Thursday, December 31, 2015

Graph of the Week

2016 New Years Resolutions

What about focusing on the following five intellectual and psychological abilities and attributes if you are a young engineer just starting down your career path:

  1. Preparedness and Work Ethic - Develop a "success" routine.  Come in early and stay late.  Be prepared in all endeavors.  Be disciplined and learn to manage distractions.
  2. Concentrate and Focus - Engineering is a concentration and focus profession.  You need to get X done and you have Y time to do it - and it has to be done correctly the first time.  Conduct you daily activities with this in mind.
  3. Competitiveness and Self-Confidence - Engineering school teaches you how to overcome self-doubt and other psychological obstacles.  Don't forget this experience - it will serve you well during your career.
  4. Stress Management and Humility - Professional careers will have slumps.  Learn to manage these slumps.  Things are never as bad as they initially seem and tomorrow is usually better than today.
  5. Adaptiveness and Learning Ability - Like all physical assets, you are subject to the laws of depreciation.  Your education depreciates the minute after you get your diploma.  You will need renewal and remodeling.  Learn to love learning.

A Paragraph to Ponder

From the current issue of American Scientist - The Rising Cost of Resources and Global Indicators of Change by Carey W. King:

"Just like the population, as we have slowed the expansion of our energy infrastructure, it has also become older.  I have calculated a dependency ratio for U.S. electric generation equal to the fraction of total capacity that is older than a certain age (for instance, 40 years) divided by the fraction of total capacity younger than that same age.  We have never had an older fleet of power generation assets than today.  Since the 1970s, we have relied more and more on older power plants."

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Tire Rotation and the Self Driving Car

Twitter is nice and I like the idea of keeping up with friends on Facebook, but I want a future of self-driving cars.  This decade.  I had my tires rotated last night.  It took a little over three hours of my time - - just wanting.  Why can't my truck rotate its own tires?  Send it to the service center by itself, have the work done, and then come back home.  Why do I have to go along for the ride?

Things need to speed up - from sensors in bridges to "smart" roads - technology needs to be deployed that allows for a saver, cheaper, and faster world.  I am tired of waiting on my truck at the service center.

Monday, December 28, 2015

Engineering and Floodplain Management

From the Environmental and Urban Economics blog:

"The NY Times reports that parts of York, Leeds and Manchester have recently been flooded.  Such natural disasters raise several adaptation questions.  First,  is this simply bad luck or a leading indicator of a risk that will repeatedly occur in the future?  Second, under business as usual development patterns; how much damage does such flooding cause to structures and to urban productivity by disrupting activity?  Third,  what actions can individuals, firms and local governments take to reduce their exposure to flood risk?  How costly will each of these actions be and what will their self protection benefits be?  Fourth,  do current insurance contracts encourage or discourage investment in such self protection actions?   Fifth, has government policy actually crowded out private self protection by encouraging development in flood plains?  Sixth, have the British figured out how to use GIS spatial software to make up to date maps of emerging flood plains?  Seventh, how do current zoning laws near British rivers now operate?  Who enforces them?   Eighth, will a "silver lining" of this recent flooding be an increased investment in resilience and new incentives such that future floods will cause less damage to life and capital?    While this blog entry has focused on the British floods, these same questions should be asked in the case of every flood region.

Do urbanites make the same mistake over and over again?  The hallmark of rational expectations is that forecasting errors are uncorrelated.  Why? Because if they are correlated, you could make a better forecast and make wiser investments based on this updated forecast.   As I have argued before, climate change adaptation will offer the cleanest test of whether rational expectations or behavioral economics offers a better model of explaining and predicting behavior."

Engineering Humans Out of Driving


Engineering the Rise of Super-Forecasters


Saturday, December 26, 2015

The Emerging Science of Urban Skylines | MIT Technology Review

The Emerging Science of Urban Skylines | MIT Technology Review

Field of View LLC

A Paragraph to Ponder

From the current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek - I'll Show You Climate Change:

"Annual U.S. coal consumption peaked in 2007 at 1.1 billion tons and declined to 919 million tons in 2014, the least since 1992.  Kentucky production topped out earlier, in 1990, at 173 million tons.  The state was displaced as the nation's No. 1 producer in 1988 by Wyoming, home to the resource-rich Powder River Basin."

