Season 4, Episode 10: Burçin Becerik-Gerber, a professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Southern California and director of CENTIENTS (Center for Intelligent Environment), discusses her work on intelligent threat-sensing buildings – structures that employ AI technology to keep people safe during emergencies, including maybe most frighteningly, those involving active shooters.
We also hear from ASCE's Student Ambassadors about how they've...
This installation of Civil Engineering’s Infrastructure Solutions series, which looks at how civil engineers are using cutting-edge techniques to resolve the issues identified in ASCE’s 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, examines the nation’s energy system. The United States’ transition from traditional fossil fuel and nuclear sources to other sources of renewable energy has significant implications on transmission and distribution infrastructure — both on land and...
After examining each of its 12 districts in terms of their vulnerabilities to climate change, the California Department of Transportation is looking to integrate the findings into its long-range efforts to address the anticipated effects of extreme weather on its state highway system. In July, Caltrans announced it had wrapped up the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Reports for District 1 (Eureka) and District 5...
ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 9: It's amazing to think that even in the oldest professional in the world, civil engineering, there remain new boundaries to push.
Erica Fischer is doing just that in the field of structural fire engineering design.
Fischer, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, is an assistant professor of structural engineering at Oregon State University. She’s working on the upcoming ASCE Structural Engineering Institute performance-based...
ASCE Plot Points Season 4 Episode 7: Cybersecurity is a hot topic these days – and one that most people would agree is important for our modern society to regulate and prioritize.
But is cybersecurity something civil engineers need to concern themselves with?
Brad Allenby says yes, 100-percent yes.
Allenby is the president’s professor of sustainable engineering, and the Lincoln professor of engineering and ethics at Arizona...
A Stantec-led consortium has begun planning and design efforts to upgrade and add to the existing wastewater infrastructure in the Fayoum governorate in central Egypt—an initiative that will affect approximately 940,000 Egyptian residents. By providing sanitation to some areas for the first time, the seven-year Fayoum Wastewater Expansion program is expected to improve public health and safety and reduce a significant source of environmental...
