Martin Crapper
Northumbria University
professor of civil engineering
Martin Crapper
Throughout his career as a consultant engineer in industry, then an academic, Professor Martin Crapper of Northumbria University has sought to deploy civil engineering thinking to make the world a better place.
In his most recent research, he has sought to understand our civil cngineering heritage, using modern thought and techniques to interpret the achievements of the past, and communicate their continuing value, both practically and inspirationally, over succeeding generations.
He was a leader of the interdisciplinary project Engineering the Byzantine Water Supply, examining the construction and operation of the aqueducts supplying the Roman city of Constantinople, and he was Northumbria's principal investigator on the follow-up project Water in Istanbul: Rising to the Challenge.
He has collaborated with engineering modelling of the water supply and drainage of Pompeii, as well as investigating the hydraulic performance of Roman water pipes excavated from Corbridge.
His latest project is entitled Life Stories of Infrastructure, and is an interdisciplinary study examining how the use and loading of infrastructure, and stakeholders' attitudes to it, changes over its long life and how we might better understand this process to help us design future infrastructure to last longer, saving carbon and cost.
