Research Activities
We have been active in several research areas. This includes participating in funded research projects and supporting ongoing consultancy projects with our research capability to ensure quality and develop novel approaches. These research activities include conducting project work, producing peer-reviewed publications, developing guidance, delivering of lecture material, supervising students and working on ongoing research areas of interest
Examples Funded Research Projects:
- Collecting crowd movement/behaviour data as part of the UK Government Events Research Programme in response to the covid-19 pandemic. Worked with multiple academic partners and UK Government to collect data from 20+ public events to inform Government response of Covid pandemic.
- Working with the Royal Academy of Engineering X programme to develop case studies / material enabling the complexity of wildfire evacuation events to be better understood. Worked in consortium with UK,EU, US, Australian and Canadian academic and government partners to develop material for education/outreach to demonstrate that the development of disasters is complex rather than complicated.
- Working for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (US Gov)/ National Fire Protection Association with consortium partners to develop a freely available wildfire modelling platform (pedestrian, traffic and fire). Worked with an international consortium to develop and prepare a free simulation model to quantify community evacuation (representing fire, traffic and pedestrian elements) given wildfire threats for practice.
- Working for the UK Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to quantify the impact of regulatory measures on evacuation performance. Worked with multiple academic and industrial partners to simulate multiple evacuation scenarios from compliant residential building designs to inform future regulatory developments.
- Working for the Canadian Government (National Research Council) to expand wildfire evacuation simulation capability to also integrate healthcare facilities, logistics and optimisation of evacuation strategies.
- Working for the UKRI (in conjunction with University of Edinburgh, University of St.Andrews, Delft University (Netherlands), Munich University of Applied Sciences (Germany), etc.) to examine the impact of emergency responder communication strategies on evacuee response.
- Working with the Swedish Meteorological Institute and Lund University (Swe) amongst others to develop and index that captures conditions produced when multiple hazards develop.
In addition to externally funded research, we also have ongoing internally funded interests to support our practice, including model development (see discussion on SENSETM), crowd behaviour at stadia, and the collection of pedestrian/evacuee data to support the modelling process.
Publications
Movement Strategies staff have authored or co-authored 30 peer-reviewed publications since 2019. These include articles published in respected journals including Safety Science and Fire Safety Journal.
Guidance Development
- Contributed to the latest edition of the Green Guide. For the past year, we have been sharing our technical expertise and experience as an input to the drafting process of the 6th edition of the Guide to Safety at Sports Ground
- Worked in Network Rail to identify expected rail passenger behaviour given incident scenarios to support development of future iterations of Station Capacity Planning Guidance
- Contributed to development of guidance related to community safety in response to Wildland Urban Interface fires in conjunction with the National Research Council Canada
- Developed of ‘Guidance on designing for crowds - an integrated approach’
- Contributed to Society of Fire Protection Engineers Guide on Evacuation from Very Tall Buildings
- Contributed to Society of Fire Protection Engineers Handbook – chapters relating to computer modelling, engineering calculations, engineering data and wildfire evacuation.
Lecture Material
Development and delivery of lecture material on evacuation and pedestrian dynamics in conjunction with:
- Glasgow Caledonian University (UK)
- Lund University (Sweden)
- University of Maryland (US)
- Crowd Dynamics training for National Arena Association and Festival Republic; Various speeches on Planning for Emergencies – Cabinet Office, festival republic conference
- Manchester Metropolitan University MSc course on Crowd Collapse (US).
- Society of Fire Protection Engineers (US/International)
Our team have delivered more than 50 presentations to academic, professional, regulatory and industrial partners since 2019. These have included international/technical conferences (e.g. FEMTC, IAFSS, Interflam, IAWF), industry expos / network (e.g. FIREX, FireCo network etc.), academic guest lectures (Imperial College, University of Central Lancashire, Bristol University, etc.), and associations (e.g. NAHFO, IFSM, etc.).
Student Supervision
Our team been involved in the supervision of over 15 undergraduate, post-graduate and post-doctoral student projects since 2019, in conjunction with:
- University of Maryland (US)
- Marine Institute Memorial University (Canada)
- Lund University (Sweden)
- University of Greenwich (UK)
- Imperial College London (UK)
- Massey University (NZ)
- Consumer Data Research Centre dissertation programme (via internship support).