RMIT University is happy to invite you to this Public Lecture, chaired by Professor Min Gu, Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship at RMIT. This event is funded by RMIT Enabling Capability Platforms (ECPs) and will be followed by a networking opportunity with finger food and refreshments.
RMIT University is partner of the European funded Horizon 2020 Project GEO-SAFE (Geospatial based Environment for Optimisation Systems Addressing Fire Emergencies). In this frame academics and practitionners from 15 European partners will visit us for a total of 200 person-months over the period 2016-2020 with the aim to collaborate with Australian experts to push forward the development of bushfire management tools for fire suppression, lives/goods protection and implementation and training. Professor Galea, the project leader, is visiting us in this frame.
About the public lecture:
Safety in Numbers
How is safety built into iconic structures, such as the New World Trade Center in New York, the Airbus A380 super jumbo, or large cruise ships, such as Jewel of the Seas? Advanced computer simulation of fire and evacuation holds the key to enhanced safety and security in the event of a fire or terrorist incident. It is also used to improve the efficiency of people flows in crowded spaces. The presentation reveals recent research to enhance safety including, the evacuation of high-rise buildings, the impact of security bollards on evacuation, improving wayfinding in complex buildings and human behaviour in domestic fires. The presentation concludes with the most challenging application of this technology, the planning of large urban-scale evacuation from natural disasters or terrorist incidents.
About the speaker:
Professor Galea is the founding director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) of the University of Greenwich in London where he has worked in the area of Computational Fire Engineering (CFE) research since 1986. FSEG are developers of the EXODUS suite of evacuation and crowd dynamics software and the SMARTFIRE fire simulation software, which have users in 35 countries around the world. As director of FSEG he manages the research activities of 30 full-time psychologists, fire engineers, CFD specialists, computer scientists and mathematicians.
His personal research interests include human behaviour in emergency evacuation situations, crowd dynamics, evacuation and crowd dynamics simulation, fire dynamics and CFD fire simulation. His research has applications to the building, aviation, maritime and rail industries. Amongst his current projects he is working on an EU Horizon 2020 project to development a VR/MR training environment for Special Forces, the Australian DSTG to development a virtual environment to simulate damage control procedures on naval vessels, a UK government funded project to investigate pedestrian interaction with autonomous vehicles, an EU Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Rise project on wild fires and a project concerned with evacuation of construction sites.
He is the author of over 260 academic and professional publications, the vice chair of the International Association of Fire Safety Science and serves on a number of standards committees concerned with fire and evacuation. He has successfully supervised 27 PhD students in fire and evacuation related studies. He has won a number of awards for his work including; 2001 British Computer Society Gold Medal, 2002 Queen’s Anniversary prize, 2006 Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Award; 2013 Royal Institution of Naval Architects Medal of Distinction and the 2014 The Guardian University Award for Research Impact.
This event is supported by RMIT ECPs and the project GEO-SAFE (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange – 691161). Both supports are warmly acknowledged.
Enquiries: marc.demange@rmit.edu.au
