Staff from the School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering (SPACE), have won the Construct Award 2009 for Innovation and Adoption.

Together with local firms Macrete Ireland, WDR and RT Taggart, and Lagan, the SPACE team received the prize for the design, development and construction of three ‘FlexiArch’ bridges built for Newtownabbey Council.

The awards were held in the Emirates Stadium in London, and the team is the first from Northern Ireland to win the title and prize money of £5,000. The judges commended the team for their “innovation, beneficial impact on the construction industry, practicality, suitability for replication, economy and value for money, simplicity and sustainability.”

The FlexiArch was patented after 10 years of research at Queen’s and five years R&D at Macrete and causes no disruption to river banks or the watercourse during its installation. It is now in place in the Bleach Green viaduct in Newtownabbey and several other locations across the UK and Ireland.

Professor Adrian Long from Queen’s said: “It would not have been possible to have got this far without our link with Macrete. That involvement has allowed the project to progress quickly. The support of WDR and RT Taggart, Lagan, and Newtownabbey Council was also invaluable. The FlexiArch has huge potential and we are already receiving inquiries from across the globe.”

The research and development of the bridge has also been supported by Invest Northern Ireland, the Knowledge Transfer Partnership, DRD Roads Service (NI) the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Leverhulme Trust.

The overall winner of the NISP 25K awards for 'The next Big Thing', was Tactility Factory, which has developed patented technology designed to combine textile technologies with concrete. The business was founded by Ruth Morrow, a professor of architecture at Queen's University, and Trish Belford, a senior research fellow and textiles designer at University of Ulster. Both returned from working outside of Northern Ireland looking for a new challenge. They initially received a small Arts Council grant four years ago and started to develop their techniques from there. The  technique sallow textiles to remain permanently on the surface of precast concrete  overcoming the material's negative acoustic or aesthetic qualities.

The award goes to a team comprising of Linda Price and Jayne Bassett from  the School of Planning, Architecture & Civil Engineering along with Eimear Gallagher from the Centre for Educational Development. Their work, in the category of ‘excellence in teaching first year students’, recognises the importance of the first year experience in determining students' future success and retention. It has involved the embedding of Personal Development Planning and personal tutoring initiatives in the first year, thus facilitating reflective learning. Through reflection, planning, doing and reviewing, students are encouraged to develop as critical and autonomous learners. The success of the initiative has convinced colleagues within their discipline of its value and has enabled the model to be rolled out to the wider teaching team.

The Forum for an Alternative Belfast, which is aiming to "create a strong new vision for Belfast", has found that land covering the size of 500 football pitches is being underused or left to waste in and around the city centre.  MORE than two square kilometres of land currently lying idle in Belfast could be used to house more than 20,000 people in the area, a newly launched think tank has said. The Forum is running a summer school at SPACE from August 17 to 21.

A Belfast academic is working on research that could help protect soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Professor Wei Sha is testing how safe vehicles with titanium alloys are when hit by bullets or explosions. Professor Sha, from Queen's University's School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering, is examining the damage tolerance of titanium. It is the first research to reveal the reasons behind the deformation of titanium alloys under strong impact.

Here you can find all recent news and archived news related to the School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering.

Archived News

Arsenic Treatment System

Bhaskar Sen Gupta

A solution to the world’s worst case of ongoing mass poisoning, linked to rising cancer rates in Southern Asia, has been developed by researchers from Queen’s University Belfast.

Currently over 70 million people in Eastern India and Bangladesh, experience involuntary arsenic exposure from consuming water and rice; the main staple food in the region. This includes farmers who have to use contaminated groundwater from minor irrigation schemes.

It is estimated that for every random sample of 100 people in the Bengal Delta, at least one person will be near death as a result of arsenic poisoning, while five in 100 will be experiencing other symptoms.

Now, researchers at the Belfast-based University have created new low-cost technology to provide arsenic-free water to millions of people in South Asia currently exposed to high levels of the poison in groundwater.

