Luiza Campos is a civil engineer with a PhD in Environmental Engineering by Imperial College, UK and an MSc in Water and Sanitation by University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Before moving to the UK, she worked 10 years for the state water and sanitation company of Goias and another 10 years as a lecturer at the Federal University of Goias in Brazil. She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering of UCL where she has worked since 2007. At UCL, she acted as Undergraduate Admissions Tutor (2009-2013), Director for the Environmental Engineering Undergraduate Programme (2010-2014), Departmental Equal Opportunities Liaison Officer (2015-2018) and led the Athena Swan application which granted the Department a Bronze Award for advancing gender equality practice in 2016. She is currently the head of the Water Management Research Group and leads the UCL Water Group which includes academics, researchers and students across UCL departments. Also, she is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Urban Sustainability and Resilience and co-Chair of the UCL Grand Challenge of Human Wellbeing. Her research lies within water and sanitation systems with particular interest on designing, testing, implementing technologies and tools to reduce environmental pollution and enhance human health and wellbeing.
The increasing human population continues to exert pressure on the freshwater scarcity. The avail... more The increasing human population continues to exert pressure on the freshwater scarcity. The availability of freshwater for crop irrigation has become challenging. The present study aimed to use domestic wastewater (DWW) for the irrigation of two rice cultivars (CVs) after treatment with the bacterial strain Alcaligenes faecalis MT477813 under a hydroponic culture system. The first part of this study focused on the bioremediation and analysis of the physicochemical parameters of DWW to compare pollutants before and after treatment. The biotreatment of DWW with the bacterial isolate showed more than 90% decolourisation, along with a reduction in contaminants. The next part of the study evaluated the impacts of treated and untreated DWW on the growth of two rice cultivars, i.e., PK 386 and Basmati 515, under a hydroponic culture system which provided nutrients and water to plants with equal and higher yields compared to soil. Growth parameters such as the shoot and root length and the ...
The use of Earth observation technology such as satellites, unmanned aircraft, or drones as part ... more The use of Earth observation technology such as satellites, unmanned aircraft, or drones as part of early-warning systems and disaster risk reduction plans is a widely researched and established area of study. However, the use this technology can have in the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene services in the response and recovery phases of a disaster is not widely researched. A systematic literature review was undertaken assessing relevant literature to identify Earth observation technology and methods that can be applied to the context of water, sanitation and hygiene in disaster response and recovery. Whilst there were many water-related studies, there was a lack of studies looking at the potential uses of Earth observation for sanitation. This is an area that requires further research. Three main common uses of Earth observation technology were identified as relevant: (1) Monitoring of surface water quality; (2) Groundwater Sensing; and (3) Mapping and monitoring of hazar...
Certain weather conditions are inadvertently related to increased population of various mosquitoe... more Certain weather conditions are inadvertently related to increased population of various mosquitoes. In order to predict the burden of mosquito populations in the Global South, it is imperative to integrate weather-related risk factors into such predictive models. There are a lot of online open-source weather platforms that provide historical, current and future weather forecasts which can be utilised for general predictions, and these electronic sources serve as an alternate option for weather data when physical weather stations are inaccessible (or inactive). Before using data from such online source, it is important to assess the accuracy against some baseline measure. In this paper, we therefore evaluated the accuracy and suitability of weather forecasts of two parameters namely temperature and humidity from the OpenWeatherMap API (an online weather platform) and compared them with actual measurements collected from the Brazilian weather stations (INMET). The evaluation was focus...
Renewable energy resource utilisation is becoming more prevalent in society and can be a sustaina... more Renewable energy resource utilisation is becoming more prevalent in society and can be a sustainable method to meet rising energy demand and consumption. The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that presently, approximately 33% of total electricity output around the world is from renewable energy sources. However, in Nigeria, the World Bank reported this figure as 18.2% in 2015. It is important to understand how Nigeria can raise this average as the world moves towards less use of fossil fuels. Therefore, the aim of this work was to provide a review of the established literature, which can then be used to support the development of renewable energy systems in Nigeria. The methodology employed for the study of the literature involved a systematic review method, including identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion criterium steps. Understanding the national energy landscape is essential to support potential projects, and consequently, energy supply, demand and cons...
