John Hennessy III,
P.E.
A sustainable civil engineering-themed parody of the song “Young, Wild and Free,” performed by the Los Angeles Younger Member Forum of ASCE. “ASCE Sustainability” was awarded an honorable mention in ASCE’s 2014 Student and Younger Member Music Video Contest.
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The Earthquake Engineering Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno is known for testing large-scale structures on its four shake tables. This video is a parody of Taylor Swift’s song “Shake It Off” that shows how engineers can safely design bridges and buildings to resist earthquake loading. The University of Nevada, Reno ASCE Student Chapter is the GRAND PRIZE WINNER and recipient of $5,000 in the Student Chapter category of ASCE’s 2014 Student and Younger Member Music Video Contest.
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BLUEGREEN ALLIANCE
Much of the physical infrastructure of the United States is in a state of disrepair. As documented by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in their 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, our roads, transit systems, dams, and airports need billions of dollars of investment to return them to adequacy. Our water, air, and land are threatened by aging systems designed to provide safe drinking water, handle hazardous waste, treat wastewater, and manage our solid waste. Half of our schools were built to educate the generation that is now retiring, and our electric grid is widely recognized as being incapable of meeting the needs of our changing energy system.
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Infrastructure is critical to economic growth, but the aging U.S. transportation system suffers from insufficient investment. As this CFR Progress Report and Scorecard, Road to Nowhere, explains, other nations are building new highways as the United States’ crumble. U.S. transportation fell from fifth in the World Economic Forum’s rankings in 2002 to twenty-fourth in 2011, passed by nations such as Spain, South Korea, and Oman. Making a U-turn will take some time since major infrastructure projects require several years to plan and execute.
On June 27th in Washington D.C., a new report was released that outlines innovative new ways that the federal government, industry and other stakeholders can work together to solve the crisis of the failing state of U.S. infrastructure. Entitled “Making The Grade,” the six point plan is the result of experts from 45 different organizations, including corporations, professional organizations, think tanks, financial advisors and academic institutions.
The report’s name is intended as a rallying cry in response to last year’s quadrennial report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which gave America’s overall infrastructure a D+ grade. Several of the report’s contributors continued the rallying cry in a #FlashBlog event last week. Following is a summary:
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AUTODESK
Making The Grade represents the consensus of many who attended the meeting “Executing a Sustainable Infrastructure Vision” convened by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) initially in 2012. The Making the Grade roundtable that followed in 2013 was comprised of experts from 45 companies representing the scope of the U.S. infrastructure industry—planning, engineering, construction, and technology—and their counterparts from local governments, professional organizations, think tanks, financial advisors, academic institutions, and others. Participants agreed to an ambitious goal: describe a new vision and path forward for regaining and sustaining America’s public infrastructure leadership.
The Bridges Photo Contest closes this Monday, March 31st, but there’s still time to get the good side of your favorite bridge. Seven categories encourage variety–rather than sending one more picture of the Golden Gate Bridge with fog rolling in, why not try to snap a local Pedestrian Bridge, or a Small-Town Bridge?
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On February 26, President Obama climbed the steps of St. Paul, MN’s Union Depot train station to announce his new vision for transportation funding. The bill includes a competition for $600 million in transportation dollars, and a four-year surface transportation reauthorization to the tune of $300 billion.
Stakeholders on both sides of the fence have been quick to form opinions, and the fate of the bill remains uncertain–though most agree that action is urgently needed. Selected reactions from the transportation community are excerpted below.
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AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS: GEORGIA SECTION
With new grades for the first time since 2009, Georgia’s infrastructure has shown very little improvement and once again received a cumulative grade of C. The Georgia Section of ASCE assessed the same 12 categories as 2009: aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, parks and recreation, ports, rail, roads, school facilities, solid waste, stormwater, transit and wastewater. Recognizing the importance of transportation to Georgians, we added two new categories in 2014: ports and rail. As indicated by the grade, much work remains to be done, though there are some bright spots.
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS
America relies on an aging electrical grid and pipeline distribution systems, some of which originated in the 1880s. Investment in power transmission has increased since 2005, but ongoing permitting issues, weather events, and limited maintenance have contributed to an increasing number of failures and power interruptions.
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