Rising sea levels will affect not only the seaside in California's Bay Area but also areas as far as 20 miles or more inland as motorists seek drier travel routes and back up traffic, according to a computational model by Stanford University researchers. The congestion is expected to add as much as 30 minutes to travel times.
Repairs for the cracked West Seattle Bridge could cost between $160 million and $225 million by the end of 2021, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation. Seattle could shift $70 million in city money to facilitate the repairs, while SDOT says it plans to borrow $100 million using bonds and take out an additional internal loan.
Illinois is providing $40 million toward a public-private partnership to build a new inland port at Cairo where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet. The project is expected to create 500 construction jobs, and the final engineering, permitting and site preparation phases are imminent.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation is heeding budget constraints by postponing segments of highway reconstruction in Duluth. The work on US Highway 53 bridges in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, and on Interstate 535 bridges and ramps onto Garfield Avenue through Duluth's port will now take place in 2027 and 2028 as part of a 10-year Capital Highway Investment Plan.
Digital technologies implemented by the hydropower and dam industry as a matter of necessity during the coronavirus pandemic will also become increasingly standard in designing and delivering projects in the post-pandemic world. The digital tool Rehearsive allows for planning of work sequences as well as testing and revisions in a virtual environment created through building information modeling.
LafargeHolcim and IBM are collaborating on a digital materials platform that could reduce carbon emissions from road construction in half and cut project costs by one-third. The platform, known as ORIS, could also help triple road durability and usage life spans.
New rules governing flood insurance and construction will begin Jan. 29 in Charleston County, S.C., as the Federal Emergency Management Agency issues new flood maps. The new directives are expected to be less stringent than the current ones.
The Environmental Protection Agency will provide $235.2 million in Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act funding to cover nearly half the cost of a project to boost capacity at the South District Wastewater Treatment Plant in Miami-Dade County, Fla. The project will also build injection wells at two other wastewater treatment plants managed by the county Water and Sewer Department.
Anil Chopra has published a book that offers a comprehensive look at how seismic analysis, design and safety evaluation of concrete dams has progressed over the past 50 years. It covers the limitations of dynamic analysis and the contemporary methods to overcome them.
Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, a Princeton University emeritus professor of civil and environmental engineering, has focused throughout his career on water management and notes the lessons humanity can learn from plants. He has worked with colleagues across disciplines to develop key mathematical models that account for rainfall, geological, soil and vegetation features to explain how living systems work.
Are certain personality types predisposed to becoming civil engineers? And how inclined are those types to seek leadership? In a Member Voices post to ASCE News, a past professor of civil engineering shares the results of studies he's conducted into leadership and personality.
