Richard Dawson has been working on an urban integrated assessment system facility that couples economic projections, land-use change, climate impacts and emissions accounting tools. These tools were built by Richard and other researchers in the team. Richard is also the Partner Representative for the Tyndall Centre at the University of Newcastle.
Research Interests
Richard has been awarded an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship (formerly the Advanced Research Fellowship scheme) to advance his research on sustainable cities. Richard’s work on sustainable cities started with a role as a researcher in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Cities Programme. Prior to this Richard was appointed as a researcher at Newcastle University in 2004, having previously worked at Bristol University where he did his PhD. Richard’s research has focused on the analysis and management of risks in civil engineering and environmental systems. It is a cross-disciplinary endeavour, involving collaboration with leading researchers, consultants and government agencies nationally and internationally. A remarkable feature of Richard’s work has been its application at broad scales – recognition that engineering systems have a much wider influence than their physical form and need to be considered within their broader environmental and social context. This engineering philosophy has become known as Earth Systems Engineering and Richard is a founder member of the Centre for Earth Systems Engineering Research (CESER) at Newcastle University. Richard believes that engineers have a crucial role to play in developing adaptation solutions to ensure our infrastructure and cities are resilient and sustainable in the face of intensifying global change.
Background
Richard was a classically trained civil engineer but soon recognised that the codes and historical methods that have enabled so much in the past are not always suitable in this rapidly changing world because they often fail to consider the wider interactions between engineering systems and altering environmental and socio-economic conditions. A feature of Richard’s work has been the application of engineering principles to broad-scale modelling and analysis – recognition that engineering systems have a much wider influence than their physical form and need to be considered within their broader environmental and social context. This engineering philosophy has become known as Earth Systems Engineering and Richard is currently Director of the Centre for Earth Systems Engineering Research (CESER) at Newcastle University.
Richard’s research interests are broad but with the common thread of Earth Systems Engineering. Richard’s work is necessarily a cross-disciplinary endeavour, involving collaboration with leading researchers, consultants and government agencies nationally and internationally. Through close working with end-users including placements at organisations, such as the Greater London Authority, Richard has disseminated and applied for his work directly with stakeholders.
