'We have to find ways to get all people out' - Ed Galea, recipient of the Queen's Anniversary prize for his research into the behaviour of World Trade Centre survivors

One of the world's leading experts in fire and evacuation safety has Maltese origins and is "proud" of his ties.

Ed Galea recently carried out a major study on the behaviour of World Trade Centre survivors and was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize, the UK's highest academic honour. He is Australian but his parents are both Maltese, from Mosta. They emigrated to Australia in the early 1950s and still have family in Malta, Prof. Galea told The Times.

Prof. Galea was born in Australia in 1957 and was brought up and educated there. In 1985, he moved to the UK to continue his research work and has been based at London's University of Greenwich since 1986.

He is the director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at London's University of Greenwich, co-director at the Centre for Numerical Modelling and Process Analysis, as well as Civil Aviation Authority Professor in Mathematical Modelling.

Among the high-profile projects he has been involved in are the World Trade Centre disaster, the design of the new Airbus 380 super-jumbo and the new British aircraft carrier, as well as airport terminal and hospital layouts and designs.

His major study of the behaviour of World Trade Centre survivors - a bid to make skyscrapers safer and easier to evacuate - was last week reported in the London newspaper, The Observer.

The study warns that many high-rise buildings are currently not designed to enable the complete evacuation of their occupants.

"We can no longer tolerate that attitude. That is the real lesson of 9/11. We have to find ways to get all people out... It would add tragedy to tragedy if we did not learn from 9/11," The Observer quoted Prof. Galea, the study's leader, as saying.

Prof. Galea and his team analysed the written accounts of 250 survivors of September 11 and found they showed a startling variation in human behaviour. Almost half of those working on floors below where the planes struck took more than five minutes to begin leaving the building. Incredibly, five per cent were still there more than an hour later, The Observer reported, based on the study's findings.

Prof. Galea told The Observer that it was "astonishing" how they sat at their computers while the building blazed. "Such behaviour contrasts with the expectations of high-rise building designers. They assume people will exit in an orderly fashion in seconds of a fire alarm sounding."

Prof. Galea came to Malta as a visiting professor two years ago due to the fact that his school at Greenwich (Computing and Mathematical Sciences) has a relationship with the University of Malta and also to forge new links with the island's computing and safety communities. He returned in July for a brief holiday with his wife, who is English and "absolutely loves" the island.

"We would visit more often if we had the time. We find Malta to be a great place to unwind. We both love Valletta and think it is one of the most interesting and unique cities in Europe," Prof. Galea said.

He hoped to become a regular visitor to Malta, which he described as "one of the most fascinating and historical places I have visited.

"From a professional point of view, I also see significant scope for the University of Greenwich to collaborate with the University of Malta, government departments and private enterprise on future projects, involving fire and evacuation safety."

Prof. Galea is the founder and director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) at the University of Greenwich, one of the world's largest university-based groups, dedicated to the simulation of fire and evacuation.

He and his team were awarded the UK's highest academic honour, the Queen's Anniversary Prize, for their research in developing the evacuation and fire simulation software, Exodus and Smartfire, which are now in use in 22 countries worldwide.

"The ability to predict the spread of fire and smoke and the likely movement and behaviour of people - particularly under emergency conditions - is an essential design capability for today's engineers and architects," he said.

The Exodus suite of software, which he developed, predicts evacuation behaviour. People are represented as individuals with real human behaviour, such as returning to their desk to collect a handbag or searching for a child. Simulated occupants even react to the heat, smoke and toxic gases generated by a fire. The realism of the software is based on data from experiments as well as eyewitness accounts from actual disasters.

"Our objective was ultimately to help design engineers to save lives," said Prof. Galea. "We have turned their PCs into virtual laboratories in which they can reach the optimal design solution cost-effectively and safely. By subjecting our 'virtual' people to a living hell of perpetual emergencies, designers can not only develop safer designs but reduce the need for real people to be exposed to the risk of evacuation trials."