Partner 6: BMT Group (BMT)

BMT is an international contract research and technology organisation created in 1985 through the merging of the National Maritime Institute (NMI) and the British Ship Research Association (BSRA). When it was formed, BMT inherited a long and distinguished history of development and transfer to industry for the marine, aeronautical and civil engineering industries. One of BMT's aims has been to continue the work of its predecessors by serving the academic world and commerce within a very wide are of activity that encompasses not only the international maritime and civil engineering communities which its predecessors served but, increasingly, the defence and manufacturing worlds, particularly process industry. BMT's independence of Government and all outside financial interests, enables it to invest the profits it achieves in new facilities and research to ensure the retention and enhancement of its technology lead.

BMT's most important asset is its people. Over 80% of all staff are qualified to at least first degree standard. To ensure all work is relevant, BMT encourages its people to play an active part in the industries they serve and to participate fully in their professional institutes. As a result many members of the staff regularly publish professional papers. BMT's outstanding ability in computer technology and system integration and its extensive network of computer facilities has become a key feature in its development and the reason why BMT today is well-known internationally as an established Software House, registered under AQAP 1 and 13, BS5750 and ISO9000. In addition, BMT has extensive physical facilities, including model water tank testing. BMT is a leading participant in multi-million pound European projects and inaugurates joint industry collaborative projects.

BMT's main work in FLOODSTAND is the implementation of the proposed standard in a Crisis Management System that will assist crisis managers in the decision process, by suggesting courses of action and optimizing the actions to be taken to prevent a crisis or mitigate its consequences.

BMT has a long experience in all of these areas, having worked in Crisis Management Systems in a large number of previous research and commercial projects. In particular in DSS_DC (Decision Support System for Ships in Degraded Condition), FIRE-EXIT, SAFETOW, EU-MOP (a project looking at clearing up oil spills at sea). Parts of the Integrated Project FLAGSHIP extend the crisis management work on DSS_DC, especially the SubProject B4 which is concerned with alarm systems and B2 which creates an homogeneous approach to crisis management. Avatars is also a project which considers crisis management in design.

Dr Gary Randall has a BSc (Hons.) in Artificial Intelligence, an MSc in Cognitive Science (Distinction) and a Ph D in Cognitive Science, all in the UK, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard. He is a distinguished member of the AI community and the author of many papers, his research having covered, amongst other areas, temporal binding of visual features and search behaviour in humans, understanding how to search for targets amid displays of distracting items and qualitative reasoning.

Dr Rory Doyle received the B.A.I., B.A. degrees in Computer Engineering and Mathematics from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in 1990. From 1990 to 1993 he worked as a researcher with the Computer Vision Group at Trinity College Dublin working on a virtual reality contract, GLAD-IN-ART. At the same time he was doing an MSc by Research on the stereo vision control of a robotic manipulator. From 1993 until 1996, he worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, and completed a PhD on Multi-Sensor Data Fusion for Helicopter Obstacle Avoidance. He has worked at BMT since 1996, working on the project management and technical details of research projects.

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Last update 15.04.2009
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