Acid mine drainage (AMD) is the largest environmental problem facing the world mining and process... more Acid mine drainage (AMD) is the largest environmental problem facing the world mining and processing industry because it has low pH and can contain high concentrations of potential pollutants (e.g., Zn, Pb, Cd, Cu, As, Sb, Hg). Biomass ash (BA), which is a by-product of burning biomass in conventional power station, can be considered as a potential material for AMD treatment. The main goal of this work was to investigate potential use of BAs for AMD remediation. Four UK biomass ashes from different fuels (i.e., straw, meat and bone meal, mixed biomass) were characterised. All biomass ashes contain high concentrations of P, Ca, and K. The bulk crystalline phases in the biomass ashes include portlandite, calcite, arcanite, quartz, apatite, and other phosphates. We used a synthetic AMD which is comparable in composition to AMD from the Almasu Mare region in Romania. Batch experiments showed that a biomass ash from straw combustion (L/S = 250) can effectively neutralise the synthetic ac...
Dengue has become a challenge for many countries. Arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti spread... more Dengue has become a challenge for many countries. Arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti spread rapidly over the last decades. The emergence chikungunya fever and zika in South America poses new challenges to vector monitoring and control. This situation got worse from 2015 and 2016, with the rapid spread of chikungunya, causing fever and muscle weakness, and Zika virus, related to cases of microcephaly in newborns and the occurrence of Guillain-Barret syndrome, an autoimmune disease that affects the nervous system. The objective of this work was to construct a tool to forecast the distribution of arboviruses transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti by implementing dengue, zika and chikungunya transmission predictors based on machine learning, focused on multilayer perceptrons neural networks, support vector machines and linear regression models. As a case study, we investigated forecasting models to predict the spatio-temporal distribution of cases from primary health notificati...
Better understanding of the range of opportunities that can be leveraged from the sustainable and... more Better understanding of the range of opportunities that can be leveraged from the sustainable and inclusive management of sanitation services is required, alongside the evidence to support it. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a comprehensive framework for sustainable development broken down into 169 Targets articulated under 17 interconnected Goals. Based on a methodology developed at University College London (UCL), this study identifies linkages between sanitation and each of the 169 Targets on the basis of published evidence. We show that there are synergies between sanitation and 130 (77%) of the Targets and trade-offs for 28 (17%) of the Targets. With synergies with all the 17 Goals we identified 83 Targets (49%) that call for action in the sanitation sector. The results demonstrate the far-reaching benefits that can be unlocked from investment in sanitation, which extend beyond health and spread across sectors. This seeks to provide the evidence base to inform ...
Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 2020
Vulnerable communities can improve their quality of life using point-of-use water treatment techn... more Vulnerable communities can improve their quality of life using point-of-use water treatment technologies. Among these technologies, household slow sand filters (HSSF), which are filters adapted to domestic operations, stand out as one of the most effective and sustainable alternatives. However, some technical issues are not fully understood, such as the ripening process, which may take a long time to take place. In this context, this research evaluated the performance of a HSSF, in real scale and operated in continuous flow when a source of nutrients (fish food) was added to influent water, as a potential ripening agent. Physicochemical and microbiological parameters were evaluated to estimate the filter efficiency. According to the results, the HSSF reached a partial ripeness level in a short time with target parameter reduction in filtered water. Nevertheless, the instability observed in the filtered water quality reveals the significant health risks associated with human consumpt...
RESUMO Com a escassez da disponibilidade de água doce e o aumento da demanda de água no mundo e n... more RESUMO Com a escassez da disponibilidade de água doce e o aumento da demanda de água no mundo e no Brasil, uma das alternativas são os sistemas de dessalinização de água, que removem os sais das águas salobra ou salgada. Este estudo teve como objetivo avaliar a eficiência de um sistema piloto de dessalinização de água salobra a qual foi obtida a partir da mistura de águas do mar e de rio até atingir concentração de sólidos dissolvidos totais (SDT) de 1.500 mg.L-1. O sistema piloto de dessalinização, com capacidade de 1,0 m3.h-1, é composto de ultrafiltração (UF) e abrandamento como pré-tratamento à osmose reversa (OR). Foram realizadas análises de qualidade da água na entrada e saída das unidades de tratamento relativas a SDT, condutividade elétrica, turbidez, pH, cor aparente, alcalinidade, dureza total, cálcio, magnésio, cloreto, sulfato e temperatura. Foram avaliadas a pressão osmótica, o fluxo de filtração e a taxa de recuperação de água no sistema de OR. Com os resultados obtid...
