Research is regarded as an integral and essential part of the business of the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology. The Faculty strives to make meaningful research contributions to all the disciplines that it services by fostering a research culture, facilitating wider co-operation within research foci and by actively involving industry and the wider community in its research efforts. The latter were somewhat hampered by the continued growth in student numbers and concomitant additional demands placed on the Faculty, but we are confident that the increase in postgraduate students should significantly increase our research ability. While our formal accredited outputs declined slightly for 2001, we are confident that a sound foundation has been laid for future growth.

In the School of Engineering the Department of Chemical Engineering significantly increased its research output with contributions to fields ranging from the fundamentals of liquid mixtures, the development of flame retardant materials, and the treatment of water and wastewater. The Speech Recognition Group in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering developed a speech application prototype of a hotel information and booking system. This system provides a fully automated telephonic hotel booking system. The group also made a significant contribution to the African Speech Technology Programme, which aims to develop speech technology software application tools for five of the eleven official South African languages, namely English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa and Sesotho.

During 2001 the Department of Engineering and Technology Management initiated a joint research project with the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands aimed at conducting the first official, national innovation survey of the South African manufacturing and related service industries. Research activities in physical metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering were boosted by the appointment of Prof. Waldo Stumpf and by joint projects with the Industrial and Minerals Research Institute in the department. The pyrometallurgy group further investigated aspects of the smelting and refining of titanium ores, the development of high temperature electrochemical sensors and the characterisation of sinters. Metallurgical processes were simulated and optimised in co-operation with researchers from the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering. In hydrometallurgy, contributions were made regarding the influence of lead on the leaching of gold in aqueous cyanide and the precipitation of iron from zinc leach solutions.

Researchers in the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering assisted with the simulation and optimisation of production processes and the modelling of composite structures. A highlight of the aeronautical group's work was the further refinement of the Exulans glider in which the efficiency of flight is significantly increased by not using a heavy tail assembly. The Department of Mining Engineering contributed to research on the stability of coal pillars, which opened the possibility of introducing a new philosophy of pillar design, based on pillar life spans rather than on safety factors.

The Department of Construction Economics in the School for the Built Environment was involved in mentorship, the development of national reference systems, economic housing, development programmes for emerging building contractors, facilities management of hospitals, financial management principles, business opportunities in value management, the development of building contracts and the management of delays.

The Department of Architecture adjusted the focus of its research areas to encompass the scope of the three disciplines contained in the Department, namely architecture, interior architecture and landscape architecture. These research areas were further defined as Appropriate and sustainable technologies, Design theory and education, Environment and development, Heritage, and Urbanism and settlement. The ENPAT Project, a 10-year contract research project for the Department of the Environment and Tourism (managed for the University within the Department of Architecture) was broadened in scope to accommodate databases related to tourism for the TOURPAT project. This made provision for a number of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional projects for data collecting, collating and related mapping, which constituted a large component of the Department's research output for the year.

In the Department of Town and Regional Planning research was focused on the concept, associated dilemmas and creative methods for urban restructuring. Specific reference was made to the Apartheid city; the theory and practice of activity/ development corridors (presented both as a means of restructuring the Apartheid city and as a way of attracting direct foreign investment); strategic development planning in municipalities (especially the legally required Integrated Development Plans and Land Development Objectives); and the education of planners (with specific reference to the appropriateness of the outcomes-based model of learning and its implications for the lifelong learning of planners).

During the year under review the Department of Computer Science in the School of Information Technology contributed to research on distributed systems, software engineering, formal logic, artificial intelligence and graphics. International co-operation included postdoctoral research at Wollongong University, Australia, as well as close collaboration with the Software Construction division at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Research in the Department of Informatics focused on a number of theoretical aspects of Informatics, namely the fundamental thinking and theory of informatics; the socio-economic impact and implications of information systems and technology with special focus on community informatics; the examination of the adoption and use of information technology in the organisation and, in particular, the application of information technology to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation; and knowledge discovery from data to aid the decision-making of organisations, which forms part of an NRF Competitive Industries project entitled 'Empowering decision making and organizational learning through knowledge acquisition and sharing'. Since 1996 the Department of Informatics has contributed to the development of a computer-supported co-operative learning environment for the SEIDET community service project at Siyabuswa. During 2001, personnel were involved in a research project concerning the addition of connectivity to ICT services, and the opportunities and implications thereof.

The Department of Information Science initiated a collaborative research project between South Africa and Hungary pertaining to the telecentre practice in these countries. A research project aimed at addressing the lack of statistical information on the number and categories of books published in South Africa provided a unique research opportunity for the programme in Publishing Studies. The Publishing Trends Database, based on the South African National Bibliography, provides comparative data on the number of books published during the 1990s and quantitative as well as qualitative analyses of the data was possible. The database was subsequently updated and retrospectively supplemented. International research collaboration was further extended by the visiting professorship of Prof. JJ Britz at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee during the year.