Don Resio, a senior technologist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, Miss., had an “Aha!” moment in 2008 when he conceived of a way to plug roaring levee breaches using fabric tubes partially filled with water. Tested at 1:4 scale on a real breach, the device rolled into place with the water current and sealed the gap in 12 seconds. Resio believes the principals are completely scalable, and the only thing needed to plug larger breaches, like the typical 40-ft to 60-ft levee gaps in a Mississippi flood, is a larger fabric sack
The fast rise of green construction technology is encouraging, particularly during this time of economic uncertainty. Green projects—mostly in the form of energy-efficiency building retrofits—lately have been working their way into the market as funds for new projects have evaporated in the credit crisis. However, many of these systems are not performing as touted, especially cleverly hyped geothermal heating systems that are plagued with inflated savings claims and deficient designs. These deficiencies have been slowing acceptance of a basically sound and environmentally sensitive approach to design and construction. Photo: Stantec Related Links: As More Buildings Go Geothermal, Project Teams Are
Logic and the construction industry do not always go hand in hand, so the industry, regulators and government officials often jump in to set limits on what a project owner and its design and construction teams can do on a project for the safety and health of the community, project and environment. Many teams complain and chafe under these restrictions but do little more. The best way to come out ahead in the long run is to step out front and lead the way with innovative ideas to make projects better and, at the same time, duck the threat of
These are scary times, and for those citizens living in earthquake country, the times are not just scary, they are terrifying. For starters, a major earthquake is overdue along the Hayward Fault, in the East Bay area near San Francisco: It could happen at any moment. San Francisco has 120,000 buildings, at least 90% of them erected before the adoption of modern building codes in the 1970s. Most won’t flat-out collapse in a city-centered earthquake the size of 1989’s Loma Prieta, but there will be damage beyond repair from the quake and ensuing fire to about a quarter of the
Size does matter for construction folks who, by nature, like telling tall tales about how their project is the world’s tallest, longest or deepest. But the wildest reason ever given for a project malfunctioning has to be that offered for the shower of sparks and released cloud of super-cold helium when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was switched on last year in Switzerland: Some physicists believed a theoretical subatomic-particle called the Higgs boson (also known as the God particle), which scientists hope to create with the collider, would be so catastrophic to nature that its effects would ripple back in
The money now is flowing from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for a variety of construction projects, ranging from simple paving jobs to sophisticated energy-efficiency revamps of federal buildings. But something is missing—public support. The economic-stimulus funding bill that Congress passed in February allocated $787 billion for the overall economic mission, but only about $130 billion for construction. Tenn-TomWaterway Yet the most visible aspects of the stimulus are the construction projects, and the ones under way do little to lift people’s spirits, give them hope about the future or cause them to open their wallets and start spending again.
The atmosphere has definitely changed in favor of some form of regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. since the Democrats took control of Congress and the Presidency last November. On June 26, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) by seven votes, and Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Sept. 30 introduced a Senate version that is even stronger. Related Links: For First Time, EPA May Regulate CO2 Against this backdrop is a proposal by the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the gases from coal-fired
Why not a ‘genius’ award just for construction? The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Fellows Program, sometimes called the ‘genius’ award, annually gives 20 to 30 extraordinarily talented individuals an unrestricted $500,000 stipend, payable over five years. This year, the foundation for the first time has included a bridge engineer among its recipients—Theodore Zoli, from HNTB Corp. The 24 recipients come from all professions, ranging from photojournalist and painter to molecular biologist and applied mathematician. All are selected by a panel of secret nominators chosen by the foundation from a broad range of fields. This should be a
As the construction industry and the nation attempt to crawl out of a very deep economic hole, there is a maelstrom of competing political agendas: economic stimulus, proposed federal bailouts of an ever-widening group of companies and industries, health-care reform, global-warming initiatives and war strategies and funding, to name just a few. But with the national debt now standing at a staggering $12 trillion, an annual federal budget deficit hitting $1.36 trillion and the federal business bailout tab running $12 trillion—just for starters—there is no money for some or all of these initiatives unless the U.S. just prints a lot
When disasters challenge the limits of engineering, all too often death and destruction follow. That is because engineering is, in a basic sense, a set of protective disciplines that enable people to live and work safely in the presence of forces that would other-wise kill them. The American Society of Civil Engineers has long recognized its responsibility, as one of the nation’s leading engineering societies, to try and answer the questions that arise when forces overtake engineered structures. ASCE regularly has been dispatching analysis teams of volunteer experts to disaster sites since 1889, when a poorly maintained dam impounding 20-million