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Howard R. Kirby, MA (Cantab), FCILT, FSS
Howard Kirby is Professor of Transport Studies at Napier University Edinburgh and Director of its cross-disciplinary (and cross-institutional) Transport Research Institute. Previous expereince was in similar multi-disciplinary environments, both at the University of Leeds, where (from 1978 to early 1997) he had been Deputy Director (Research) at the Institute for Transport Studies, and at University College London, where, as Lecturer in Transport Planning, he was in both the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, and the Transport Studies Group of the Department of Civil Engineering.
A scientist by background, from his days at Eastbourne Grammar School and Pembroke College Cambridge, his interest in applying science to wider social issues was stimulated by the Buchanan Report, Traffic in Towns, and he started his career in 1964 at the then Road Research Laboratory. The research he has conducted or led spans three main areas. In the travel demand area, this has included car ownership forecasting; trip distribution modelling, travel budgets, simplified area-wide models; and auditing other's models. In the information technology area, this has included the evaluation of speech recognition and image processing technology, the use of neural networks for recognising congestion patterns, and the development of a way-finding aid for visually impaired people.
In the safety and environmental area, he has led a major study on contributory factors in urban traffic accidents; led the development of the Department for Transport's Vehicle Market Model, which estimates the effects of different policy levers on fuel consumption nationally; designed techniques for estimating the effects of local changes on carbon dioxide emissions; and led an energy-saving investigation of how light-emitting polymer technology can help improve the ability to read bus timetables at poorly lit bus stop or shelters.
Committee Members
- Dougie Adamson
- Robert Armstrong
- Graham Atkins
- George Brown
- Bill Burns
- Gerry Condron
- Kevin Cullinane
- Stewart Dick
- Keith Evans
- John Fender
- Derek Halden
- Tom Hannan
- Archie Hipwell
- Howard R. Kirby
- Stephen Lockley
- Jim McBeath
- Donald MacCuish
- Crawford McGhie
- Marion Mackay
- William Murchison
- Margaret Roy
- David Reid
- John Yellowlees
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