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RiV is the Venue
Aiming to maximise the impact of the project, our team has secured a grant through the Innovate Fund of the Public Engagement Unit of the University of Bath.
The recently awarded ‘River is the Venue’ (RiV) project is a unique collaborative initiative co-led by the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering and Department of Education, working closely with local art exhibitors and charities (44AD studio, Art at the Heart of the Royal United Hospital). Through a creative approach involving artwork, spatial historic information and modern communication technologies (e.g. social media), the RiV project will create an inclusive artspace around the theme of flooding. The project engages local water-related stakeholders such as the Environment Agency, Bath & North East Somerset Council (B&NES) , Wessex Water, sensitive local communities (e.g. people with disabilities) and educational institutions (e.g. primary schools, Bath Spa University). The project’s outputs also align with ongoing local initiatives, led by B&NES and the Bristol Natural History Consortium. River is the Venue won earlier this year the "Art" category at The Creative Bath Awards. |
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Swindon Science Festival 2020
On Friday February 21st, members of the new Centre for Infrastructure, Geotechnics and Water Engineering IGWE took part at “TOMORROW”, Swindon’s first Science Festival. The Science Swindon Festival was a two-day festival of science and engineering surrounded by Brunel’s engineering at STEAM, the Museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon, the hub of UK science and innovation. This year it was celebrating five main themes: (i) Health & Medicine, (ii) Energy & Environment, (iii) Gaming, VR and Coding, (iv) Space & Astronomy and (v) Future of Travel.
Earlier in the year, Ioanna Stamataki, research associate in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, together with James Rand, PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, applied for the Public Engagement Unit's Engage Grants funding call to put together an Augmented Reality Sandbox (AR Sandbox). Obtaining this funding allowed to permanently own the AR Sandbox within the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering which will allow the project to be embraced by the IGWE community and is foreseen to lead to several more public engagement activities reaching out to larger audiences. The day in Swindon was a huge success! The audience was mainly young children, but we managed to capture the interest of scientist enthusiasts of all ages, from parents, to grandparents, volunteers and exhibitors who joined in the AR Sandbox fun. The AR Sandbox was developed by UC Davis W.M. Keck Centre for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences and supported by the National Science Foundation. It allowed participants to sculpt a sand landscape in miniature from either their imagination or mimicking real-world geography. The landscape created in the sandbox was scanned by an overhead sensor (an Xbox Kinect camera) and colours and contour lines were projected (from a colour overhead projector) onto the sand which brought the sand landscape to vivid 3D life. Participants were generating rainfall by holding their hands above the augmented reality landscape to create dark billowing clouds which caused augmented reality rain to fall over that part of the sandbox world. As the rain was falling onto the landscape the water started to accumulate and flow downhill leading to flooding. We created, altered and adjusted different landscapes, made rain and attempted scenarios demonstrating the effect of flooding (e.g. flash flood from a dam break) and natural disasters (e.g. tsunami) and the engineering mitigation strategies associated with them. Science Swindon wrote on Twitter “The sandbox was a real highlight, we received loads of enthusiastic feedback about it!”. Creating simplified scenarios from our research and communicating the core messages to young audiences is unique and an important quality to learn. The Swindon Science Festival 2020 was an irreplaceable experience for all of us – we will definitely be there next year! |
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Walking with the scientists: European Researchers Night 2018 and 2019
On Friday 28 September 2018, Ioanna Stamataki took part at an event called “Walking with Scientists”. It was part of FUTURES, a series of free events taking place across Bristol and Bath to celebrate European Researchers' Night on Friday 28 September. European Researchers' Night is funded by the EU Commission and aims to engage the European public in celebrating the latest and most stimulating research at a local and an international level. This year, simultaneous events took place in over 300 cities, spanning across 24 European countries. Two walks were organised and led by Olly Langdon from Kilter Theatre and the walkers were joined by researchers from the University of Bath at different stops along the route to talk about their work, and answer questions.
In collaboration with Tom Smith from EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Statistical Applied Mathematics (SAMBa) we gave a short talk about the historical floods of the River Avon in the City of Bath and the applications of using such historical data. During the walk, we stood underneath the Halfpenny Bridge where we started by pointing out the flood marks and talked briefly about some important floods in Bath such as 1823, 1882, 1894, 1960 and 1968 and the policy changes they triggered. Then, we explained why we can't know exactly how big historical floods were, and why this uncertainty must be considered when trying to understand the risks that future floods pose to Bath. |
Ioanna Stamataki, also took part in the same event on Saturday 28 September 2019, and gave a very similar talk on the historical floods of the city of Bath and the changes in the River Avon over the years. The activity was once more very successful and interesting and walkers interacted with all researchers throughout the walk. One walker said "What a fantastic was to use the history of architecture of Bath to tell fascinating stories of science. Very interesting and enjoyable. Thank you!"
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Festival of Nature 2018
Researchers and PhD students of the WEIR Water Environment & Infrastructure Resilience and WISE Water Informatics Science & Engineering groups of the WIRC@Bath Water Innovation Research Centre contributed to the success of the Festival of Nature 2018, which took place in Green Park on the 2nd of June.
With a diverse range of engaging activities, the outreach team of WEIR and WISE managed to capture the audience, which mainly consisted of promising science talent of a wide age range. One of the activities involved the building of an Augmented Reality Sandbox (AR Sandbox). This was built using open-source software from Stanford University and equipment loaned from Computer Science. The AR Sandbox offers a great opportunity to visuliase the geography and geomorphology of an area. During the FON, the audience was encouraged to recreated a scale model of the River Avon, in order to show its impact on the shape of Bath today. This activity was orchestrated as part of the River is the Venue (RiV) project.
With a diverse range of engaging activities, the outreach team of WEIR and WISE managed to capture the audience, which mainly consisted of promising science talent of a wide age range. One of the activities involved the building of an Augmented Reality Sandbox (AR Sandbox). This was built using open-source software from Stanford University and equipment loaned from Computer Science. The AR Sandbox offers a great opportunity to visuliase the geography and geomorphology of an area. During the FON, the audience was encouraged to recreated a scale model of the River Avon, in order to show its impact on the shape of Bath today. This activity was orchestrated as part of the River is the Venue (RiV) project.