PLATFORM: Platform grant Renewal: Environmental Forensics

Completed

Nuclear Fission and Fusion(Nuclear Fission, Nuclear supporting technologies)
Not Energy Related

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Civil Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Architecture and the Built Environment)
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES (Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences)

Not Cross-cutting
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Environmental dimensions)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation)

Professor R Kalin
Civil Engineering
University of Strathclyde

Standard

EPSRC

01 October 2007

31 January 2010

28 months

£1

Transport Systems and Vehicles

Scotland

Materials, Mechanical and Medical Eng, Process Environment and Sustainability

Professor R Kalin, Civil Engineering, University of Strathclyde

Dr T Elliot, Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Queen's University Belfast
Dr W Meier-Augenstein, Stable Isoptopes Unit, James Hutton Institute (Macaulay Inst with SCRI)

The aim of this EPSRC Platform Grant Renewal is to use the understanding of soil and groundwater contamination and remediation gained with past Research Council support including an EPSRC Platform Grant, and expand this knowledge into new areas to make a significant scientific advancement in the emerging field of Environmental Forensics. This will be done by linking a strong scientific understanding of the sources, transport and fate of environmental pollutants, their effect on the natural environment and on the built/human environment, with the vast experiences available from traditional forensic approaches to science.The purpose of the Platform Grant renewal is to underpin a 5 year research programme to fill this need and to provide to the UK a sound scientific grounding in environmental forensics which can provide the factual basis for mediated or negotiated transactions or for any public inquiry related to environmental matters; and to link this effort with other UK and International groups working in the field.Questions that environmental forensics seeks to answer includes providing a 'Legal Weight of Scientific Evidence' for:Who caused the contamination?When did the contamination occur?How did the contamination occur?How extensive is the contamination?Are the test results valid? Is there evidence of fraud? What levels of contamination have people been exposed to?

15/11/11