The MOBILISE Project Consortium will organise its second project workshop on “A Collaborative Multi-Agency Platform for Building Resilient Communities” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 29 – 31 October 2018. The event is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The workshop is being coordinated by Dr Noralfishah Sulaiman at the Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia and THINKlab at the University of Salford. Dr Sulaiman is one of the Co-Investigators and is the project lead for the MOBILISE project’s Malaysia activities. Over forty-five government, academic, non-government and business organisations from Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom, are contributing to the workshop which will be held in English.

The workshop will particularly focus on three specific themes relating to disaster risk governance:

1. Collaborative disaster risk reduction and response governance
2. Building community resilience
3. The use of technology for understanding, monitoring, predicting local disasters’ risk and cascading impacts.

For further details about the event:  http://mobilise.uthm.edu.my

Photo by: Ishan @seefromthesky on Unsplash

THINKlab show the value of VR collaboration at GameLab 2018

THINKlab’s enterprise team are excited to be exhibiting at this year’s GameLab event, which is part of the annual Manchester Science Festival, 2018.

Taking place at MediaCityUK on Saturday 20 – Sunday 21 October, GameLab is a playground for ideas and brings together developers and industry to showcase new research, products and thought-provoking activities.

Exhibiting on both days, THINKlab will display recent work they have co-created with Siemens UK and the Mersey Gateway Environmental Trust. Both projects will demonstrate the possibilities of real-time 3d graphics and how this can be applied in collaborative engineering and interactive learning environments.

Dr Simon Campion, Commercial VR Project Manager said: “We’re thrilled to be taking some of the work we’ve produced with Siemens UK and the Mersey Gateway Environmental Trust to the show and we’re really grateful for the opportunity.

For Siemens UK, visitors will be able to walk around an interactive Offshore Electrical Substation in real-time and learn how VR has been utilised from design through to product launch. This device will be using the Oculus Rift Headset offering a fully immersive experience. Don’t get too close to the edge and fall in the water!

The VR application we produced with Mersey Gateway Environmental Trust was really exciting and very unique. To achieve the final application we used digital terrain models, geo-mapping layers and drone and satellite data, to enable the user to experience the entire Upper Mersey Estuary. Areas that are difficult to access or even impossible to reach can now be clearly seen, as well as the local wildlife and ecology.”

THINKlab Director, Prof Terrence Fernando praised recent work projects: “Due to our success with several Innovate UK commercial projects, the Enterprise team has now grown to four VR experts in the THINKlab. This event is a great opportunity for us to showcase the pioneering VR work that the team has produced during the last few years that brought innovation within our industry partner organisations.”

In addition to the THINKlab’s commercial VR projects, the team will also be exhibiting a joint project created with the research team.  The Design4Energy VR application allows users to interactively design an energy efficient neighbourhood including road layout, house positions, placement of solar panels and wind turbines while in the background an algorithm works out how energy efficient the design is.

GameLab is a FREE event and open to all the family. It takes place on Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 October, 11am – 5pm at MediaCityUK campus, University of Salford, Salford Quays, M50 2HE.

Point Clouds used for demonstration courtesy of Transport for London

Michal Cieciura, a Principal Software Engineer at THINKlab, has recently won a funding application from this year’s 2018 Unreal Development Grants.

The award is part of the larger $5m development grant by Epic Games which was founded in 2015 to help programmers and studios that are developing the Unreal Engine 4.

Michal is one of 37 winners from a variety of teams or individual creators, who received between $5,000 and $50,000 to support the development of their games, tools, broadcast and more.

His winning entry is a Point Cloud Plugin, a free plugin for Unreal Engine 4, which he has created to help with importing, processing and rendering point clouds. Currently, the software is in beta and supports desktop and VR platforms. It is already being used for a number of individuals, commercial and academic projects in architectural visualisation, construction & engineering, games & entertainment and landscape visualisation.

Michal said: “The plugin originated as a simple tool to aid in one of our in-house projects. I decided to make it a little bit more consumer-ready and release it for free on the Unreal Engine Forums. After it received surprisingly positive feedback, I continued improving it and started recording users’ ideas and suggestions for new features. This eventually led to the creation of a streamlined, standalone plugin which it currently is.

There have been many challenges to overcome throughout the work including performance and general handling of the huge data sets the point clouds often come in. It allowed me to acquire a more in-depth understanding of the different parts of the engine, which coincidently benefited other ongoing projects, both personally and in the THINKlab.”

THINKlab Director, Prof Terrence Fernando added: “We are so happy that Michal won this prestigious award from EPIC in recognition of his contribution to the gaming community. This is an indication of the quality of the VR team within the THINKlab.”

Michal was recently invited to an exclusive event in London which was part of Unreal Engine BuildLondon’18 for Architecture. The event showcased how real-time visualisation technology is being used across the architecture and construction industries, enabling architects and their clients to experience projects in full photographic quality and, if required, in mixed reality. The event took place at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in London and included a number of high profile speakers from leading agencies including Zaha Hadid, NVIDIA, Soluis Group, Garou VR and Heatherwick Studio.

Michal is the Principal Software Engineer at THINKlab working in the Enterprise Team. An experienced developer of interactive 3D environments, he has been instrumental in delivering a number of commercial projects for clients including Siemens, Network Rail and the BBC.  Outside of work, his personal interest include virtual reality, computer graphics, game engines and weightlifting!

Point Clouds used for demonstration courtesy of Dr Neil Entwistle, UoS

We are delighted to welcome Professor Marie-Christine Therrien from Montreal’s École Nationale d’administration publique and Cité-ID LivingLab, to the THINKlab for a very special event.

Taking place on Thursday 11 October 2018, Professor Marie-Christine will deliver a unique lecture on “Implementation of Urban Resilience Governance and Social Capital” which focuses on projects in Montreal and London.

Professor Marie-Christine Therrien is a Management Professor at the École Nationale d’administration publique, which is one of the largest public administration universities in the world. Since its creation in 1969, it has positioned itself as a leader in the renewal of a modern and effective public administration in Quebec and overseas. It has set the standard in this field, in both academic and practitioner communities.

As a Director of The Cité-ID Living Lab in Urban Resilience Governance, the organisation is a collaborative initiative that brings together individuals from across Canada and around the world working on urban resilience. It brings together city managers to private enterprises, non-profit organisations, citizens and academic researchers and is an incubator for new inter-sectoral evidence-based approaches and innovative practices in urban resilience.

In the presentation, there will be a discussion on two projects underway.  The first is a project looking at enabling strategies and hindering factors in urban resilience implementation by comparing the cities of Montreal and London.  The second project looks at identifying enabling factors in two Montreal neighbourhoods to develop social capital as a way to increase resilience to disasters.

The event takes place from 11.00am – 12.00pm (inc Q&A session) on Thursday 11 October 2018, in the THINKlab, 7th Floor, Maxwell Building.

If you would like to attend this presentation (open to all) please book in via this Eventbrite link https://www.eventbrite.com/e/implementation-of-urban-resilience-governance-and-social-capital-tickets-50961838230