The Skycatch Dashboard

Welcome to the Skycatch Dashboard from Skycatch on Vimeo.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Monday, December 21, 2015

Civil Engineering In the Age of Bad News

From the excellent Elizabeth Kolbert in the current issue of the New Yorker - The Siege of Miami:
"Neither of us was wearing boots, a fact that, as we picked our way along, we agreed we regretted. I couldn’t help recalling stories I’d heard about Miami’s antiquated sewer system, which leaks so much raw waste that it’s the subject of frequent lawsuits. (To settle a suit brought by the federal government, the county recently agreed to spend $1.6 billion to upgrade the system, though many question whether the planned repairs adequately account for sea-level rise.) Across the soaked intersection, in front of a single-family home, a middle-aged man was unloading groceries from his car. He, too, told us he didn’t know where the water was coming from.
“I heard on the news it’s because the moon turned red,” he said. “I don’t have that much detail about it.” During the past month, he added, “it’s happened very often.” (In an ominous development, Miami this past fall experienced several very high tides at times of the month when, astronomically speaking, it shouldn’t have.)
“Honestly, sometimes, when I’m talking to people, I think, Oh, I wish I had taken more psychology courses,” Hammer told me. A lot of her job involves visiting low-lying neighborhoods like Shorecrest, helping people understand what they’re seeing. She shows them elevation maps and climate-change projections, and explains that the situation is only going to get worse. Often, Hammer said, she feels like a doctor: “You hear that they’re trying to teach these skills in medical schools, to encourage them to have a better bedside manner. I think I might try to get that kind of training, because it’s really hard to break bad news.”"

6 Important Moments in Virtual Reality in 2015 | MIT Technology Review

6 Important Moments in Virtual Reality in 2015 | MIT Technology Review

The New Engineering Oligarchs

From New Geography:

"Ultimately the ambitions of the oligarchs are boundless. Firms like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s Space X, seek to lead the world in space exploration. If NASA continues to retreat from many areas of space exploration, it is likely that, in the future, the heavens may end up belonging to the oligarchs as well."

Engineering and the Rise of Automation


Private Infrastructure Deal Volume Falls, World Bank Says | 2015-12-17 | ENR

Private Infrastructure Deal Volume Falls, World Bank Says | 2015-12-17 | ENR

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Graph of the Week


Engineers Eye Sustainable Solutions at London Conference | 2015-12-16 | ENR

Engineers Eye Sustainable Solutions at London Conference | 2015-12-16 | ENR

Trump to be Endorsed by the American Society of Civil Engineers?

From the debate last night:

""We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people," Trump said. "If we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems -- our airports and all of the other problems we've had -- we would've been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.""


Sunday, December 13, 2015

The CEO as Relentlessly Inquisitive

From a Fortune profile of Nike CEO Mark Parker - Nike's Master Craftsman:

"As Nike's boss, Parker is relentlessly inquisitive.  "Mark's questions are often either leading or directive," says Andy Campion, Nike's chief financial officer and a former Disney executive.  "What's fascinating about his use of questions is that it leaves other leaders empowered to find the answers themselves and act on them."  Parker has a penchant, as well, for managing by aphorism.  Spanx's Singer recalls him waxing sagacious on the question of talent management by comparing someone on Singer's team to an oak tree.  "He told me, "Trying to turn it into a pine tree isn't going to help anyone.  But making it into the best oak tree possible is the goal."

Engineering in a Time of Drought and Deluge

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Engineering the Expected - But Which Ones?

Embedded image permalink

Your City as Digital Lab

Water Term of the Week - Flexible Water Management

From the current issue of ENR - by Jeff Gunderson, Water Stressors Driving Projects Around the Globe.  Water engineering and management is increasingly about dealing with extremes - - the yin and yang of mother nature.

