Civil Engineering Research in Ireland 2018

Civil Engineering Research in Ireland (CERI2018) conference was jointly held with the Irish Transport Research Network (ITRN2018) conference at University College Dublin on 29-30 August. A broad range of papers on civil engineering and transport topics were presented at the conferences including 147 full peer-reviewed technical papers and 8 keynote speakers. It was the largest conference to date with over 220 people registered for the conference. The quality of the papers were, in general, of excellent quality. There were eight eminent keynote speakers at the CERI2018 and ITRN2018 conferences, who were Professor Ken Gavin from TU Delft, Professor Ahmed Elghazouli from Imperial College London, Professor Lizbeth Goodman from UCD, Dr. Sree Nanukuttan from QUB, Andrew McIntosh from Banah UK, Professor Laurence Gill from Trinity College Dublin, Dr. Christine Buisson from the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks. It was particularly pleasing to have Tony Dempsey, Director of Roughan & O’Donovan Consulting Engineers, give the Joe O’Donovan Memorial Lecture on the 10th anniversary of the death of Joe O’Donovan. The lecture series, given every two years at the CERI conference, was instituted in 2010 to recognise the contribution made by Joe O’Donovan to civil engineering in Ireland.

The conferences aim to nurture early-career researchers and offer opportunities wherever possible to the next generation of leaders in research and industry. Thus, the best papers with a student as lead author in a number of streams of civil engineering received awards, including a cash prize of €200 and a €750 travel bursary to present at an international conference in the next two years. The award winners were Alan Carty (NUI Galway) on ‘An investigation into hydrodynamic effects on vortex drop structures liners using fluid-structure interaction techniques’, Alexandra Micu (UCD) on ‘Estimation of traffic load effects on Forth Road Bridge using camera measurements’, Luke Oakes (Ulster University) on ‘A simplified mix design procedure for geopolymer cement mortars based on metakaolin and industrial waste products activated with potassium silicate’, Suzanne Meade (Edinburgh Napier University) on ‘Measurement of Cycling Risk to underpin Quantitative Policy’, Jessica Holmes (Queen’s University Belfast) on ‘The Use of Near Surface Geophysical Methods for Assessing the Condition of Transport Infrastructure’  Jennifer Kirkpatrick (NUI Galway) on ‘The Effect of Climate Change on Flooding in Cork City’, Siyuan Chen (University College Dublin) on ‘Automated Bridge Deck Evaluation through UAV Derived Point Cloud’ and Federico Perrotta  (University of Nottingham) on ‘A big data approach for investigating the performance of the road infrastructure’.

The award for the overall best paper at the conference was presented to Dr Lin Zhang from Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions Ltd for her paper on ‘TAGS: How the GSI is making AGS data available to the geotechnical community’. This paper was co-authored with Mr. Paul Quigley (Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions Ltd), Mr. James Trench (Geological Survey of Ireland) and Mr. Michael Sheehy (Geological Survey of Ireland).

Professor Mark Richardson (University College Dublin) and Professor Roger West (Trinity College Dublin) were jointly awarded a life time achievement award from the Civil Engineering Research Association of Ireland (CERAI) for their outstanding achievements made over a sustained period in the disciplines of engineering, while Dr Magdalena Hajdukiewicz and Declan Gavigan were also recognised at the CERI2016 conference banquet for their outstanding contribution to research and practice at an early stage in their careers by receiving the Young Researchers Award.

The next Civil Engineering Research in Ireland (CERI2020) conference will be hosted by Cork Institute of Technology on 28-29 August 2020.

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