Alex McDowell is the award-winning production designer behind more than 20 Hollywood films, including “Fight Club” and “Minority Report.”
Now he is bringing his creative genius to ASCE’s Future World Vision, a dynamic new scenario-planning tool that looks five decades into the future to consider potential ways society will advance, how the infrastructure we use every day will develop and how civil engineers must take...
Alex McDowell, an award-winning production designer for dozens of Hollywood films, talks about the way he is blending storytelling and data-driven research for ASCE's Future World Vision.
The world is rapidly changing. There are exciting new opportunities and difficult challenges ahead for civil engineers: alternative energy, autonomous vehicles, climate change, smart cities, high-tech construction and advanced materials, and policy and funding are just a few.
To educate our members and spark dialogue on the latest and future practices in the civil engineering field, ASCE’s Future World Vision will be highlighted at the...
In response to a growing demand for performance-based wind design guidance, ASCE's Structural Engineering Institute has issued a prestandard that supplements ASCE 7's prescriptive methods.
The “ASCE/SEI Prestandard for Performance-Based Wind Design” includes nonlinear dynamic analysis for wind design, system-based performance criteria and enhanced design criteria for the building envelope. It also aims to smooth out conflicts when applying performance-based approaches to seismic design.
“This research...
And here we thought the future of engineering was smart technology.
Perhaps there is merit in the art of being dumb. Technically speaking, at least.
The Emerald Tutu earned the Overall Grand Challenge Award, Thursday, during the 2019 ASCE Innovation Contest celebration event at ASCE Headquarters in Reston, Virginia. The Emerald Tutu’s lead developer, Gabriel Cira, himself refers to the project as dumb tech rather than...
Chris Luebkeman is an Arup Fellow, based in their San Francisco office, with the rather daunting title of director for global foresight, research and innovation.
Is he a fortune teller? Can he predict the future?
Not exactly. But he has his finger on the pulse of change, embraces the challenges, and stresses that we must all find our new role in these new times.
Recently, he delivered...
Climate change is one of six key trends driving ASCE’s Future World Vision scenario-planning model. Already, right now, in the present world vision, climate change – specifically sea-level rise – is driving demand for flooding solutions in Southeast Florida.
Civil engineers in the region, along with local governments and cooperative efforts like the Southeast Regional Climate Change Compact, the Resilient Utilities Coalition and the Florida...
Mikhail Chester was at a crossroads of sorts.
He’d done plenty of good work in the sustainable engineering space – life-cycle assessment, climate change adaptation, resilience and the like – and won ASCE’s Huber prize in 2017 for these efforts. But there was something missing, some kind of unifying, synthesizing approach to tie it all together.
“A few years ago I stepped back and asked myself,...
David Odeh can’t help but chuckle at the irony inherent in his statement.
“The one thing we can say with certainty,” Odeh says, “is that whatever future scenario we predict, that scenario will not be the future.”
Odeh, a technical region director on the ASCE Board of Direction, is referring to Future World Vision, ASCE’s bold, comprehensive scenario-planning tool that helps civil engineers strategize for an...
Civil engineering is not a profession that lacks for great ideas. The 2019 ASCE Innovation Contest makes that much clear.
“The entries and winners have jumped another level higher in quality this year,” said Marc Hoit, Ph.D., F.SEI, F.ASCE, Innovation Contest chair and vice chancellor for information technology at North Carolina State University.
“This year's winners are the best yet and should attract investors.”
ASCE’s Industry Leaders...
