Photo by Matthew Kraus/flickr Cars awash on 15th Street in lower Manhattan, New York City, during Superstorm Sandy. Related Links: Flood Risk Management: Call for a national strategy ASCE's Post Katrina Statement: What Must We Do Next A task force of the American Society of Civil Engineers, formed to assess the nation's response to the ASCE's eight years of repeated, urgent calls to improve flood risk management as a national priority, delivered its report on Sept. 22 with the finding that there has been only limited progress.But the ASCE committee delivered an analysis of why progress is lacking and, significantly,
Big data is like the Atlantic Ocean; it’s huge and deep and full of power but we know that—whatever we have done so far—we have barely touched its potential.One example of tapping the potential of big data is a service that mines and analyzes the hits generated by more than one million mobile wireless devices as they register at one cell tower after another while traveling along. The identities of the users are never known, but it doesn’t matter. It is the pattern of movements on a grand scale that tells the tale.The transportation studies the data analytics company, AirSage,
Within a year or two, U.S. companies likely will replace many human workers now flying aerial survey and photo missions or inspecting structures from scaffolds and platforms with missions flown by unmanned aerial vehicles—drones.
Photo Courtesy of Bentley Systems The integrated analyzer runs grillage, or line-girder analysis, and then performs comprehensive design code checks and load ratings based on results. Analysis in 3D is expected in a later release. Related Links: Bentley LEAP Bridge Steel Bentley LEAP Bridge Enterprise V81 Bentley Systems Inc. has produced new software for the design, analysis, load rating and 3D modeling of "everyday" steel bridges. It complements another Bentley product for designing similar bridges in concrete. One early user of the new tool for steel says her firm already has used the pair to create a bridge proposal using
Related Links: The Nature Conserevancy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources and TNC partnership U.S. map of selected projects in which The Nature Conservancy is partnering Interactive U.S. map of selected projects in which The Nature Conservancy is partnering Interactive Latin American map of selected projects in which The Nature Conservancy is partnering The world's largest conservation non-governmental organization is a 63-year-old environmental activist group that has drawn 119 million acres of sensitive lands under its protective wings. It has amassed assets of $6 billion and now annually collects $500 million in donations from its one million
Related Links: NY Tech Meetup FieldLens I am not sure when a meetup becomes an institution, but a 10-year-old monthly gathering of tech heads in New York City called NY Tech Meetup has definitely crossed the bar. It has more than 40,000 members and claims to be the largest tech meetup group in the world.Every session I have attended has had more attendees than the previous one, although the format remains the same; three batches of three presenters describing their breakout tech inventions and then answering questions from the audience, plus one bonus presentation to mix things up.The audiences are
The latest in a series of reports about concerns over construction defects in the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge suspension span involves cracked welds in the girders that form the span’s roadway. Others that have emerged include suspect foundation concrete, rusted tendons in the skyway that connects the suspension span to Oakland, broken anchor rods, and corrosion on the main cable. Many of the issues were first reported by The Sacramento Bee.As a “fracture critical” structure, in which some vital structural elements lack redundancy or backup, the bridge would seem to be a perfect candidate for an installed system for structural
Related Links: ZweigWhite survey Detailed survey reports about the use of information technology in the industry provide insight into the real world experiences and plans of practitioners, so the release of results of an annual survey that has been analyzing it for 16 years is worthy of attention. ZweigWhite, a Fayetteville, Ark.-based business management resource for designers and planners, recently released its 2014 Information Technology Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning & Environmental Consulting Firms. It provides a granular, representative sampling of IT use at such firms, as well as a forecast. The annual reports are used by many firms for
Related Links: Blog Post by Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO Autodesk's Acquisition of Get The Point Technology Weds Field Layout to Design Files Autodesk is making a big commitment to 3D printing with three recent moves to put its software and services, and even some new hardware, at the center of that industry.Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass blogged on May 14 that later this year the company will launch an open-source software platform called Spark for driving 3D printers. He also announced the company will start selling its own 3D printer, whose design will be open-sourced as part of the
Related Links: 3D Hubs global 3D printer network Recent conversations with Autodesk’s technologists, a tour of Autodesk’s “Pier 9” workshop on the San Francisco waterfront and an encounter with Carl Bass, Autodesk president and CEO, builds an appreciation for the company’s deepening interest in 3D printing.The workshop is a 27,000 sq ft, two-story structure housing 115 people on a pier near Autodesk’s San Francisco offices at the foot of Market Street. It opened last fall and has been equipped with offices, presentation spaces, a test kitchen, a Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor and a series of workspaces separately equipped for
