Ed Galea

Last updated

Ed Galea
Born
Melbourne, Australia
Alma mater Monash University
Awards2001 British Computer Society Gold Medal for IT
2002 Queen's Anniversary Prize
2006 and 2017 Royal Aeronautical Society's Gold Award
Scientific career
FieldsFire and evacuation modelling
Institutions University of Greenwich
Thesis  (1981)

Ed Galea (full name, Edwin Richard Galea) is a British academic specialising in fire safety engineering and evacuation dynamics. He is the founding director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) at the University of Greenwich, where he has conducted pioneering research in fire modelling, human behaviour in emergencies, and evacuation simulation since 1986. [1] [2]

Contents

Galea has served in several major public inquiries such as the Paddington Rail Crash, the Swiss Air MD11 crash, the Admiral Duncan pub bombing, and the Grenfell Tower Fire. [3] Further, he is part of the editorial board of Safety Science and an Associate Editor for the Aeronautical Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society. [4] [5]

Early Life and Education

Galea was born in Melbourne, Australia, and developed an early interest in science and engineering. He pursued a bachelor's degree in Science, majoring in Physics and Mathematics at Monash University (1976 – 1980), followed by a Diploma in Education Monash University (1980–1981) and a Ph.D. in astrophysics, with a focus on magnetohydrodynamics from Newcastle University, New South Wales (1981–1984). [6]

Early career

Upon graduating Galea secured a position as an industrial mathematician at the Melbourne research laboratory for BHP (1984 – 1985). In 1985 Galea was offered a one-year post-doctoral position at St.Andrews University in Scotland to work on the mathematical modelling of magnetic flux tubes in the solar atmosphere. Galea moved to the UK in October 1985, took up the position at St. Andrews but remained there for only a few months (1985 – 1986). [7]

Academic career

Galea's academic career in fire safety research began at Thames Polytechnic in London (1986) with a three-year post-doctoral position focused on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling of fire. His project was concerned with utilising the ‘new’ technique of CFD fire modelling to explore the fire dynamics of the fatal Manchester Airport B737 fire of 1985 that claimed the lives of 55 people. [8] As such, it was one of the first applications of CFD fire modelling to the study of fatal post-crash aircraft fire. Thames Polytechnic became the University of Greenwich in 1992, and Galea was appointed as Senior Lecturer in 1988, Reader (Associate Professor) in 1991 and full Professor in 1992. At the age of 34, he was the youngest Professor appointed by the university. He established the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) at the University of Greenwich in 1992. Today, FSEG in a world-leading research group in fire safety engineering. [6] [9]

Research Contributions

Ed Galea's research has significantly advanced the field of fire safety engineering. He has developed several computational tools for fire and evacuation modeling, SMARTFIRE for CFD fire modelling, and the EXODUS suite of agent-based evacuation models including. [10] [11]

Galea's work encompasses various aspects of fire safety, from the detailed simulation of fire spread to the analysis of human behaviour during evacuations. Galea has conducted extensive studies on the evacuation of high-rise buildings, ships, aircraft and urban environments, contributing to improved safety standards and practices in these environments.

Awards and Honours

Throughout his career, Ed Galea has received numerous awards and honours for his contributions to fire safety engineering. These include: [12]

2001 British Computer Society Gold Medal for IT;

2002 Queen's Anniversary Prize; [13]

2006 and 2017 Royal Aeronautical Society's Gold Award;

2013 Royal Institution of Naval Architecture Medal of Distinction;

Galea has also been recognized by professional organisations such as the Institution of Fire Engineers and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.

Publications and Divulgation

Galea has authored or co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters. His publications are widely cited and have influenced both academic research and practical applications in fire safety engineering. [14] [15] Galea has been interviewed in many news articles and six documentaries focusing on fire and evacuation disasters. [16] [17] [18] [19]

Professional involvement

Galea is actively involved in several professional organizations and committees related to fire safety and evacuation. He frequently serves as a consultant to government agencies, regulatory bodies, and industry, providing expert advice on fire safety standards and policies. He is a charted fire safety engineer, a charted mathematician and a fellow of the IFE and IMA.

Personal life

Galea resides in London and is known for his dedication to education and mentoring the next generation of fire safety engineers – he has supervised to completion 35 PhD students. He has been married since 1992. He enjoys photography, astronomy, driving performance cars and the cinema in his spare time.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Greenwich</span> Public university in Greenwich, London, England

The University of Greenwich is a public university located in London and Kent, United Kingdom. Previous names include Woolwich Polytechnic and Thames Polytechnic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emergency evacuation</span> Urgent removal of people from an area of imminent or ongoing threat

Emergency evacuation is an immediate egress or escape of people away from an area that contains an imminent threat, an ongoing threat or a hazard to lives or property.

