Through My Eyes - Professor Roger Falconer, engineer - video Dailymotion

CGTN Europe

The work of Professor Roger Falconer, a renowned British engineer, has been recognized through his receiving the prestigious China Friendship Award. Falconer told CGTN of the recent increased  academic collaboration between Western and Chinese scholars. Falconer has collaborated with Hohai University and the Yangtze Institute, focusing on a pioneering project involving the construction of coastal reservoirs to support major megacities like Shanghai.

Transcript

00:00Is there more of an openness now within with Western scholars to work with

00:06Chinese scholars would you say? If you're talking about the academic fraternity

00:10yes most of my colleagues that I know not just in the universities that I've

00:15worked in but across the UK and across Europe they admire the Chinese

00:19academics and vice versa I think the respect is mutual in both ways.

00:24Are there any particular areas that we might see coming out of that

00:29collaboration in the near term? Yes I mean the developing turbines for

00:34example and much more efficient turbines are going to be developed by are being

00:40developed based on collaborative activities we're now looking at

00:45improving the representation of things like foetal bacteria there are many

00:50people working on flooding around the world what I realized from a study in

00:53the UK that flooding could be made much worse if something like a car went into

00:58the river and then blocked a bridge I started working on that problem I then

01:03started introducing the problem to my Chinese friends this is a big project in

01:07China so they have developed with in partnership with my university Cardiff

01:12University formulations for how cars move in floods and so forth and I

01:17believe this has been hugely beneficial in China and now it's starting to come

01:21in here with some companies interested in applying this year so I think it's

01:25been a two-way partnership and now working with Hohai University and the

01:30Yangtze Institute at Hohai University and here we're looking at following

01:35something that China is doing already which is building coastal reservoirs to

01:40provide water for major megacities like Shanghai they have the Qingkou

01:44Shao Reservoir in the estuary of the mouth of the Yangtze and I can see this

01:49approach being adopted much more in the West in the future to supply water

01:53during particularly during periods of drought in terms of China as a country

01:58what sort of feelings do you have towards it what sort of emotions what

02:01do you think of I think that the Chinese people have always treated me as a

02:05friend and I think they want to be friendly with people all around the

02:11world and I think given that opportunity we've benefited enormously together why

02:17does it upset you the lovely people I don't think people have been there they

02:27may say or they visited but that's not the same as working with people to

02:32address some of the big challenges in the world no country is trying harder to

02:38to address the problems of climate change in my experience than China it

02:42may have a lot further to go than many other countries but they are they doing

02:50their best professor Falkner thank you so much for your time

Through My Eyes - Professor Roger Falconer, engineer

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