The Centre of Numerical Modelling and Process Analysis
The UNIVERSITY of GREENWICH
The Fire Safety Engineering Group
Key Team Members
Professor Ed Galea
Centre Co-director, FSEG Director
BSc, Dip.Ed, Phd, AMISASI, CMath, FIMA, CEng, MIFireE.
Professor of Mathematical Modelling, the founding Director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) and Co-Director of the Centre for Numerical Modelling and Process Analysis, where he has worked in the area of Computational Fire Engineering (CFE) research since 1985. He is the author of 130+ academic and professional publications, has generated research funding in excess of £3 million between 2004 and 2006, and serves on a number of International/National standards committees concerned with fire safety such as IMO, ISO, BSI and SFPE. He also serves on a number of influential government safety and security committees, including SAPER (Scientific Advisory Panel for Emergency Response), which is chaired by Prof Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government.
He has contributed to several major Inquires and legal proceedings as an expert in fire and evacuation including: the Paddington Rail Crash, the Swiss Air MD11 crash, and the Admiral Duncan Pub bombing.
His current portfolio of research projects includes, several CBRN civil defence related projects funded by the UK Home Office; a large UK study into evacuation issues associated with the WTC disaster of 9/11 funded by the EPSRC; the development of a rail evacuation modelling tool funded by the US Dept of Transport; EU FP6 IP lead by Airbus concerned with large, green and efficient passenger aircraft of the future, and an EU FP6 STREP concerned with pedestrian dynamics in passenger terminals.
Dr Mayur Patel
Centre Co-director
BSc, MSc, PhD, FIMA, CMath, CSci
Reader in Computational Fluid Dynamics, head of the fire simulation group of FSEG and Co-Director of the Centre for Numerical Modelling and Process Analysis. He started his research career as one of the first PhD students within the Centre in 1983. Within FSEG he leads the development and applications team for the CFD fire simulation software SMARTFIRE which has users in over 18 countries around the world. His wider interest in CFD means he interacts with all the research groups within the Centre. His research interests in fire and ventilation simulation include: heat/smoke movement in enclosures; dispersion of toxic combustion products from pool fires; modelling technologies for water-mist applications, fires in reduced gravity environments, smoldering fires, post-fire analysis, heat and mass transfer, combustion and radiation, etc. He has published over 100 papers concerning CFD and its applications.
Dr Peter Lawrence
BSc, PhD
Reader in Computational Pedestrian Dynamics and head of the EXODUS development and applications team. He joined FSEG in 1994 on completing a PhD in Mesh Generation by Domain Decomposition. His team of 5 research staff is involved in the research and development of advanced behavioural algorithms for evacuation and pedestrian dynamics. He is also the principal software engineer and manager for the exodus suit of programs which can be found in over 30 countries. His current projects include people circulation simulation; emotion modelling; CAD image recognition; agent interaction with signage systems, and graph theory applied to agent wayfinding algorithms. He has published over 53 papers concerned with evacuation and people circulation research.
Dr John Ewer
BSc, MSc, PhD
Dr John Ewer is a Senior Research Fellow and head of the SMARTFIRE software engineering team. He joined FSEG in 1992, to start research on his PhD in re-engineering a legacy CFD code. His team of 4 research staff is involved in the development and implementation of advanced models for combustion and fire suppression, parallel implementations, visualisation systems and intelligent user interfaces. His current projects include the development of an intelligent "Experiment Engine" to ensure convergence of CFD fire simulations; unstructured meshing techniques, and the development of a hybrid CFD-ZONE fire model. He has published over 20 papers concerned with fire research.