EWRE Makes a Stand in Blue & Green at this year's Imperial Festival

Each year in May, Imperial College London plays host to one of the UK's premier science festivals

The Imperial Festival showcases the leading edge research that  cements Imperial’s position as one of the world’s top universities.

At this year’s Festival (May 9th-10th, 2014), the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Environmental and Water Resource Engineering (EWRE) section contributed a stand (pictured below) with the umbrella theme: Retaining and Repelling Water.

With able assistance from project members Dr Ana Mijic, Xi Liu, Rui Pina and Ivo Suter, EWRE stand leader Dr Karl Smith talked visitors through the key benefits brought by the Blue Green Dream (BGD) project.   In April (2014), a green roof (pictured below) was installed on Imperial’s Eastside Hall of Residence for use as an experimental test site for the BGD project.

 A sample of the green roof was employed to bring life to the fundamental BGD concept of using green infrastructure to ecologically deliver not only a range of essential services – e.g. stormwater management, biodiversity provision, thermal and noise insulation – but also, support urban adaptation to climate change.

Also featured at the stall was a demonstration of the hydrophobic properties of a waste derived powder serendipitously produced by PhD student Ms. Hara Spathi (pictured below).  Drops of water were seen to soak in into the reference sheet of paper, whilst the powder impregnated paper remained impervious, impelling the drops to retain their globular form.

For further information about the Blue Green Dream (BGD) project, please contact Dr Karl Smith

For further information about the hydrophobic powder, please contact Prof. Chris Cheeseman