Evacuation simulation is a method to determine evacuation times for areas, buildings, or vessels. It is based on the simulation of crowd dynamics and pedestrian motion. The number of evacuation software have been increased dramatically in the last 25 years. A similar trend has been observed in term of the number of scientific papers published on this subject. One of the latest survey indicate the existence of over 70 pedestrian evacuation models. Today there are two conferences dedicated to this subject: "Pedestrian Evacuation Dynamics" and "Human Behavior in Fire".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bram van Leer</span> Dutch mathematician

Bram van Leer is Arthur B. Modine Emeritus Professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. He specializes in Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), fluid dynamics, and numerical analysis. His most influential work lies in CFD, a field he helped modernize from 1970 onwards. An appraisal of his early work has been given by C. Hirsch (1979)

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PTV Vissim</span>

PTV Vissim is a microscopic multi-modal traffic flow simulation software package developed by PTV Planung Transport Verkehr AG in Karlsruhe, Germany. It was first developed in 1992. The name is derived from "Verkehr In Städten - SIMulationsmodell".

Vahid Motevalli is the director of the School of Science, Engineering, and Technology at Penn State Harrisburg. Prior to joining Penn State, he was Associate Dean of Engineering for Research and Innovation and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee. In his role, he was responsible for overall research activities of the college including two centers of excellence, Center for Manufacturing Research (CMR) and Center for Energy Systems Research (CESR) as well as coordination of graduate student funding, research strategies, research infrastructure and providing advice and administration of all research related functions. In addition, he was providing support and launching initiatives to grow innovation and entrepreneurship programs within the college and university.

Charbel Farhat is the Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where from 2008 to 2023, he chaired the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. From 2022 to 2023, he chaired this department as the inaugural James and Anna Marie Spilker Chair of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is also Professor in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, and Director of the Stanford-King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Center of Excellence for Aeronautics and Astronautics. From 2017 to 2023, he served on the Space Technology Industry-Government-University Roundtable; from 2015 to 2019, he served on the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB); from 2008 to 2018, he served on the United States Bureau of Industry and Security's Emerging Technology and Research Advisory Committee (ETRAC) at the United States Department of Commerce; and from 2007 to 2018, he served as the Director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center at Stanford University. He was designated by the US Navy recruiters as a Primary Key-Influencer and flew with the Blue Angels during Fleet Week 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. Bowen Loftin</span> American academic administrator

Richard Bowen Loftin, better known as R. Bowen Loftin, is an American academic and physicist who was the 22nd Chancellor of the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Prior to his appointment as chancellor, he served as the 24th president of Texas A&M University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramesh K. Agarwal</span> American academic

Ramesh K. Agarwal is the William Palm Professor of Engineering in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Washington University in St. Louis. He is also the director of Aerospace Engineering Program, Aerospace Research and Education Center and Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at WUSTL. From 1994 to 1996, he was the Sam Bloomfield Distinguished Professor and Chair of Aerospace Engineering department at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. From 1996 to 2001, he was the Bloomfield Distinguished Professor and the executive director of the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University. Agarwal received Ph.D in Aeronautical Sciences from Stanford University in 1975, M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1969 and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India in 1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ESI Group</span>

ESI Group provides virtual prototyping software that simulates a product's behavior during testing, manufacturing and real-life use. Engineers in a variety of industries use its software to evaluate the performance of proposed designs in the early phases of the project with the goal of identifying and eliminating potential design flaws.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elaine Oran</span> American aerospace engineer, computer scientist, physicist

Elaine Surick Oran is an American physical scientist and is considered a world authority on numerical methods for large-scale simulation of physical systems. She has pioneered computational technology to solve complex reactive flow problems, unifying concepts from science, mathematics, engineering, and computer science in a new methodology. An incredibly diverse range of phenomena can be modeled and better understood using her techniques for numerical simulation of fluid flows, ranging from the tightly grouped movements of fish in Earth's oceans to the explosions of far-flung supernovae in space. Her work has contributed significantly to the advancement of the engineering profession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Karniadakis</span> American mathematician

