PhD SUCCESS (Dec 2000)

Matthijs van Leeuwen successfully defended his PhD thesis on 'Stochastic Determination of Well Capture Zones Conditioned on Transmissivity Data' on 8 December.

Helen J Foster also successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled 'Assessment and Modelling of Spatio-temporal variability in Upland Stream Chemistry' in December.

SAVING WATER (Dec 2000)

Domestic water demand has been rising in the UK for many years, and is projected to continue to do so over the next two decades. One way to tackle this is to build new supply projects, but a more sustainable approach is look at ways in which water can be used more efficiently in the home by reducing consumption and/or recycling. Dr David Butler has recently been awarded a 3-year EPSRC Network WATERSAVE to establish a core group of UK (and international) academics and industrialists. The aim is to not only deliberate and act in response to particular problems, but also to think ahead, innovate and consider the long-term role of water conservation and recycling in urban water management.

'STARKER' LECTURE (Dec 2000)

Prof Howard Wheater was invited to Oregon State University in November to give the 'Starker lecture'. Fortunately for all concerned, this was delivered fully-clothed. He was also a keynote speaker at the first international conference on Wadi Hydrology, held in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt in December.

FLOOD RESEARCH (Dec 2000)

Given the recent weather, what is the Department doing about floods? Current work is led by Prof Howard Wheater and Dr Christian Onof. It includes a study with UCL and UEA of spatial structure and temporal patterns in the occurrence of extreme wind and rainfall over northern Europe. Demetrios Lekkas is working on improved methods of real-time flood forecasting, and Hayder Khan on rainfall and rainfall-runoff simulation models. Robert Bird has a joint appointment with UCL, to develop new methods of modelling spatial rainfall for flood design. Thorsten Wagener has built a tool-kit for hydrological modelling for regional application. Howard is advising MAFF on R&D requirements for flood design, and DETR on flood aspects of reservoir safety, as well as planning a Royal Society meeting on Floods for November 2001.