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