"Lesile Shoemaker, Tetra Tech's executive vice president of water, environment and infrastructure, says smart and integrated water-management approaches that combine new and emerging technologies to better monitor, track and optimize systems are an emerging driver in developed markets.  Along these same lines, Shoemarker sees increasing interest in the development of flexible water and wastewater management systems that can function efficiently in long cyclical droughts but quickly adapt to extreme wet conditions, when flooding risks are elevated.  "Flexible water management goes right back to the idea of using real-time control and water water technology.""

Arup - The Six Steps to Green Infrastructure

Planning and the Christmas Gift

xmas giving

Friday, December 11, 2015

Natural Gas Utility Taps Environmental Group’s Leak-Maps to Prioritize Repairs | 2015-12-07 | ENR

Natural Gas Utility Taps Environmental Group’s Leak-Maps to Prioritize Repairs | 2015-12-07 | ENR

Building in 90 Seconds

Machine Learning Inspired by Human Learning | MIT Technology Review

Machine Learning Inspired by Human Learning | MIT Technology Review

InfraPlan

From the InfraPlan website:

"InfraPlan offers solutions supporting the rehabilitation planning of buried water and wastewater networks, as well as other assets. InfraPlan's associates have a strong combination of experiences in research and field applications in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. This has put InfraPlan in a unique position to introduce a new concept, InfraPlanSolutions, an asset management framework that incorporates the most advanced approaches and analytical models in an integrated way."

The Inspiration of Great Design


Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Extreme Weather and Wastewater Overflows in Dallas

Friday, December 4, 2015

A Bandage That Glows to Warn of the Presence of Bacterial Invaders | MIT Technology Review

A Bandage That Glows to Warn of the Presence of Bacterial Invaders | MIT Technology Review

Cisco and Ericsson Hook Up for IoT Network

Cisco and Ericsson Hook Up for IoT Network

When Your Boss Is an Uber Algorithm | News | Communications of the ACM

When Your Boss Is an Uber Algorithm | News | Communications of the ACM

Graph of the Week

morris-stephcurry-2

The Future in 6 Phases

From Noahpinion - -  

Phase 1: Technological Change. The IT revolution, computers, the internet, automation, mobile communication.

Phase 2: Globalization. The huge wave of global growth between 1990 and 2008. Globalized supply chains. A huge Latin American immigration flow into the U.S., and a huge Middle Eastern immigrant flow into Europe.

Phase 3a: Inequality. Rising income and wealth inequality everywhere. Stagnating wages in rich countries. An explosion in the number of billionaires. Soaring college tuition as workers desperately try to get skills. 

Phase 3b: Cultural Change. Greater economic opportunity and equality for women, due to the service economy. A rise in divorce and single parenthood, and a drop in marriage. Sex culture spreading via the Internet. The decline of religion.

Phase 3c: Financialization: The explosion of financial profits and output as percentages of the total.

Phase 3d: Geopolitical Shift: The rise of China and the recovery of Russia, and (most importantly) the de facto alliance between the two.

Phase 4: Rise of Extremism. The steady polarization of American politics. Skyrocketing use of the filibuster. The Tea Party. The debt ceiling crisis. Trump. Sanders. Fox vs. MSNBC. Le Pen. The British National Party. Syriza and Golden Dawn. The Zaitokukai. Campus anti-speech movements. Online wars between leftist "SJWs" and rightists (GamerGate, etc.). The normalization of the terms "fascist" and "socialist". Illiberalism on both sides of the political spectrum.

Phase 5: Economic Slowdown: The 2008 crisis and the Great Recession, the Euro crisis and the China slowdown and the emerging markets slowdown. 

Phase 6: War. Let's hope not...

The Oil and Gas Tradeoff


Thursday, December 3, 2015

Moving Refugees to Ohio



From New Geography:

"Youngstown mayor John McNally has said that his most important task is to stop the depopulation.  A city like Youngstown needs to stop the hemorrhaging and get an infusion of energy.  Would the city gain by encouraging refugees to move to Youngstown? Other communities have tried this approach, encouraging immigrants to move to depopulated areas and gaining new economic activity in the process. Weather-challenged Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, has taken advantage of the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program, which “selects applicants who demonstrate they have the potential and the desire to immigrate and settle themselves and their families in the Canadian province of Manitoba.” Immigrants may apply through different categories such as General, Family Support, International Student, Employer, Strategic Initiative, or Business Immigration. An Economic Development study reports that Winnipeg’s metropolitan population has grown to 780,000, 100,000 higher than earlier projections. The population increase includes about 85,000 immigrants. Between 2009-2014, the local economy stabilized with unemployment below the national average and higher labor force participation and wage growth. In 2014, the city was touted by KPMG as the No. 1 low cost manufacturing location in aerospace, chemical, electronics assembly, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications equipment in North America."