Leading an international team, Queen’s researchers have developed a trial plant in Kasimpore, near Calcutta, which offers chemical-free groundwater treatment technology to rural communities for all their drinking and farming needs.

The technology is based on recharging a part of the groundwater, after aeration, into a subterranean aquifer (permeable rock) able to hold water. Increased levels of oxygen in the groundwater slow down the arsenic release from the soil. At higher dissolved oxygen levels, soil micro organisms, as well as iron and manganese, reduce the dissolved arsenic level significantly.

Dr Bhaskar Sen Gupta of Queen’s, co-ordinator of the project said: “Arsenic poisoning is behind many instances of ill-health in Southern Asia, including a rising number of cancer cases. Developing a low cost method of decontaminating ground water that is laced with high levels of arsenic is a key challenge for sustainable agriculture there.

“While there are some techniques available for treating relatively small quantities of water, there has, until now, been no viable technology available for decontaminating groundwater on a large scale that can ensure safe irrigation and potable water supply.

“This project developed by Queen’s is the only method which is eco-friendly, easy to use and deliverable to the rural community user at an affordable cost.”

The project is part of the EU-funded Asia Pro Eco Programme which is dedicated to the improvement of environmental performance in Asian economic sectors. Known as TiPOT (Technology for in-situ treatment of groundwater for potable and irrigation purposes), a key part of the project is the establishment of sustainable technology partnerships.

Explaining further, Dr Sen Gupta said: “From its inception we have had the vital support of Indian-based stakeholders, such as village councils and local financial institutions. This has been vital as they are the authorities who monitor the water supply and distribution in rural areas and provide micro-credit to the local farmers.

“With their help, we now have a solution which is transferable to many areas in need across Asia.”

The new plant will be maintained and operated by local village technicians. To help apply the technology to other areas in the South Asian region, the World Bank has given a grant of $200,000 to the TIPOT consortium to set up six more subterranean water treatment plants in the Gangetic plains of West Bengal. In June 2008, Queen’s along with the Indian partners BESU and IEMS won the prestigious DELPHE award of the British Council (www.britishcouncil.org/delphe.htm) to set up another treatment plant and run awareness programmes for arsenic poisoning in India.

Further information on the project can be found at http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/TiPOT/

For media enquiries please contact: Lisa Mitchell, Press Officer, +44 (0)28 9097 5384, Mob: 07814 422 572, lisa.mitchell@qub.ac.uk

Two graduates from the BSc in Environmental Planning 2007/08 have been awarded prizes in the British Council Erasmus Competition. Laura Michael and Julie Crawford have come first and second respectively in the Regional Erasmus Photographic Competition and have been invited to attend an award event in London on December 9th where they will be entered into the national final.

Four prizes have been awarded to Northern Irish students in total and we are delighted that the School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering is so well represented in this. Laura and Julie spent Semester I of their final year in the School of the Built Environment in KTH Stockholm. This year there are five students from the School in Stockholm.

For futher details about the Erasmus programme in the School please contact Karen Keaveney (k.keaveney@qub.ac.uk)

Congratulations to Faber Maunsell who were winners of the NI heat of the NCE Communications Competition which was held in the Council Chamber, Queen’s University on 26th November 2008.  The team of three included Mary Moorhead and Laura Henderson who are both Civil Engineering students in SPACE currently on a placement with Faber Maunsell. The third member is Patrick O’Connor. The team presented a study of three routes for a by-pass to the (imaginary) town of Ambleton.   The Faber Maunsell team will now progress to the national heat where their winning streak will hopefully continue!

The Centre for Built Environment Research (CBER), the Environmental Engineering Research Centre (EERC) and the Institute of Spatial & Environmental Planning (ISEP).

Successful candidates will join a School with a well established research record: the School’s ratings in the 2008 RAE showed Civil Engineering ranked 8th in UK, with 75% of its research deemed to be world leading or internationally excellent.  Planning at Queen’s rose eight places to achieve a position of 9th in Russell Group submissions whilst research in Architecture at Queen’s has undergone a major review and, with recruitment of established research-active academic staff and ring-fenced funding, is set to expand over the next three years.