Metaldehyde has been detected in drinking water system in relatively high concentration exceeding... more Metaldehyde has been detected in drinking water system in relatively high concentration exceeding European water quality standard. In order to address this problem, the aim of this project was to treat metaldehyde aqueous solution by advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) and granular activated carbon (GAC) column. Ten novel materials were tested for degradation rates of metaldehyde under ultraviolet light irradiation (UVC). For treatment of 1 mg/L metaldehyde solution by AOPs, the highest degradation rate is 16.59% under UVC light with the aid of nitrogen doped titanium dioxide coated graphene (NTiO2/Gr). Furthermore, 0.5 mg/L is the optimal concentration for degradation of metaldehyde with N–TiO2/Gr under UVC light. Apart from that, the lifetime of GAC column could be elongated on condition that metaldehyde has been treated by AOPs previously. Hence, combination of AOPs and GAC column is promising in treating water containing metaldehyde.
The increasing human population continues to exert pressure on the freshwater scarcity. The avail... more The increasing human population continues to exert pressure on the freshwater scarcity. The availability of freshwater for crop irrigation has become challenging. The present study aimed to use domestic wastewater (DWW) for the irrigation of two rice cultivars (CVs) after treatment with the bacterial strain Alcaligenes faecalis MT477813 under a hydroponic culture system. The first part of this study focused on the bioremediation and analysis of the physicochemical parameters of DWW to compare pollutants before and after treatment. The biotreatment of DWW with the bacterial isolate showed more than 90% decolourisation, along with a reduction in contaminants. The next part of the study evaluated the impacts of treated and untreated DWW on the growth of two rice cultivars, i.e., PK 386 and Basmati 515, under a hydroponic culture system which provided nutrients and water to plants with equal and higher yields compared to soil. Growth parameters such as the shoot and root length and the ...
The use of Earth observation technology such as satellites, unmanned aircraft, or drones as part ... more The use of Earth observation technology such as satellites, unmanned aircraft, or drones as part of early-warning systems and disaster risk reduction plans is a widely researched and established area of study. However, the use this technology can have in the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene services in the response and recovery phases of a disaster is not widely researched. A systematic literature review was undertaken assessing relevant literature to identify Earth observation technology and methods that can be applied to the context of water, sanitation and hygiene in disaster response and recovery. Whilst there were many water-related studies, there was a lack of studies looking at the potential uses of Earth observation for sanitation. This is an area that requires further research. Three main common uses of Earth observation technology were identified as relevant: (1) Monitoring of surface water quality; (2) Groundwater Sensing; and (3) Mapping and monitoring of hazar...
Certain weather conditions are inadvertently related to increased population of various mosquitoe... more Certain weather conditions are inadvertently related to increased population of various mosquitoes. In order to predict the burden of mosquito populations in the Global South, it is imperative to integrate weather-related risk factors into such predictive models. There are a lot of online open-source weather platforms that provide historical, current and future weather forecasts which can be utilised for general predictions, and these electronic sources serve as an alternate option for weather data when physical weather stations are inaccessible (or inactive). Before using data from such online source, it is important to assess the accuracy against some baseline measure. In this paper, we therefore evaluated the accuracy and suitability of weather forecasts of two parameters namely temperature and humidity from the OpenWeatherMap API (an online weather platform) and compared them with actual measurements collected from the Brazilian weather stations (INMET). The evaluation was focus...
Renewable energy resource utilisation is becoming more prevalent in society and can be a sustaina... more Renewable energy resource utilisation is becoming more prevalent in society and can be a sustainable method to meet rising energy demand and consumption. The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that presently, approximately 33% of total electricity output around the world is from renewable energy sources. However, in Nigeria, the World Bank reported this figure as 18.2% in 2015. It is important to understand how Nigeria can raise this average as the world moves towards less use of fossil fuels. Therefore, the aim of this work was to provide a review of the established literature, which can then be used to support the development of renewable energy systems in Nigeria. The methodology employed for the study of the literature involved a systematic review method, including identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion criterium steps. Understanding the national energy landscape is essential to support potential projects, and consequently, energy supply, demand and cons...
Acid mine drainage (AMD) is the largest environmental problem facing the world mining and process... more Acid mine drainage (AMD) is the largest environmental problem facing the world mining and processing industry because it has low pH and can contain high concentrations of potential pollutants (e.g., Zn, Pb, Cd, Cu, As, Sb, Hg). Biomass ash (BA), which is a by-product of burning biomass in conventional power station, can be considered as a potential material for AMD treatment. The main goal of this work was to investigate potential use of BAs for AMD remediation. Four UK biomass ashes from different fuels (i.e., straw, meat and bone meal, mixed biomass) were characterised. All biomass ashes contain high concentrations of P, Ca, and K. The bulk crystalline phases in the biomass ashes include portlandite, calcite, arcanite, quartz, apatite, and other phosphates. We used a synthetic AMD which is comparable in composition to AMD from the Almasu Mare region in Romania. Batch experiments showed that a biomass ash from straw combustion (L/S = 250) can effectively neutralise the synthetic ac...