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

British Rail Corporate Design Manual

What Do Engineers Mean by the Word Resilience?

From the New York Times magazine - The Profound Emptiness of "Resilience":

"But where ‘‘resilience’’ can suggest new avenues for civic infrastructure — admitting that disaster can’t always be diverted and shifting the focus to survival strategies — it is indistinguishable from classic American bootstrap logic when it is applied to individuals, placing all the burden of success and failure on a person’s character. ‘‘It’s pretty much the same message that’s drummed into us by Aesop’s fables, Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms, Christian denunciations of sloth and the 19th-­century chant invented to make children do their homework: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,’ ’’ the social scientist Alfie Kohn argued in an op-ed article in The Washington Post. ‘‘The more we focus on whether people have or lack persistence (or self-­discipline more generally), the less likely we’ll be to question larger policies.’’"

World Bank Proposes $16.1B for Africa's Global-Warming Response | 2015-11-24 | ENR

World Bank Proposes $16.1B for Africa's Global-Warming Response | 2015-11-24 | ENR

Israeli Startup Pushes Innovative Water Pipe Leak Repair Tech Globally | 2015-11-24 | ENR

Israeli Startup Pushes Innovative Water Pipe Leak Repair Tech Globally | 2015-11-24 | ENR

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Customer Micro-Moments and Mobile Technology

From Think With Google:

"Let me give you a very clear example of that. A micro-moment when you're traveling is wanting to get into your hotel room and not have to wait in line to check-in. With the Starwood app, you can check-in right on the app. As soon as you enter the property, beacons recognize that you're there. You verify your identity with a fingerprint (if you’re on an iPhone), the app provides your room number, and then you simply hold your phone up to the entranceway to the room, and go right in. That's an amazing way for a brand to help you in a micro-moment."

How Will Engineering Correlate with Automation Potential?

New Coalition Aims to Boost Clean Energy | MIT Technology Review

New Coalition Aims to Boost Clean Energy | MIT Technology Review

Housing Booms and Busts

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Black Friday Parking

Monday, November 23, 2015

What Is a Sponge City?

From Grist:

"China’s plan for spongifying its water systems is starting with 16 pilot cities, which will each receive up to 63 million dollars per year over three years for water-related initiatives. According to the Guardian, these projects will likely include developing ponds, filtration pools, and wetlands; building permeable roads and public spaces where rain can soak into the ground; and creating rooftop gardens."

The Future of VR Applications - Coming to the Design Studio Near You


#BlackFridayParking

Link to the site and effort.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

The Pig Worse than the Bacon

Apocalypse Pig: The Last Antibiotic Begins to Fail – Phenomena: Germination

Marketing and Hostage Negotiations

Interesting article - - from hooks, hot buttons, to active listening - - negotiating with bad guys is similar to marketing and client relationship management.

The Rise of AI

Thinking About Urban Resiliency

Mott MacDonald Looks at The Internet of Things

Link to the white paper.

Word of the Week - Agrihood



From the New York Times:

"The neighborhood is called Agritopia, and it’s one of a growing number of so-called agrihoods, residential developments where a working farm is the central feature, in the same way that other communities may cluster around a golf course, pool or fitness center. The real estate bust in 2008 halted new construction, but with the recovery, developers are again breaking ground on farm-focused tracts. At least a dozen projects across the country are thriving, enlisting thousands of home buyers who crave access to open space, verdant fields and fresh food."

