Prof Terrence Fernando
| Post Nominals | BSc, MSc, PhD |
|---|---|
| Biography | Professor Terrence Fernando has a broad background in conducting multi-disciplinary research programmes involving a large number of research teams in areas such as urban simulation, virtual building construction, collaborative engineering workspaces and disaster risk reduction. During 2001 and 2004, he led an EPSRC/OST funded regional research centre on advanced virtual prototyping (Grant Ref: 55214/01), involving the Universities of Salford, UMIST, Manchester and Lancaster. This project resulted in the development of collaborative visualisation and simulation technologies for the engineering sector. He was also the Scientific Director of the EU-funded CoSpaces project (17 partners, 12MEuros)); a core member of the INTUITION VR Network of Excellence project (50 VR Centres, 6MEuros) and the Visionair project (25 VR Centres, 3MEuros) which developed and demonstrated a range of novel collaborative virtual environments for sectors such as aerospace, automotive, building construction, urban planning. He has recently successfully completed three EU projects- Design4Energy, PROSECO and CROSS DRIVE which focused on developing collaboration platforms for creating energy-efficient neighbourhoods, eco-products and space mission planning for Mars. Furthermore, Prof. Fernando has commercially exploited this work by working closely with industry partners such as Arup, Network Rail, Siemens, and WS Atkins. In 2006, Prof. Fernando won a national award - “Best BIM (Building Information Modelling) Project of the Year” from the Building Construction Excellence for his work on “4D Simulation for Track Renewals” with Network Rail which has now led to a spin-off company (4DSImulations.net). His EPSRC-funded projects Vivacity (http://www.vivacity2020.co.uk) and FIRM (EP/H003738/1, £2M) led to the development of several collaborative platforms for urban planning. He was the Principal Investigator of the MOBILISE project (mobilise.thinklab-salford.org.uk), funded by GCRF/EPSRC (EP/P028543/1, £1.2M) to develop a “Collaborative Multi-agency Platform for Building Resilient Communities” in the UK. Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Pakistan, which focused on digital infrastructure that can offer intelligence to a range of agencies to reduce the impact of disasters such as floods and landslides on communities. He was also the Principal Investigator for the ESRC/GCRF funded project (ES/T003219/1,£980K) on “Technology Enhanced Stakeholder Collaboration for Supporting Risk-Sensitive Sustainable Urban Development” in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia (www.transcend-project.org.uk). As a part of these projects, Prof. Fernando has been instrumental in establishing several Living Labs in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Pakistan to initiate a sustainable approach to building climate resilience involving local stakeholders. Following the success of these research grants, Prof. Fernando was awarded a grant by the World Bank’s CARE programme to pilot the MOBILISE platform in the Kalutara District in Sri Lanka to develop a community-centric multi-hazard early warning platform (https://kalutara.mobilise-srilanka.org). This work was conducted in collaboration with the National Building Research Organisation, Tecxal Systems Ltd and the Kalutara District Secretariat. This project has resulted in co-developing two key technical components: (1) a shared multi-agency platform for analysing local risks; (2) a multi-hazard early warning system that embraces the “Whole Society” and a community-centric approach to early warning dissemination. Due to the success of this project, the World Bank appointed the University of Salford as a consultant to develop a “Prototype Impact-based Multi-hazard Forecasting and Early Warning System for Anticipatory Action” and a roadmap for implementing this prototype in Sri Lanka within the Climate Resilience Multi-Phase Program (CresMPA). The work is now underway to scale up the outcome of this project to initially scale up within the Kalutara District with the view to scaling up across other districts in Sri Lanka. |
| Research Interests | Technology Enhanced Multi-agency Collaboration in Building Climate Resilience. Advanced Visualisation. |
| PhD Supervision Availability | Yes |
| PhD Topics | The use of machine learning and data science for developing decision support systems for building climate-resilient urban environments. |