerencia" by Monica Morales on the current needs of fire safety engineering in the building and process industries.

The article, in Spanish, can be found here [1st part] and here [2nd part].

Seminario Internacional de Seguridad Contra Incendios, Peru

In August 2008, the 'Seminario Internacional de Seguridad Contra Incendios', was organized by Engineering Services SAC, Lima, to gather the fire safety industry in Peru. The programme had three invited speakers from Edinburgh (Prof Torero, Dr Rein and Dr Schemel).

2008 RAEng Silver Medal

Congratulations to Dr Barbara Lane, an Associate Director with Arup, who has won the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for her outstanding contribution to British engineering. Dr Lane is a graduated PhD student in Fire Engineering from the University of Edinburgh.

TV Interview

Televisión Nacional del Perú program "Confirmado Mesa Central" interviewed Prof Jose Torero, August 2008. Also he was interviewed in the Peru 24-hour cable news channel "Canal N".

Guise Medal

Warm congratulations to Prof. Jose Torero who has received the 2008 Arthur B. Guise Medal from the Society of Fire Protection Engineering. This is the second Guise Medal going to Univ. of Edinburgh, the first went to Prof. Drysdale in 1995. The medal will be given to Jose in a ceremony after his Award Lecture on Oct 14th during the 2008 SFPE The Annual


Update:
Video clips from the presentation:

Clip 1: Introduction to "Dr Hose" and the award.


Clip 2: Introduction to the presentation by Jose Torero.


Clip 3: Conclusion to the presentation by Jose Torero.

Old News and Announcements until July 2008

Since august 2008 we moved our News and Announcements to this blog. The old News, Announcements and Media website (used until July 2008) can still be visited here (includes pieces from 2001):

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/fire/old_news.html

2008 Quigley Award for joint student with University of Western Ontario

Congratulations to Stephanie Macphee who has received the 2008 RM Quigley Award for her excellent academic performance in Geotechnical Engineering at The University of Western Ontario. Stephanie is a graduate student at UWO jointly supervised from UoEdinburgh by Dr Rein and working on a simulation tool for STAR (remediation technology for contaminated land using smouldering combustion).

BBC Horizon on FireGrid and WTC

BBC Horizon show 'Skyscraper Fire Fighters' featuring FireGrid and the Dalmarnock Tests, 24 April 2007.

* Three minute clip from the programme on YouTube.
* Eight minute Video Podcast from BBC Horizon:
mp4 version (23Mb, for Quicktime, iPod and Mac users), or
avi version (22Mb, for other media players and Windows users, may require DivX 6 installation)

By July 2008, the documentary had been broadcast by BBC UK, SBS Australia, RTE Ireland, TVB Hong Kong, Noga Israel, Al Jazeera Qatar, Chello Multicanal Spain, Eidiseis Star Greece, RTL Belgium, Canal Z Canada, Vox Germany, EBS Korea, Documentary Channel New Zealand, Prava I Prevodi Serbia and BBC Singapore.

Read also the accompanying article in BBC News "A new kind of fire fighting" by Prof. Jose Torero (24 April 2007).

Radio Interview

BBC Radio 4 interviewed Dr Luke Bisby and Dr Barbara Lane on Structural Fire Engineering. Download postcast of the programme [here].

Fire Tartan

The Centre now has a 'corporate' tartan (see webpage background), it is officially known as Edinburgh Fire and has been approved by the world tartans register. The tartan was designed and produced (by Andrew Elliot Weavers) using the prize money from the Best Paper award from the 5th Fire & Explosion Hazards International Seminar and from the 'Bodycote Warrington Fire Research Prize for the Best Paper in Fire Safety Engineering' last year (see news: April & July 2007). The tartan is a modified version of the University of Edinburgh tartan, which was launched in 2007, but with added 'fire' colours.

2008 Lessells Scholarship

Rory Hadden has received the Lessells Travel Scholarship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh to visit the University of California at Berkeley and expand his PhD research in smouldering combustion.

Updated Sept 2008:
Rory's research was highlighted in The Herald when he took part at a Scottish Government reception in the Edinburgh Castle bringing together "the best talent of the new generation of Scotland's scientists".

Building safer by design

Dr Luke Bisby has been appointed Arup Foundation /Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellow in Structures and Fire and joins the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering as a Reader. [News Release].

Help with Wikipedia entries

We are looking for volunteers to edit these Wikipedia entries:

BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering


Dalmarnock Tests


Cardington Tests


Prof David Rasbash

Staticstics of paper downloads (April 2008)

In a small research community like fire engineering, impact factors in journals designed for much large communities in Medicine, Geography and Economics does not really describe the importance of the contributions to the state of the art. Alternative impact factors could be more indicative of the situation. For example the numbers of downloads of papers in the web could be one. I have just consulted the last statistics from Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA). It is a different story. See below another way of quantifying of our impact (in absolute terms and within the context of The University of Edinburgh).

ERA hosts 242 collections and 1,570 papers from the University of Edinburgh at large. It has registered 192,749 downloads mostly from USA, UK and China.