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Engineering From Mars to Manhattan

Graph of the Week

Some perspective

The internet of things will bring makers closer to customers - mmc-news.com

The internet of things will bring makers closer to customers - mmc-news.com

Construction and the Smart Hard Hat

A Swarm of Thoughts on Hive Mind, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

A Swarm of Thoughts on Hive Mind, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

Why Engineers Still Need to Draw


aWhere

The IoT comes to agriculture via aWhere.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Infrastructure Investing and the Decline of the White Male Working Class

All of the reasons for increasing our investment in public infrastructure are good.  A new reason might be the increase of white working class mortality.  From CityLab:

"Who cares what white, working-class Americans think? Obviously, it matters from a political perspective. But recall that this group has been making news for reasons other than its support of Trump.

A recent study found that, while death rates for virtually all other demographics are on the decline, death rates for white Americans age 45 to 54 and with a high-school education or less have risen by 22 percent since 1999. Suicides, drugs, and alcohol are believed to largely explain the increase, which may reflect bleak health and economic circumstances among this demographic.  

Hopelessness, rage, a sense of lost opportunity: These feelings seem to help explain the increased mortality rates, as well as the political values of many white, working-class Americans. It’s easy to wave them off in the form of Trump’s circus-ringleader-style rhetoric, but it may be a matter of national health to take them seriously."

Public Transportation in the United States

Too Many Places Will Have Too Few People

NewGeography - Too Many Places Will Have too Few People

Monday, November 16, 2015

Atkins Talks Tech and Infrastructure

Design Space - Cool, Combine, Collaborate, Connect

How Students are Thinking About Their Class Projects

Design Thinking and IBM

From the New York Times - IBM's Design-Centered Strategy to Set Free the Squares:

"Mr. Gilbert answers that question with something called design thinking. (His title is general manager of design.) Among other things, design thinking flips traditional technology product development on its head. The old way is that you come up with a new product idea and then try to sell it to customers. In the design thinking way, the idea is to identify users’ needs as a starting point.

Mr. Gilbert and his team talk a lot about “iteration cycles,” “lateral thinking,” “user journeys” and “empathy maps.” To the uninitiated, the canons of design thinking can sound mushy and self-evident. But across corporate America, there is a rising enthusiasm for design thinking not only to develop products but also to guide strategy and shape decisions of all kinds. The September cover article of the Harvard Business Review was “The Evolution of Design Thinking.”

Venture capital firms are hiring design experts, and so are companies in many industries. Still, the IBM initiative stands out. The company is well on its way to hiring more than 1,000 professional designers, and much of its management work force is being trained in design thinking. “I’ve never seen any company implement it on the scale of IBM,” said William Burnett, executive director of the design program at Stanford University. “To try to change a culture in a company that size is a daunting task.”"

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Engineering and the Circular Economy

The Stress of Managing a Water Utility

Engineering in the World of Screens

Task Force Jumps To Work On Drone Registration Plan | 2015-11-11 | ePublishing

Task Force Jumps To Work On Drone Registration Plan | 2015-11-11 | ePublishing

Graph of the Week

US Construction in 2030

Coastal Real Estate Investing and Climate Change Risk

New paper from UCLA economist Matthew Kahn.

The ScanLAB Projects

Cerf Cites Challenges Facing the Internet of Things | News | Communications of the ACM

Cerf Cites Challenges Facing the Internet of Things | News | Communications of the ACM

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Sedaru Water Modeling Tools


Sedaru is the true smart water enterprise platform that unites your entire water utility, connects your GIS, AMI/AMR,...
Posted by IDModeling, Inc. on Friday, June 19, 2015

Fail at Scale | November 2015 | Communications of the ACM

Fail at Scale | November 2015 | Communications of the ACM

Engineering and Your Reputation

What Makes for a Great Public Works Director

Link to the article.

Drones could be used to detect ‘invisible’ water leaks - E & T Magazine

Drones could be used to detect ‘invisible’ water leaks - E & T Magazine

Is Your Company Busy With Being Born or Busy With Dying?

Slope Failure Infographic

Tests Begin of Technology the FAA Thinks Could Keep Drones Safe Beyond the View of Their Operators | MIT Technology Review

Tests Begin of Technology the FAA Thinks Could Keep Drones Safe Beyond the View of Their Operators | MIT Technology Review

Mapping the Rust Belt

The Rust Belt

Cities and Climate Change

No Stagnation in Innovation

The Future of Federal Support for Infrastructure Investments



Sunday, November 8, 2015

Are We (Engineers) Heading for An Economic Civil War?