Dengue has become a challenge for many countries. Arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti spread... more Dengue has become a challenge for many countries. Arboviruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti spread rapidly over the last decades. The emergence chikungunya fever and zika in South America poses new challenges to vector monitoring and control. This situation got worse from 2015 and 2016, with the rapid spread of chikungunya, causing fever and muscle weakness, and Zika virus, related to cases of microcephaly in newborns and the occurrence of Guillain-Barret syndrome, an autoimmune disease that affects the nervous system. The objective of this work was to construct a tool to forecast the distribution of arboviruses transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti by implementing dengue, zika and chikungunya transmission predictors based on machine learning, focused on multilayer perceptrons neural networks, support vector machines and linear regression models. As a case study, we investigated forecasting models to predict the spatio-temporal distribution of cases from primary health notificati...
Better understanding of the range of opportunities that can be leveraged from the sustainable and... more Better understanding of the range of opportunities that can be leveraged from the sustainable and inclusive management of sanitation services is required, alongside the evidence to support it. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a comprehensive framework for sustainable development broken down into 169 Targets articulated under 17 interconnected Goals. Based on a methodology developed at University College London (UCL), this study identifies linkages between sanitation and each of the 169 Targets on the basis of published evidence. We show that there are synergies between sanitation and 130 (77%) of the Targets and trade-offs for 28 (17%) of the Targets. With synergies with all the 17 Goals we identified 83 Targets (49%) that call for action in the sanitation sector. The results demonstrate the far-reaching benefits that can be unlocked from investment in sanitation, which extend beyond health and spread across sectors. This seeks to provide the evidence base to inform ...
Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 2020
Vulnerable communities can improve their quality of life using point-of-use water treatment techn... more Vulnerable communities can improve their quality of life using point-of-use water treatment technologies. Among these technologies, household slow sand filters (HSSF), which are filters adapted to domestic operations, stand out as one of the most effective and sustainable alternatives. However, some technical issues are not fully understood, such as the ripening process, which may take a long time to take place. In this context, this research evaluated the performance of a HSSF, in real scale and operated in continuous flow when a source of nutrients (fish food) was added to influent water, as a potential ripening agent. Physicochemical and microbiological parameters were evaluated to estimate the filter efficiency. According to the results, the HSSF reached a partial ripeness level in a short time with target parameter reduction in filtered water. Nevertheless, the instability observed in the filtered water quality reveals the significant health risks associated with human consumpt...
RESUMO Com a escassez da disponibilidade de água doce e o aumento da demanda de água no mundo e n... more RESUMO Com a escassez da disponibilidade de água doce e o aumento da demanda de água no mundo e no Brasil, uma das alternativas são os sistemas de dessalinização de água, que removem os sais das águas salobra ou salgada. Este estudo teve como objetivo avaliar a eficiência de um sistema piloto de dessalinização de água salobra a qual foi obtida a partir da mistura de águas do mar e de rio até atingir concentração de sólidos dissolvidos totais (SDT) de 1.500 mg.L-1. O sistema piloto de dessalinização, com capacidade de 1,0 m3.h-1, é composto de ultrafiltração (UF) e abrandamento como pré-tratamento à osmose reversa (OR). Foram realizadas análises de qualidade da água na entrada e saída das unidades de tratamento relativas a SDT, condutividade elétrica, turbidez, pH, cor aparente, alcalinidade, dureza total, cálcio, magnésio, cloreto, sulfato e temperatura. Foram avaliadas a pressão osmótica, o fluxo de filtração e a taxa de recuperação de água no sistema de OR. Com os resultados obtid...
Metaldehyde has been detected in drinking water system in relatively high concentration exceeding... more Metaldehyde has been detected in drinking water system in relatively high concentration exceeding European water quality standard. In order to address this problem, the aim of this project was to treat metaldehyde aqueous solution by advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) and granular activated carbon (GAC) column. Ten novel materials were tested for degradation rates of metaldehyde under ultraviolet light irradiation (UVC). For treatment of 1 mg/L metaldehyde solution by AOPs, the highest degradation rate is 16.59% under UVC light with the aid of nitrogen doped titanium dioxide coated graphene (NTiO2/Gr). Furthermore, 0.5 mg/L is the optimal concentration for degradation of metaldehyde with N–TiO2/Gr under UVC light. Apart from that, the lifetime of GAC column could be elongated on condition that metaldehyde has been treated by AOPs previously. Hence, combination of AOPs and GAC column is promising in treating water containing metaldehyde.
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Papers by Luiza Campos