George Em Karniadakis is a professor of applied mathematics at Brown University. He is a Greek-American researcher who is known for his wide-spectrum work on high-dimensional stochastic modeling and multiscale simulations of physical and biological systems, and is a pioneer of spectral/hp-element methods for fluids in complex geometries, general polynomial chaos for uncertainty quantification, and the Sturm-Liouville theory for partial differential equations and fractional calculus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alison Etheridge</span> Professor of Probability

Alison Mary Etheridge is Professor of Probability and former Head of the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford. Etheridge is a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Meneveau</span>

Charles Meneveau is a French-Chilean born American fluid dynamicist, known for his work on turbulence, including turbulence modeling and computational fluid dynamics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wen Chuanyuan</span> Chinese aeronautical and automation engineer (1918–2019)

Wen Chuanyuan was a Chinese aeronautical and automation engineer. He was a professor and co-founder of the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering at Beihang University. He developed China's first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in 1959 and first flight simulator in 1983. He was awarded the State Science and Technology Progress Award in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Igle Gledhill</span> South African scientist

Irvy (Igle) Gledhill is a South African physicist at the University of Witwatersrand, School of Mechanical, Industrial & Aeronautical Engineering, in Johannesburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guillermo Rein</span> Professor of fire science

Guillermo Rein is a professor of fire science in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. His research is focused on fire, combustion, and heat transfer. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Fire Technology and Fellow of the Combustion Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyle Norman Long</span> Academic and computational scientist

Lyle Norman Long is an academic, and computational scientist. He is a Professor Emeritus of Computational Science, Mathematics, and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, and is most known for developing algorithms and software for mathematical models, including neural networks, and robotics. His research has been focused in the fields of computational science, computational neuroscience, cognitive robotics, parallel computing, and software engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruggiero Lovreglio</span> Italian scientist

Ruggiero Lovreglio is an Italian academic based in Auckland, New Zealand. He is an associate professor at Massey University and a Rutherford Discovery Fellow for Royal Society Te Apārangi. His research is focused on large-scale and small-scale evacuation dynamics and safety training using emerging technologies, such as virtual reality and augmented reality.

Enrico Ronchi is an Italian Associate Professor at the Department of Fire Safety Engineering and the Department of Transport and Roads at Lund University, Sweden. He is known for his research in evacuation modeling, human behavior in fire, and fire safety engineering.

References

  1. ↑ "Ed Galea | People". University of Greenwich. Retrieved 3 June 2024.
  2. ↑ ExpertFile. "Professor Ed Galea Director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group - Expert with University of Greenwich | ExpertFile". expertfile.com. Retrieved 3 June 2024.
  3. ↑ ExpertFile. "Professor Ed Galea Director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group - Expert with University of Greenwich | ExpertFile". expertfile.com. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  4. ↑ "Editorial board - Safety Science | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier". www.sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  5. ↑ "Editorial board". Cambridge Core. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  6. 1 2 "Ed Galea - University of Greenwich | LinkedIn". uk.linkedin.com. Retrieved 3 June 2024.
  7. ↑ "Podcast: Episode 41 – Ed Galea, His career, part 1: How astrophysics leads to steel casting and fire modelling". The Aperiodical. 11 October 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  8. ↑ "Podcast: Episode 41 – Ed Galea, His career, part 1: How astrophysics leads to steel casting and fire modelling". The Aperiodical. 11 October 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
  9. ↑ "Ed Galea". 5x15. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  10. ↑ "SMARTFIRE (An advanced CFD fire simulation environment) INTRODUCTION". fseg.gre.ac.uk. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  11. ↑ "Exodus Introduction". fseg.gre.ac.uk. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  12. ↑ Hall, Rachel; Bayer, Lili (2 January 2024). "Japan: plane collision at Tokyo airport leaves five dead on coastguard aircraft but Japan Airlines passengers evacuate – as it happened". the Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  13. ↑ "The lessons of 9/11". Times of Malta. 12 November 2005. Retrieved 3 June 2024.
  14. ↑ "E. R.Galea". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 3 June 2024.
  15. ↑ "Scopus preview - Galea, E. R. - Author details - Scopus". www.scopus.com. Retrieved 3 June 2024.
  16. ↑ "Ed Galea". IMDb. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  17. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 - All in the Mind, Self-driving cars and the pedestrian, Risk tolerance in the brain, Awards nominee". BBC. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  18. ↑ Sider, River Davis, Megumi Fujikawa and Alison. "Inside a Flaming Jet, 367 Passengers Had Minutes to Flee. Here's How They Did It". WSJ. Retrieved 10 June 2024.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. ↑ "How everyone on Jan flight 516 survived". The World from PRX. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.