Interesting post in NewGeography.  Engineering is increasingly defined and divided like our overall society.  Those engineers that work in the world of the tangible (i.e., manufacturing, construction, and resource development) and the world of the intangible (i.e., consulting, software development, financial services).  When the world of the tangible runs out of opportunity due to automation, AI, and offshoring, will the world of the intangible provide enough middle class jobs?

Link - Are We Heading for An Economic Civil War?

The Price of Parking

AEC Hackathon


Graph of the Week

Source: Congressional Budget Office

Exxon and Climate Change

Staffing Woes Worry Owners | 2015-11-05 | ePublishing

Staffing Woes Worry Owners | 2015-11-05 | ePublishing

Red Team Handbook

Link to the newly named Applied Critical Thinking Handbook.

Texas Lake Levels

Bennie Sanders (Larry David) on our Crumbling Infrastructure

From The Hill:
"David’s Sanders also said he refuses to drive on bridges or through tunnels because of America’s crumbling infrastructure.
“Instead, I keep a kayak strapped to the top of my car,” he said. “Whenever I get to a bridge, I park, abandon my car, paddle to the other side. So if you ever see a soaking wet man pulling a kayak out of a river and screaming about bridges, give him a hand, because he’s your next president.”"

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Urban Master Planning for the Elderly

The plan for Barcelona, Spain.

City of Dallas - Paying for the Past or Investing in the Future

Story from the Dallas Morning News on recent bond rating down grades for the City of Dallas.  The primary concern is the underfunded level of the Dallas police and fire pension fund.  The city faces a key infrastructure renewal fork in the road moment that many other communities will be facing - funding retirements or fixing potholes.

Infrastructure Decline and Dystopian Societies

Ben Carson on Advannced Engineering

From VOX:

"Carson also argued that the advanced engineering the pyramids required can be explained by divine intervention. "And various [sic] of scientists have said, 'Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that's how' — you know, it doesn't require an alien being when God is with you." (For the record, scientists do not believe that aliens taught the Egyptians how to build the pyramids.)"




Thursday, November 5, 2015

Smart Slope Monitoring

The Drone That Might Never Come Down | MIT Technology Review

The Drone That Might Never Come Down | MIT Technology Review

OpenRoads – Transportation, Civil Analysis, Design Software

OpenRoads – Transportation, Civil Analysis, Design Software

The Threat of Not Disclosing Climate Change Risk

From the New York Times.

Graph of the Week

For example, as shown in Figure 3.10, US mail volume increased for decades upon decades until the 1990s. And it started to level off in the 1990s (forming an S shape from 1926 to 1999) with the rise of email and the Internet, and then, since the early 2000s has fallen off a cliff (the beginning of a reverse S). Nobody today expects the number of letters delivered to rise in a decade's time. This same pattern could confront the conventional automobile as we know it today. From Levinson and Krizek (2015) The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport. http://davidlevinson.org/the-end-of-traffic-and-the-future-of-transport/  Figure 3.10 Source: US Postal Service (nd) Pieces of Mail Handled, Number of Post Offices, Income, and Expenses Since 1789.  https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/pieces-of-mail-since-1789.htm.

A Database of Global Water Rates

Link to the site.

Thinking About IRR

Bringing it back home: Why state comparisons are more useful than international comparisons for improving U.S. education policy

Bringing it back home: Why state comparisons are more useful than international comparisons for improving U.S. education policy

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Synthetic Biology Is Coming to Your Wastewater Treatment Plant

DroneDefender

Quality Data Key to Tapping into Full Benefits of Asset Management

Quality Data Key to Tapping into Full Benefits of Asset Management

Green and Decentralized

A Paragraph to Ponder

From Meetings of the Minds:

"The first-in-the-nation competition harnesses value embedded in the utility platform and enables greater adoption of new energy solutions customers want. Strengthening and modernizing the State’s electric grid not by government handouts to utilities, but by empowering communities and third parties to integrate microgrids and put forth new business models that serve critical infrastructure, and have the ability to delight and surprise customers with new energy products and services that improve their quality of life. Microgrids are localized and optimized grids that can disconnect from the traditional electric grid to operate autonomously and fill critical infrastructure and service needs in the event of an emergency. They also operate during normal, ‘blue-sky’ days and can help defer costly infrastructure investments that would lead to higher bills for customers. These systems can be thought of as ‘the brains’ of any distributed energy resource, like solar or storage; they have a variety of options to “share” their services with the grid – such as by participating in demand response programs or by providing ancillary services (such as voltage control or regulation) by selling generated excess power back to the grid."

