Remediate · Improved decision-making in contaminated land site investigation and risk assessment

Improved decision-making in contaminated land site investigation and risk assessment

The REMEDIATE project has concluded all activities as the end of the project has been reached. This Innovative Training Network is made up of 7 beneficiaries from five EU member states - the UK, Ireland, Germany, Denmark and Italy, and 10 partner organisations. the project was co-ordinated by the QUESTOR Centre at Queen's University Belfast (QUB). REMEDIATE delivered innovative research for more cost effective and sustainable remediation of contaminated land. REMEDIATE was a collaboration between groups in academia and industry with expertise in a wide range of technologies. Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) were recruited to take part in research and training programmes to provide them with a blend of technical and transferable skills to enhance their career prospects. The researchers received joint supervision from both academic and industry mentors. REMEDIATE has produced a generation of mobile, creative, and innovative researchers with skill sets to address present and future challenges in the contaminated land sector. Each research project was designed to benefit the contaminated land sector through development of techniques and tools relating to site investigation and risk assessment, to provide better informed solutions to contamination. Research was carried out within four thematically linked work packages: environmental chemistry and toxicological approaches to site assessments; rapid molecular microbiological approaches to assessing bioremediation; geophysical approaches to site assessments; and computational modelling and prediction approaches to estimate contamination, forecast contamination development and assess remediation options. Other work packages delivered the planning, training, and dissemination activities of REMEDIATE. A cornerstone of this project was cross-disciplinary collaboration. Network meetings were held where supervisors and ESRs discussed their work and identified areas for cooperation and collaboration. The project held three summer schools with intensive training by leading academics and industry partners across the contaminated land sector. This resulted in collaboration around the sharing of samples sites and techniques, resulting in harmonised data sets and more productive work output. To date, the Remediate project has produced 47 publications in scientific journals, books, industry magazines, and conference outputs. Of these to date, 25 are in leading international peer reviewed journals with nine more in preparation. The Early Stage Researchers have collaborated across the work packages producing multi-disciplinary and trans disciplinary work that enhanced their training beyond a normal PhD. The project has a Virtual Special Issue (VSI) in the leading environmental journal Science of the Total Environment. The VSI celebrated the output of the project as well as research from other leading figures in industry and academia who participated in the Remediate final conference. The Remediate conference was held on the 19th – 20th September 2018. It had 4 sessions, 12 presentations from ESRs and a further 18 presentations from industry and academia. The conference also had two industry focused workshops. Workshop 1 was facilitated by project partners The Geological Survey of Northern Ireland and the British Geological Survey on the use and application of environmental data for contaminated and brownfield sites. The other workshop was facilitated by the Ireland Brownfield network and was focused on influencing policy and good practice around the issue of asbestos in soils in Ireland.

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