The Library receives over 100 new titles a month. Recent popular titles cover blast, car park design, the NEC, I.K. Brunel and concrete in aggressive ground. Please contact the Library if you would like regular full updates of new acquisitions.
Library staff recommend
PEARCE, Fred. When the rivers run dry – what happens when our water runs out? Transworld Publishers, 2006. £18.99. ISBN 1903919576.
Fred Pearce takes his readers on a your through the global water crisis and asks pertinent questions on the way. “Can we fill the world´s taps without emptying its rivers? Do we need mega projects or should we think small – catching the rain from our roofs or irrigating crops with bicycle inner tubes?”
The statistics about our water use are very surprising. We drink no more than 5 litres each day and even after washing and flushing the toilet we only use 150 litres. Yet it takes 5,000 litres to grow a kilo of rice or 11,000 litres to feed enough cow to make a quarter-pounder. In such ways we consume a hundred times our own weight in water every day.
Throughout the book various examples are used to illustrate how, for instance, high yield crops that saved a generation from famine are now draining the earth dry or ambitious irrigation schemes have emptied the rivers that originally fed them.
However, there is hope for the future. Pearce concludes that water is the ultimate renewable resource but “the problem facing us is not the lack of water, but the lack of efficient regimes for using the available water.” Water has to be treated as a precious resource and we need to find ways of storing water without wrecking the environment and restoring water to rivers and lakes without leaving people thirsty – we need a “blue revolution.”
Other titles
Repairing flooded buildings: an insurance industry guide to investigation and repair by Flood Repairs Forum published by BRE Press, 2006, ISBN: 1 86081 903 6
This publication has been compiled by the Flood Repairs Forum to explain the issues involved with flooding and to suggest best practice. It follows the sequence of events in a flood claim: insurance, inspection, drying, monitoring repair, health & safety, and damage avoidance. The reference pages list useful websites and other sources of information.
MANDL, G. Rock joints: the mechanical genesis. Berlin: Springer, 2005.
PITTOCK, A B. Climate change: turning up the heat. London: Earthscan, 2005
HUNT, A G. Percolation theory for flow in porous media. Berlin: Springer, 2005
REES, D W A. Mechanics of solids and structures. London: Imperial College Press, 2000
BARR, J. How to build a wind pump. Winslow: Low-Impact Living Initiative, 2006
KOLYMBAS, D. Tunnelling and tunnel mechanics: a rational approach to tunnelling. Berlin: Springer, 2005
To borrow any of these titles contact michele.page-jones@ice.org.uk
