Webinar on Energy Engineering: Advances in Production and the Role of Consultancy

24th February 2021, 2pm to 4pm (GMT)

Online

Overview

This webinar presents current technological developments in harnessing and processing products from renewable energy sources such as solar, biomass and waste. It also deals with challenges for consulting services in the energy sector arising from the emerging smart grid technologies and the adverse consequences of climate change.

Webinar Presentations

• “Synthetic natural gas production: production cost, key cost factors, and optimal configuration”
  Miss Devasanthini Devaraj, University College Dublin, Ireland
  
  
• "Setbacks in solar PV performance and proposed mitigation"
  Prof Hussain Al-Kayiem, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia
  
  
• "Energy engineering and consulting: new challenges and reality"
  Dr Mikhail Kozhevnikov, Ural Federal University, Russia
  
  
• "Good practices" to improve energy efficiency in the industrial sector"
  Simone Maggiore, Energy Efficiency Research Group, Italy

For details of future Webinars please visit:

WIT Winter Webinars

Webinar on Water Nexus: Dealing with Conflicting Aspects of Water Management

 27th January 2021, 2pm to 4pm (GMT)

Online

Overview

The webinar was intended to describe both the implications of proper and sustainable water management upon the different needs a society has to face and a large number of uncertainties in this field which still require solutions. The experiences and case studies presented in the webinar were selected in order to cover a broad spectrum of problems and opportunities.

Webinar Presentations

• “Pumped-Hydro Storage Systems and Flood Risk Mitigation: A Proposed Nexus”
  David Proverbs, Birmingham City University, UK
  
  
• “Nature-based water treatment solutions and their successful implementation in Kathmandu valley, Nepal”
  Zuzana Boukalova, VODNÍ ZDROJE, a.s., Czech Republic
  
  
• “Infiltration-exfiltration systems design under hydrological uncertainty”
  Gianfranco Becciu, Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy
  
  
• “New Phase in the Process of Maintenance of the Urban Agricultural Area of “L’Horta de València”, Spain”
  Jose Luis Miralles i Garcia, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain

For details of future Webinars please visit:

WIT Winter Webinars

COVID-19 Update - New Arrangements for 2021 Conferences

The year 2021 has started and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to seriously affect daily life and people’s health around the world. Although the rollout of vaccination programmes will contribute to getting the health crisis under control, the restrictions in people´s mobility will continue for the next few months at least, thereby preventing most international travel.

In these challenging circumstances, WIT has continued as usual with its activities and has also introduced new ones, for instance, the WIT Winter Webinars, a series of monthly free live-streamed events covering a variety of scientific fields held from December to April. See https://www.wessex.ac.uk/webinars for more information.

As it was the case last year, we are conscious that the scientific community continues to work and wants to disseminate and publish their research. With the objective to continue our services and preserve the well-being of our delegates, we have decided that WIT Conferences scheduled between May and July 2021 will take place online.

Having taken into consideration the valuable comments from last year’s online conference feedback forms, we are pleased to announce that our 2021 online events will have two new features:

• Daily live-streamed Q&A session with authors.
  
  
• Reduced registration fees including a specially reduced early-bird registration.
  • Chair/ISAC Fee €450 / €320 (early bird up to two months before the conference)
  • Standard Fee €550 / €400 (early bird up to two months before the conference)
  • Student Fee €300 / €250 (early bird up to two months before the conference)

Below is a short description of how online events will be run:

1. Following the acceptance of a paper, authors will be asked to submit their PowerPoint Presentation with voice-over before the conference. A set of instructions to help authors prepare their presentation will be provided.
   
   
2. With the accepted papers and presentations, WIT will elaborate an online programme divided into topic sessions as usual. The programme will be available from the first day of the conference until the conference eBook is available (approx. 8 weeks). Delegates will be able to download papers and visualise presentations in any order and as many times as they wish.
   
   
3. Each day of the conference will include a live-streamed Q&A session where delegates will be able to pose questions to the authors of the papers scheduled in the programme for that day. Authors of the day will be asked to be present for the duration of the Q&A session.
   
   
4. Certificates for online participation will be provided after the event.
   
   
5. Accepted papers will continue to be published in a volume of the WIT Transactions which are Scopus indexed and accessible to the scientific community Open Access via the WIT Press website.

We look forward to meeting our delegates again very soon but in the meantime, we want to encourage the scientific community to continue with their research activities and participation in our conferences. We will continue with the commitment to our publishing activities, providing researchers with the greatest dissemination that their high-quality work deserves.

My very best regards

 

Santiago Hernández
Chief Academic Officer
Ashurst Lodge

Webinar on Architecture and Urban Planning for Eco-Sustainable Cities

16th December 2020, 2pm to 4pm (GMT)

Online

Overview

The webinar was intended to describe the challenges and strategies that can be necessary to implement architectural design as well as city planning based on the concepts of green architecture and sustainability in the context of massive urbanization. The examples described in the webinar corresponded to different countries and applications.

The webinar consisted of four 20-minute presentations selected among the best papers presented at our 2020 conferences and also include a 30-minute Q&A section at the end to allow attendees to make questions to the presenters.

