Stories of Science: Evacuating virtual buildings

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TU Delft and NS study the impact of the coronavirus crisis on travel behaviour

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Stories of Science: Globally mapping air pollution

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Stories of Science: Looking into the earth with sound

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Stories of Science: Into the mud to help nature

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Civil Engineering and Geosciences

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| Stories of Science

Reading time: 4 min

Moved by moving water

Newton’s law of universal gravitation is good news for the Dutch. Ice melting in Greenland and the Arctic glaciers has caused the Netherlands to rise by about 4 centimetres over the last century. Riccardo Riva has been studying the effects of moving water masses from one place to another.

Reading time: 4 min

Evacuating virtual buildings

Virtual Reality (VR) is not just about gaming or flight simulators. At TU Delft, PhD Yan Feng is investigating how it may help explain the behaviour of pedestrians. It took her just five months to teach herself how to create a complex virtual building. By then she had built an exact replica of her faculty building and invited real people to explore and evacuate it. So how did they find their way around?

Reading time: 3 min

Globally mapping air pollution

Satellites are the best available measuring instruments to detect man-made pollution worldwide. Atmospheric scientist Pieternel Levelt initiated OMI and TROPOMI, two of the most prestigious measuring instruments for the detailed mapping of harmful pollutants in the atmosphere. TROPOMI, the latest of the two, is capable of identifying and studying sources of pollution with even greater precision. The recently launched satellite will also be monitoring the main greenhouse gas emissions.

Reading time: 3 min

Looking into the earth with sound

A student is hitting a metal plate with a hammer while another is looking at a computer screen in a nearby tent. What (on earth) is happening here? ‘We’re studying the earth’s interior,’ PhD and geophysicist Myrna Staring says.

Reading time: 4 min

Into the mud to help nature

PhD candidate Lodewijk de Vet stood in the mud for weeks, in order to learn about organisms in the seabed and to take measurements. He wants to understand the Eastern and Western Scheldt better, so that he can help the ecology while simultaneously protecting our country from rising sea levels. His understanding of these areas served as a foundation for the Roggenplaat nourishments, that have since been executed.

Reading time: 4 min

Taking a piss? Or turning it into energy

Pee not only generates uncontrollable laughter in five-year-olds but energy as well. Niels van Linden is currently working on a concept to produce electricity from urban and industrial residual waters, which in turn will power the energy-neutral water treatment system he is hoping to develop.

Reading time: 3 min

From concrete waste to concrete buildings

Earth’s primary resources are finite. Human inventiveness, however, isn’t. At TU Delft’s laboratories, Francesco Di Maio is working on the recycling of concrete waste. Just like the Phoenix, the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes, Di Maio wants new concrete buildings to arise from their predecessors waste. He hopes his technologies will help to transform urban economies into self-sustaining loops.

Reading time: 4 min

Can sandbanks save mangrove forests?

Waking up early and going into the field on a small fishermen's boat, while the sun is rising behind volcano tops. That's how days started for PhD student Silke Tas during her two month fieldwork in Indonesia. The rest of her days were less idyllic: they consisted mostly of treading through the mud to get the right measurements for her research. She studies the workings of coastal sandbanks that give a chance to mangrove forests to restore, so that the forests can, in turn, prevent coast erosion.

Reading time: 4 min

A golden age for earth observation

Earth observation is experiencing a golden age: satellites are providing us with an unprecedented wealth of data. Climate researcher Stef Lhermitte is making good use of this, because however effective our models may be, they still contain plenty of uncertainties.

Reading time: 3 min

Waiting for the perfect storm

For months hydraulic engineer Patrick Oosterlo has been waiting for a heavy storm. One that can truly test his equipment that was installed in and on a dike on the coast of the eastern Wadden Sea. He needs high waves and strong winds to decide: is this dike high enough?

Reading time: 4 min

Measuring flood risks the smart way

A world without a sewer system is not really something anyone would wish to contemplate. Flooding, smelly streets, not to mention the absence of toilet facilities, would make life intolerable. With approximately 150,000 kilometres of waste pipes the Dutch sewage system is one of the country’s most important pieces of infrastructure. While maintenance is crucial it is also expensive. Assistant professor urban water infrastructure Lisa Scholten, together with Francois Clemens and Juan Pablo Aguilar Lopez are looking at new ways to achieve an efficient inspection and maintenance system. With Leiden University computer scientists Arno Knobbe and Dirk Meijer they have been working on ‘SewerSense’, a project to develop a new inspection method which will also lead to a better understanding of the decision-making processes surrounding sewer maintenance.

Reading time: 3 min

Water with a barcode

A world without a sewer system is not really something anyone would wish to contemplate. Flooding, smelly streets, not to mention the absence of toilet facilities, would make life intolerable. With approximately 150,000 kilometres of waste pipes the Dutch sewage system is one of the country’s most important pieces of infrastructure. While maintenance is crucial it is also expensive. Assistant professor urban water infrastructure Lisa Scholten, together with Francois Clemens and Juan Pablo Aguilar Lopez are looking at new ways to achieve an efficient inspection and maintenance system. With Leiden University computer scientists Arno Knobbe and Dirk Meijer they have been working on ‘SewerSense’, a project to develop a new inspection method which will also lead to a better understanding of the decision-making processes surrounding sewer maintenance.

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Coral in close-up

Master’s student Paul van Wiechen has manually crafted 384 coral replicas out of silicone plastic moulds. Production time: a painstaking 48 hours. He has planted all of them on the bottom of our large flume set up in the Waterlab. His goal: to understand exactly how waves transform in coral reefs. If corals are bleaching due to climate change, what will happen to our world’s coastlines if the natural systems protecting the shore disappear? More soon in Stories of Science.

Coral in close-up

Master’s student Paul van Wiechen has manually crafted 384 coral replicas out of silicone plastic moulds. Production time: a painstaking 48 hours. He has planted all of them on the bottom of our large flume set up in the Waterlab. His goal: to understand exactly how waves transform in coral reefs. If corals are bleaching due to climate change, what will happen to our world’s coastlines if the natural systems protecting the shore disappear? More soon in Stories of Science.

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