Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The Resilient Water System

From Black & Veatch in Meeting of the Minds:

"For a growing number of communities, smart water is about resilience. Our water systems must be resilient enough to endure floods, droughts and human threats while reliably supplying clean water and managing stormwater and wastewater needs. Advanced water management technologies can give utilities and cities an edge by helping to address these diverse resiliency needs in both day-to-day circumstances and in periods of duress.

In terms of technology, the power of incremental innovation shines brightly here. The combination of new sensor technology, massive data sets, predictive analytics, and cloud computing brings water systems to life, enables adaptability, and guides appropriate actions.

For example, a risk-based analytics framework can identify and evaluate options to enhance water system resilience against events such as flood, drought or terrorism. These smart tools help water utilities simulate disruptions on a grand scale and identify the best means to manage the situation across planning, design, and operational perspectives.

Using the same smart tools, utilities can compare project portfolios to improve raw water storage, transfer and network interconnections. The results help prioritize improvement options and focus capital investments on the initiatives that produce the highest benefits and lowest risks for varying spending levels.

In the context of smart cities, resiliency also means the ability to manage water needs in increasing larger, denser urban areas where, the stakes get higher as populations increase. In these areas, the needs are more complex, green space is limited, and the costs associated with disruption are magnified."

Engineers Designing With the Public versus For the Public


City of Dallas 2017 Bond Program


Wednesday, October 12, 2016

How to Think About the Future

From Peter Thiel - -


The End of Engineers?

UK Tsunami Simulator Gives Engineers Unique Data on Long Waves

UK Tsunami Simulator Gives Engineers Unique Data on Long Waves: With its ability to create shallow waves of great length in a laboratory flume, a new tsunami simulator in the U.K. is helping seismic engineers at University College’s EPICentre, London, compute more accurate structural impact models than previously were possible.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Sunday, October 9, 2016

GoPro Karma Drone

The Economics of Higher Education

Engineering the Modern Farm

Graph of the Week


Airports Power Up the Next Generation of Construction Programs

Airports Power Up the Next Generation of Construction Programs: It’s a new age of design and construction for U.S. airports.

Basic common sense is key to building more intelligent machines

Basic common sense is key to building more intelligent machines: An unfashionable old technique that helps modern artificial intelligences grasp our world could make them more versatile and better at communicating with us.

AI on 60 Minutes Tonight

Monday, October 3, 2016

Crowdsourcing Flood Data


What the Markets Think About a President Trump

From Bloomberg BusinessWeek:

"That implies that investors don't think Trump will win, or just don't care. Indifference can't be dismissed -- financial professionals know that presidents lack the magical power over economic affairs that the political arena demands that they claim. But the exceptional steadiness of global markets in the face of U.S. political tumult favors the first explanation: In contrast to previous election years, investors are convinced that there's only one likely outcome this time."