REF2014 success: Earth and Planetary Sciences projects demonstrate their impact
A chance to look at some of the projects behind Earth and Planetary Sciences REF2014 results.
In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, in a joint submission with UCL Earth Sciences, maintained a top ranking, coming 6th in the UK. This research quality review was especially significant because universities were judged on the impact their research had on industry, business and society. Ninety percent of the department’s research output was evaluated as of high international standing. In addition, the research impact was considered outstanding with global reach and significance, dealing with real world problems and achieving a higher score in this category than Oxford, and matching Cambridge. The joint UCL-Birkbeck submission benefitted from the shared use of institutional resources to support both knowledge transfer and enterprise.
Here we highlight some of the research projects behind these excellent results:
Better decision-making reduces water contamination
Collaborative studentships with external partners both within and beyond industry are an important mechanism for knowledge transfer and enterprise. Although such collaborations within the discipline tend to come from the hydrocarbon industry, our submission highlighted other types of partnership, including with the Catholic aid agency (CAFOD). This collaboration resulted in the science and technology associated with disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change being embedded in the CAFOD Humanitarian Strategy. Building on this, Professor Karen Hudson-Edwards (Birkbeck) won a research council Collaborative Award in Science and Engineering (CASE) studentship in 2013, supported by CAFOD, to develop a decision-making tool for reducing water contamination risk.
Tracking sand dunes brings cost benefits to engineering projects
The submitted IMPACT case studies afforded opportunities to demonstrate how excellent research and sustainable relationships with industry partners and strategic training increased end-user benefits. Blue skies research on the development of methods to determine sand dune migration by Professor Charlie Bristow (Birkbeck) and Dr. Pieter Vermeesch (UCL) benefited both engineering and hydrocarbon companies. To mitigate against damage from wind-blown sand engineering and petroleum companies need to know long-term trends of sand dune movements to plan pipeline, road and rail routes and production facilities in deserts where migrating sand dunes are an expensive problem. The tools developed by Birkbeck staff have already informed decisions that will result in long-term maintenance cost savings in production facilities, in the order of several millions of US dollars. Companies also now include the methods in their tender documents for infrastructure projects.
Better forecasts for seismic hazards
Caption: Fault scarp offsetting a slope dating from 15,000 years ago in central Italy. It is offsets such as this that define the strain-rates that we have correlated with topography. The offsets have developed over tens of earthquakes, each with a slip of <~1m so the correlation holds over a timescale including tens of earthquakes.
A case study on improved seismic hazard mapping to improve procedures and practices for seismic risk assessment arose from the research of Professor Gerald Roberts (Birkbeck). Professor Roberts has been working with the Italian civil service and the Bank of Greece to calculate seismic hazard based on the recurrence interval for damaging earthquakes on individual active faults averaged over thousands of years. This longer-term record provides a more realistic image of earthquake location and magnitude as well as timing.
Further information
To find out more about these projects and others, visit the impact pages of Birkbeck-UCL Institute of Earth and Planetary Sciences website and Birkbeck’s science and biomedicine impact section in Birkbeck research.