Breaking News: National Infrastructure

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Engineers at the University of New Hampshire have designed a unique living laboratory on a heavily traveled iconic bridge which could change the way infrastructure is viewed. The Memorial Bridge, which links Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Kittery, Maine, has been outfitted with data sensors that have transformed it into a self-diagnosing, self-reporting “smart” bridge that captures a range of information from the health of the span to the environment around it.

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Heidi Feigenbaum, a professor at Northern Arizona University, received a $544,758 grant from the U.S. Department of the Army to develop a mathematical model that will more accurately predict how the materials in bridges, pipes and other infrastructure will react to stressors with the goal of building safe and cost-effective projects.

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As more rain falls on a warming planet, a new computer model shows that it may not take a downpour to cause widespread disruption of road networks. The model combined data on road networks with the hills and valleys of topography to reveal “tipping points” at which even small localized increases in rain cause widespread road outages.

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A new deep-mapping computer model can detect visual changes to individual properties, allowing researchers to more-rapidly track gentrification within neighborhoods and cities, according to a study published March 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lazar Ilic, Michael Sawada, and Amaury Zarzelli of the University of Ottawa, Canada.

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The products of wastewater treatment have been found to contain trace amounts of antibiotic resistant DNA. These products are often reintroduced to the environment and water supply, potentially resulting in the spread of antibiotic resistance.

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False alarm text message made residents of Hawaii check what others were doing to verify risk

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Students to build sustainable home of healing for military veterans for U.S. Department of Energy contest; UNLV competed in 2013 and 2017.

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HARC released a special report today for public and private sector leaders that addresses how to fund critical infrastructure required to maintain the safety and well-being of cities and communities. The Green Paper is entitled “Funding Resilience in the Greater Houston Region: Synopsis from a Public-Private Sector Workshop.”

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A Mississippi State civil engineering faculty member who researches resilience against extreme events and natural hazards is responding to lessons learned from California’s deadly Camp Fire by outlining how to utilize the power of data to improve disaster response and minimize economic loss and human harm in similar events.

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A field work study of four bridges in Denver, Colorado was conducted to assess the behavior of prestressed concrete bridges carrying light rail transit loadings.

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In her new book, Kathryn Rogers Merlino, University of Washington associate professor of architecture, argues for the environmental benefit of reusing buildings rather than tearing them down and building anew.

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As small Iowa towns continue to lose population, a strong social infrastructure – rather than economic or physical factors – determines whether residents report greater quality of life, according to new research out of Iowa State University.

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Psychology Professor Wally Boot, an expert on cognition and perception, led a research project that examined "smarter" highway signs and identified the most effective ones to prevent wrong-way driving crashes. His research recommendations are now being used by the Florida Department of Transportation in the construction of new highway interchanges in the state and will guide future design, too.

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Columbia Engineers show for the first time that runoff extremes have dramatically increased in response to climate and human-induced changes. Their findings demonstrate a large increase in precipitation and runoff extremes driven by human activity and climate change.

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The Urban Adaptation Assessment is an open-source, free measurement and analysis tool that explores a city’s ability to adapt and readiness for adaptation to climate change.

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