An 80,000 word thesis would take 9 hours to present. Their time limit… 3 minutes.
For the first time in 2016, Edinburgh Napier University took part in 3MT® and its back this year!
The Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition was set up by the University of Queensland in 2008. Since then, the competition has soared in popularity and is competitions are held in over 350 universities across the world. 3MT® is a celebration of PhD research, challenging students to explain their research to a non-specialist audience in three minutes.
For more information about 3MT®: https://www.vitae.ac.uk/events/three-minute-thesis-competition
Researcher participants:
People worry about wind and are hit by surge water – Anitha Karthik, School of Engineering and the Built Environment
Storm surges are complex seaborne hazard originating predominantly from key weather events such as tropical cyclones. Yet not all hurricanes result in bringing a storm surge to a coast. This increases the ‘level of uncertainty’ and the need to study more about Storm surges. With the prevailing modern technologies and prediction systems even today more than 1000s are being killed in a single tropical cyclone event. Both coastal communities and infrastructure are exposed to the storm surge hazard. A wide range of literature is available yet only little work has been done towards adaptation and mitigation. Disaster Adaptation to Mitigate Storm Surge (DAMSS) framework is designed to highlight the gaps within existing approach to reshape a resilient future.
View Anitha’s presentation here.
Dropping the ball? Juggling noise and other stressors – Craig Stenton, School of Applied Sciences
To date, environmental risk assessments have predominantly assessed pollutants using a single-stressor approach. However in reality, organisms within our oceans are facing unprecedented pressure from multiple concurrent stressors – ranging from established threats such as climate change and chemical pollutants, to emerging concerns from the likes of anthropogenic noise. Whilst these stressors may often seem disparate and unrelated, in combination they may result in interactive effects; interactions that may offer some select benefits to an organism, but may equally prove extremely detrimental. It is therefore vital to establish both the propensity for these interactions to occur, and the wider implications of any such interactions at various levels of biological organisation. This will help establish a more comprehensive understanding of the risks and potential harm facing our oceans, and in turn can hopefully help inform the development of future environmental management strategies.
View Craig’s presentation here.
The Key Drivers of Foreign Direct Investment in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Nigeria’s service sector – Francis Achi, The Business School
The key drivers necessary to attract FDI in services, to enhance the prospect of the country being preferred over others in the FDI competition.
View Francis’ presentation here.
Who Cares? – Gwenne McIntosh, School of Health and Social Care
This presentation is of the preliminary findings from a research study exploring the lived experience of male caregiver, caring for a wife with dementia and their decisions to access support.
An outline will be given of the qualitative research study using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to examine the lived experience of caring from a male perspective.
Early findings show that relationships, trust and change impact decisions, while lack of influence and control over decisions resulted in a sense of disempowerment.
These findings will be of interest to health and social care staff working with people affected by dementia. They offer opportunities for staff to reflect how they engage with families to maximise a sense of empowerment and influence when making decisions relating to care and support services.
View Gwenne’s presentation here.
Shared ownership and use of Driverless vehicles – Sayed Faruque, School of Engineering and the Built Environment
This
research project aims to understand whether and how people will share the
ownership and the use of fully Driverless vehicles. The factors of present
sharing of a vehicle and future usage pattern of DV were the research
questions. The results will shape the future sustainable DV mobility policies.
Postal questionnaires will be used collect data within Edinburgh. Initially,
findings from expert interviews highlighted the factors of sharing the DV and
helped to design the final questionnaire.
The demand for auto ownership showed some marked changes over the last few
decades. Simultaneously, the emergence of Driverless vehicle showed some
opportunity to flourish shared mobility in the future. Along with numerous
benefits for mobility, DV will enhance mobility options for disables, seniors,
and offer relatively cheap travel options for everyone. Hence, DV can increase
vehicle demand and the resultant traffic congestion unless used on a shared
basis. This research will be focused to own or share a DV as a solution for the
overarching urban mobility demand.
Shared use of vehicles will allow less demand for personal vehicle, parking, and economic spending on mobility. Data will be collected for the present vehicle sharing and ownership pattern, factors for mode choice, possible AV sharing types, and personality data. An export opening survey was undertaken to finalise the Questionnaire to collect data within Edinburgh.
Collected data will be utilised by Factor Analysis to understand the unobserved variations of vehicle sharing and ownership, personality, and mode choices. This way will also observe the correlations of underlying variables.
To analyse the multiple effects of variables random parameter Ordered Probit model will be utilised for this research. This ordered analysis will interpret the scale effect of some dependent variables (willingness to pay, mode choice) for shared ownership and ridership possibilities of Driverless vehicles.
View Sayed’s presentation here.