Monday, November 2, 2015

Engineering and Warm Water

The Future of Utilities Looks Uncertain | MIT Technology Review

The Future of Utilities Looks Uncertain | MIT Technology Review

New Book


Stopping Terror Attacks

Job Title of the Future - Reclamation Process Engineer

ASCE Career Connections

Speaking Less / Saying More


Disaster Planning and Loving Your City



Sunday, November 1, 2015

Design Think Your Life

Climate Change & Disaster Resilience

Link to a good news site.

The Five Best Energy Stories of the Week | MIT Technology Review

The Five Best Energy Stories of the Week | MIT Technology Review

Stanford's CS+X Program

Stanford's multidisciplinary approach to linking STEM with the humanities.

Key Ingredients of Entrepreneurship at Stanford

From the current issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education - Inside Startup U: How Stanford Develops Entrepreneurial Students:

  • Networking and collaboration across disciplines and schools.  Embodied best by the Hasso- Plattner Institute of Design, programs and courses that cross disciplines are support by the university.  About one-quarter of students purse interdisciplinary majors.
  • Close connections to industry.  Local leaders play an active role on campus, serving as instructors and mentors to students, and as collaborators with faculty members.  Stanford offers professors a two-year leave for opportunities to work in industry.
  • Classes, centers, and organizations that focus on innovation.  Students can choose among dozens of offerings, both academic and applied, that build entrepreneurial skills.
  • A robust liberal-arts environment.  As enrollments in engineering have grown, Stanford has sought to bolster and humanities and social sciences, too, including by creating programs such as CS+X, a joint major in computer science and a humanities field.
  • Support for commercialization of research and ideas.  Established entities, like the Office of Technology Licensing, and newer ones, like StartX, a nonprofit, Stanford-affiliated business accelerator, offer faculty members, students, and alumni help with the technical and development sides of entrepreneurship.

Engineering in the Age of Lights Out

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Cities Built on Resilience

From the WSJ:
"The World Bank estimates that the share of the world’s population living in large cities exposed to tropical cyclones and earthquakes will rise from 11% in 2000 to 16% in 2050. Economic exposure will grow even more because of rising sea levels linked to a warmer climate, economic growth and urbanization.
In 2005, the 10 cities most economically exposed to coastal flooding—led by Miami, New York, New Orleans, Osaka-Kobe and Tokyo—accounted for 5% of world GDP. That is likely to grow to 9% by the 2070s as Guangzhou, Kolkata, Shanghai, Mumbai, Tianjin, Hong Kong and Bangkok join the list.
As for New York City, it has been courting disaster virtually ever since its founding. The areas of lower Manhattan inundated by Sandy correspond almost exactly to those parts reclaimed from the seas since 1609. Two Dutch water experts, Jeroen Aerts and Wouter Botzen, have calculated that in the past century, the value of buildings in New York’s hundred-year flood zone has risen from less than $1 billion to $18 billion (in constant 2009 dollars)."

Engineering and the U.S. Housing Market

An interesting post from Moody's.

Friday, October 30, 2015

SLJ900


A Paragraph to Ponder

From Inside Climate News - Power Grid Remains Ill Prepared for Future Hurricanes, Study Shows:

"The report focused on five metropolitan regions: the Delaware Valley, southeastern Virginia, the South Carolina lowcountry, southeastern Florida and the central Gulf Coast. The proportion of exposed substations ranged from 16 percent in southeastern Florida to nearly 70 percent in the central Gulf Coast. In Norfolk, Va. and Charleston S.C., more than 80 percent of substations would likely be inundated."