Abertay University is one of the UK’s leading universities for research into environmental science, with no fewer than three centres specialising in different areas of work: the Abertay Centre for the Environment (ACE), SIMBIOS and the Urban Water Technology Centre (UWTC).
SIMBIOS is home to a multidisciplinary research team including physicists, chemists, biologists, and computational modellers, working on complex ecological and environmental issues. Focussing on the bio-physical interface, SIMBIOS uses modelling and experimental approaches to examine a wide range of fundamental and applied questions that impact on daily life on the planet.
The team have become acknowledged world leaders on the properties of soil and its impact on climate change, as both a measurement and catalyst. Equipped with highly sophisticated 3D scanning technology, the team is able to look at soil particles in microscales, enabling never-seen-before analysis of a whole host of new processes in soil behaviour and its impact.
Professor Philippe Baveye, Chair of Computational Modelling and Director of SIMBIOS, is leading the team discovering more and more about soil and its behaviours, with major potential benefits for farming and industrial practices, as well as household and individual responsibilities.
The team is also researching evolutionary ecology and community-level consequences of geneflow, and sensory ecology (why organisms move). Researchers are also looking at self-organised habitats and communities, chiefly the impact of the physicality of habitats on their sustainability and functionality.
Abertay researchers are investigating sustainability enhancement in local government decision-making processes. Dr David Blackwood (UWTC) jointly leads the research with Dr Ruth Falconer (SIMBIOS).
The team are developing a sustainability assessment and enhancement framework for urban redevelopment projects. A 3D visualisation tool which identifies sustainability indicators such as pollution, noise levels, energy usage and traffic levels, is also being developed.
The tool allows stakeholders to understand, interact with and influence decisions made regarding urban design. This platform uses computer games technology for 3D visualisation in conjunction with an underlying computational model.
The visualisation approach is also being used to convey complex sustainability information in other projects, such as studying the life cycle of phosphates in the aquatic environment and the influence of land management strategies on the sustainability of ecosystems (in conjunction with Edinburgh University).
The enhancement framework and the visualisation tool are also being applied to issues regarding public policy for demographic change in Europe as part of an EU-funded Interreg IV B North Sea Region Project involving nine European regions.
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