NEWS

Latest News

Reporting on FCL19

 

 

 

Read about our designing fire safe informal settlement workshop here.


Festival of Creative Learning 2019

Join the IRIS-Fire team for a fire workshop as part of the Festival of Creative Learning.

 

Read more

SPIE Remote Sensing conference

IRIS-Fire presented preliminary remote sensing fire detection results at the SPIE Remote Sensing conference in Berlin.


First large scale field experiments in South Africa

The first large scale field experiments took place in South Africa in May 2018.

 

Mohamed Beshir describes our trip in this blog post.

Festival of Creative Learning

19 - 23 February 2018


As part of the Festival of Creative Learning at Edinburgh University, Dr David Rush of the IRIS-Fire project organised a hackathon from 19-23 February 2018 to design and construct an informal dwelling with limited resources. But rather than simply build a structure to provide protection from the elements, we were encouraged to come up with creative ideas that could enhance the day-to-day experience for dwellers of informal homes.


January Research Trip 2018

23 Jan 2018 


 

The beginning of January saw Sarah-Jane Cooper-Knock and David Rush travel to Cape Town for three main reasons

  1. Survey planning
  2. Advisory Board meeting
  3. Visiting settlements

 

 

Read more about who we met, where we went, and what surveys we are planning.

 


Welcoming Dr Yu Wang

1 Nov 2017


Dr Yu Wang started today at The University of Edinburgh, working alongside the IRIS-Fire Project Team.

 

Yu will be working mainly on the fire experiments within the UK and supporting the experiments occurring in South Africa.  

 


Welcoming Dr Lesley Gibson and Mohamed Beshir

1 Sept 2017


Dr Lesley Gibson and Mohamed Beshir (mid-september) started today at The University of Edinburgh, working alongside Drs David Rush and Rory Hadden, on the IRIS-Fire Project.

 

Lesley will primarily be working on developing the mapping algorithms and frameworks to identify and quantify the fire risks within informal settlements. 

 


Funding for deeper social investigation and impact

15 Aug 2017


Dr Graham Spinardi has recently been awarded an ESRC grant to look into more depth the social and technological issues within informal settlements with respect to fires.

 

The ESRC grant, titled "Tackling Fire in Informal Urban Settlements: An Interdisciplinary Approach", is to work alongside many aspects of the IRIS-Fire project. With this being the case, the grants will work together in terms of outputs and deliverables, to maximise the use of resources to the fullest possible extent. 


Welcoming Charles Kahanji

3 July 2017


Dr Charles Kahanji started today at Stellenbosh University, working alongside Dr Richard Walls, on the IRIS-Fire Project. Charles gained his PhD from Ulster University, Belfast, UK working on high performance fibre reinforced concrete. He previously lectured at the University of Zambia. He obtained his MEng in structural engineering from the Wuhan University of Technology, China, and his under-graduate degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Zambia. His research interests are in fire behaviour and performance of construction materials and informal settlement fires. He worked a consulting engineer in Zambia for two years.     


Settling in with settlement visits

29 May 2017


Imizamo Yethu after som initial reblocking (South Africa)
A street in Imizamo Yethu

An exciting and thought provoking visit to Stellenbosch and Cape Town, meeting with Dr Richard Walls and colleagues as we discuss the next few years of the project.

 

The trip also included a few trips to some of the settlements that we are considering studying, both socially and physically, for the IRIS-Fire project.


IRIS-Fire project brief

Project brief for IRIS-Fire - motivation, objectives and key partners.

Data, publications and guidelines

Go to the downloads page for all our accessible content, including up to date publications and data sets.