Webinar Presentations

The programme included the following presentations:

• "Hospital design, construction and management"
  Pilar Chias, University of Alcala, Spain
  
  
• "The future of dwelling: rocking the house-boat"
  Camilo Cerro, American University of Sharjah, UAE
  
  
• "Temporary transformations to access and experience sustainable city public spaces"
  Danila Longo, University of Bologna, Italy
  
  
• "Sustainable Cities indices in Modern Architecture, A Comparative study in UAE"
  I. A. Shahid Ibrahim, University of Sharjah, UAE

For details of future Webinars please visit:

WIT Winter Webinars

WIT Winter Webinars

The programme of WIT conferences in 2020 is almost complete, with the exception of the BEM/MRM 43 Conference, which is to take place in early December. For 2021, WIT has, as usual, an outstanding programme composed of 15 conferences that will start in May, most of them already announced on the Web.

We are living in uncertain times, defined by the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic that has disrupted in many ways our social lives and has almost stopped people´s mobility. These circumstances are decreasing the possibilities of in-person networking and interchange of ideas.

WIT always tries to react proactively to each situation and in this case, the Institute has decided to organize a series of free live-streamed webinars, the WIT Winter Webinars, which will take place from December 2020 to April 2021, and will cover the winter months until the start of the 2021 calendar of WIT Conferences.

Each webinar will be devoted to a specific scientific field and will consist of four 20-minute presentations selected among the best papers presented at our 2020 conferences and also include a 30-minute Q&A session at the end to allow attendees to put questions to the presenters.

Registration for the webinars will be free of charge and those interested will be provided with the necessary instructions to register and access the event.

We hope this initiative will increase the dissemination of the best contributions from WIT conferences, show a clear description of the activities of the Institute and encourage senior and junior researchers to attend our future conferences.

COVID-19 Update - 2020 Conference Programme overview from our Chief Academic Officer

 

The 2020 programme of WIT conferences is almost complete, with the exception of the BEM/MRM 43 Conference which is to take place in December. The events had been planned in beautiful European cities, in collaboration with well-known universities, in venues that provided a friendly atmosphere for networking and the interchange of ideas among delegates.

Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a worldwide health crisis and reduced people´s mobility, resulting in many institutions having to cancel their meetings and conferences. The institute reacted quickly to the crucial situation and promptly arranged a scheme of online events which allowed easy participation for delegates, wherever their location, something that was very important to us, given the fact that WIT conferences attract researchers from many continents.

The Institute is proud to report that the feedback received from our delegates via the post-event questionnaire, given to the delegates requesting their opinion on the event, has provided scores of an average value higher than 4 (in a range from 1 to 5, where 5 is the top score) in terms of quality of the presentations, ease of access to the conference documents and overall rating of the event.

For 2021 WIT has, as usual, an exciting programme of conferences with 15 events, some of which have already been announced on the Web. The dates and venues are described in the information for each conference. Our strong hope is that the pandemic will decline, thus allowing the conferences to take place as in-person events, with the scientific community being in a position to meet again, but in any case, the Institute is truly committed to the safety of the delegates and so we are ready once again to adapt the conferences into online formats as we successfully did this year.

We look forward to your participation in our 2021 conferences and reiterate the sincere wishes of all at WIT for good health for you and your families.

My very best regards

 

Santiago Hernández
Chief Academic Officer
Ashurst Lodge

Blast Effects and Analysis 2020 (Online Short Course)

Overview

Dr Graham Schleyer from the University of Liverpool, School of Engineering recently delivered an online course on Blast Effects and Analysis over three half days to a group of nine participants from the UK, Switzerland, Indonesia, UAE, Spain and Portugal. This course was designed to equip engineers, security consultants and researchers with the knowledge and tools to better understand the effects on the built environment that large dynamic loads can produce from explosion sources. Practical design examples were used throughout with reference to commonly used design manuals and using spreadsheet analysis tools. The course covered the elementary concepts of HE blast loading and response in the far-field domain, and participants were provided with an appreciation of the scope and limitations of analytical and numerical methods for modelling these types of problems. The participants especially appreciated the condensed overview of an important area to the safety and security of the built environment as well as the opportunity to interact and network with others on the course. 

Course Sessions

The course consisted of six sessions (over 3 half days):

• Introduction, general considerations & blast effects
• Blast loading calculations
• Single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) analysis methods
• SDOF spreadsheet analysis tools
• Design of structural steel members under blast loading
• Design of RC structural members under blast loading & round-up

Presenter

Dr Graham Schleyer CEng, FIMechE, SFHEA is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and a member of the Impact Research Centre at the University of Liverpool, having worked previously for several years in the gas industry and for shorter periods with leading consultancies in the UK and the US. Over the past 30 years or so he has conducted hundreds of field and laboratory tests on full-size and sub-scale structures involving gas, HE and pressurized air explosions which have provided fundamental insights into the explosion resistance of steel, RC and glazing as well as validation of numerical models and simplified analytical methods.

Dr Schleyer is co-chair of the International Conference 'Structures Under Shock and Impact' (SUSI) organised by the Wessex Institute. He is a previous Royal Academy of Engineering Global Research Award holder (formerly Engineering Foresight Awards) and has published widely in journals, conference proceedings, and government and industry reports.

For further information and details of the next event please contact:

Jane Chantler
Wessex Institute
Ashurst Lodge, Ashurst
Southampton, SO40 7AA

Tel: 44 (0) 238 029 3223

Fax: 44 (0) 238 029 2853

jchantler@wessex.ac.uk

Blast Effects and Analysis 2020 Screenshot