We are the most downloaded collection in the whole University. We have 13 authors in the top 50 most downloaded. We have 11 papers in the top 50 most downloaded.

Details attached.

--------ERA www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk ---- 16/04/2008

in TOP 50 COLLECTIONS
ERA collection downloads since 2006
#1 BRE Research Publications 14,634
#2 Institute of Geography 9,982
#3 Management School and Economics 8,764
#17 BRE PhD thesis collection 3,038

in TOP 50 AUTHORS
ERA name downloads since 2006
#1 Torero, Jose 10,745
#2 Usmani, Asif 6,292
#5 Welch, Stephen 4,264
#6 McLaughlin, Stephen 4,168
#7 Carvel, Ricky 3,975
#21 Rein, Guillermo 2,693
#23 Jowsey, Allan 2,591
#25 Fletcher, Ian 2,442
#27 Lane, Barbara 2,364
#28 Steinhaus, Thomas 2,358
#40 Lamont, Susan 1,636
#45 Flint, Graeme 1,448
#46 Fuentes, Andres 1,407

in TOP 50 PAPERS
ERA downloads since 2006 title
#12 1097 The behaviour of concrete structures in fire
#21 854 Study of a non-buoyant diffusion flame radiative
#25 820 Light Steel Framing: Improving the Integral Design
#26 803 Fire Size in Tunnels
#27 795 Large-scale pool fires
#28 794 Interactions between the Reaction Zone and Soot Field #36 721 How did the WTC towers collapse: a new theory
#39 634 Determination of Fire Induced Collapse Mechanisms of
#42 577 A Study of Fire Durability for a Road Tunnel: Comparing #45 562 Performance of concrete in fire: a review of the state
#47 549 Behavior of Structures in Fire and Real Design - A Case

Paolo Pironi receives Student Research Award

Paolo Pironi has been awarded the second prize at the 2008 Student Research Contest in Groundwater Practices sponsored by Geosyntec Consultants, Canada. Paolo's STAR experiments have enable to patent a novel remediation technology for contaminated soil using smouldering combustion.

Dec 2009 UPDATE: STAR's work has been published in the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute

Sir Duncan Michael's Speech at Graduation Ceremony 2007

University of Edinburgh Graduation Ceremony 26 June 2007
Sir Duncan Michael’s response (As spoken)


Friends

Next week 60 years ago I first saw Edinburgh, the Castle ox red in the evening sun. I fell in love with Cities, and so it remains today.

Little did I, know at 10, that I would graduate here as an engineer or that this University would pay me to enlighten myself further at Leeds. Or that six decades later I would be here with you.

You sit today where I sat in 1958. I was as bright and optimistic as you, the future still folded but infinite in its possibilities. You have a big job ahead. The world is at a choosing point. On the one hand unimaginable wealth, thank you engineers, from unimaginable invention and creation, admittedly very ill distributed amongst people, but self evidently here. Engineering and Science have been the only show in town for over 100 years. Other Institutions remain in arrears, “no longer at ease in the old dispensation, clutching their gods”. The momentum and fruitfulness of the open, intellectual way can be good for another 100 years. Beyond that I cannot see.

We are getting smart enough to see and almost to understand the forward effects of what we are creating. The engineers are now fumbling with philosophy and ethics, recovering from Galileo’s cop out. Big changes just ahead, some see darkness, others great opportunities, or not seen at all. A couple of degrees warmer, people in the wrong places, water too little and too much, end of cheap raw minerals, squabbles over food and land. It is not that bad you know. The fantastic opportunity for your generation is to take all humanity through this phase safely and wisely. No one else can do it. And it can be done I am quite sure.

You will find yourself having to fight to change the ways of Institutions and sometimes their values, the Lawyers, the Rich, the Churches, the Powerful, the Military, the Bankers, even Governments and Universities as they compulsively promote the status quo ante. You can do it from the inside or the outside, for love or for money, noisily or calmly. Just do it. Never doubt yourselves, as you work to make the world a Better Place for everyone. I will be watching in hope.

Thank you.



Duncan Michael, June 2007

IMech Best Project in Mechanical Engineering UoE

Congratulations to the MEng student Clare Ashton who has been awarded the IMech Best Project in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Edinburgh for her MEng thesis "The ignition of Peat Fires". Dr Guillermo Rein was the lucky supervisor.

The Dalmarnock Fire Tests in The Herald Magazine

The Herald Magazine covers The Dalmarnock Fire Tests in the featured article "How does this man aim to save millions of lives by blowing up a tower block?", 22 July 2006.

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/fire/images/TheHeraldMagazine_22Jul2006.pdf

The Implication of the World Trade Centre Disaster

The Centre organized the conference "Fire and Structures: The Implication of the World Trade Centre Disaster" sponsored by The Royal Society of Edinburgh. April 2004.

Proceedings are available here [link to pdf]

Channel Five documentary features Dr Carvel's research on tunnel fires

Channel Five documentary "A to Z of disasters" features Dr Ricky Carvel talling about tunnel fires. May 2001.

[15Mb video clip] http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Ercarvel/AZofDisasters.mpg