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Phone:: (023) 8059 2883
Email:: g.watson@soton.ac.uk

Mr Geoff Watson BSc (Hons), ARCS

Research Fellow

Geoff Watson is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, UK. He specialises in laboratory testing of soils and landfill wastes and field research into the performance of railway track systems and landfill engineering. He has also contributed to the work on the UK's infrastructure as an author on the UK's second Climate Change Risk Assessment and as a reviewer on the first National Infrastructure Assessment completed by the UK's National Infrastructure Commission. Over the past 18 years he has worked on research projects funded by the UK's EPSRC, Network Rail, the European Union, Defra and industry in the UK and overseas. He has authored over 30 publications.

Geoff has been running the laboratory and field work components of the geology for engineers first year course for many years and has also become the infrastructure group's unofficial photographer.

Research

Publications

Teaching

Gallery

Contact

Research interests

Geomechanics, Geotechnical engineering, Waste management, Ballast, Geotechnical engineering, Infrastructure, Railway infrastructure, Retaining Structures, Slopes, Soil mechanics, DIC, waste mechanics, climate change risk assessment, national infrastructure, solid waste.

Principal activities

Design, implementation and analysis of results from bespoke field monitoring systems for the evaluation of track performance, e.g. using pressure cells, geophones, high speed filming with digital image correlation (DIC), extensometers, accelerometers (MEMs) and total station surveying.

Named Researcher, researcher or project manager for:

EPSRC funded:

Track to the Future
Track 21
Track 400
ITRC
MISTRAL

Other rail projects have been funded directly by Network Rail, RSSB, the EU (Shift2Rail, In2Rail, In2Track, In2Track2) include:

performance of under sleeper pads at switches and crossings
behaviour of under track crossings
monitoring of integral bridges
pre- & post-renewal behaviour of a flat crossing
efficacy of mud pumping remediation
developing strategies for targeted maintenance
lateral earth pressures generated during high-output train ballast excavation and renewal
ballast contact testing
cyclic triaxial testing of Victorian clay embankment fill

Research group

Infrastructure Group

Affiliate research group

Waste Management

Research project(s)

Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC)

Track 21 - Railway Track for the 21st Century

Ballasted Rail Track

Several aspects of railway geotechnical engineering are being investigated at the University of Southampton, with the financial support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Network Rail through a Strategic Research Partnership on Future Infrastructure Systems, and HS2 Ltd. Some examples are described on this page. In addition to those three, funders and collaborators include Arup, GeoObservations, London Underground Limited, Mott MacDonald and RSSB.

Understanding landfill processes

Waste mechanics and causes of landfill settlement, degradation and gas generation

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Articles

Book Chapters

Tran, M., Hall, J., Nicholls, R., Hickford, A. J., Chaudry, M., & Watson, G. (2018). Sustainable Infrastructure. In T. Dixon, J. Connaughton, & S. Green (Eds.), Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment to 2050: A Foresight Approach to Construction and Development (pp. 117-136). Wiley.
Watson, G. V. R., Stringfellow, A. M., Powrie, W., Turner, D. A., & Coello, J. (2016). Solid waste systems assessment. In The Future of National Infrastructure: A System-of-Systems Approach (pp. 158-180). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107588745.009
Watson, G., & Powrie, W. (Accepted/In press). Re-engineering the city for sustainable solid waste resource management. In T. Dixon, M. Eames, M. Hunt, & S. Lannon (Eds.), Urban Retrofitting for Sustainability: Mapping the Transition to 2050 (1st ed.). Taylor & Francis. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315850184/chapters/10.4324/9781315850184-25
Watson, G., & Powrie, W. (Accepted/In press). Landﬁll as a resource: Issues in environmental science & technology: waste as a resource. In R. E. Hester, & R. M. Harrison (Eds.), Waste as a Resource (pp. 205-226). Royal Society of Chemistry. https://doi.org/10.1039/9781849737883-00205
Watson, G. V. R., Powrie, W., & Blades, A. P. (2006). Particle-scale classification and identification of the structure of processed municipal solid waste by CT scanning. In M. Hyodo, H. Murata, & Y. Nakata (Eds.), Geomechanics and Geotechnics of Particulate Media (pp. 149-154). (Proceedings of the International Symposium on Geomechanics and Geotechnics of Particulate Media). Routledge - Taylor & Francis.

Conferences

Reports

Dawson, R. J., Johns, D., Gosling , S., Darch, G., Watson, G., Powrie, W., Paulson, K., Chapman, L., Bell, S., Hughes, P., & Thompson, D. (2016). UK Climate Change Risk Assessment Evidence Report: Chapter 4, Infrastructure. Commitee on Climate Change. https://www.theccc.org.uk/uk-climate-change-risk-assessment-2017/ccra-chapters/infrastructure/
Tran, M., Hall, J., Hickford, A. J., Nicholls, R. J., Alderson, D., Barr, S., Baruah, P., Beavan, R., Birkin, M., Blainey, S. P., Byers, E., Chaudry, M., Curtis, T., Ebrahimy, R., Eyre, N., Hiteva, R., Jenkins, N., Jones, C., Kilsby, C., ... Zuo, C. (2014). National infrastructure assessment: Analysis of options for infrastructure provision in Great Britain, Interim results. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.