InfrastructureFixing NYC’s aging infrastructure one engineering problem at a time

Published 4 May 2016

How do you make sure aging bridges which are vital links in New York City’s transportation network are safe or keep the city’s sewer system from breaking down? These are among the questions that occupy Columbia University researchers, who have installed sensors to analyze vibration on some of the city’s bridges and in landmark buildings and museums, and have focused on the functioning of the city’s water system.

How do you make sure aging bridges which are vital links in New York City’s transportation network are safe or keep the city’s sewer system from breaking down?

These are among the questions that occupy Andrew Smyth and Patricia Culligan, civil engineers and professors at the Columbia University Engineering School, who work on New York’s infrastructure.

“There are a lot of nasty, ugly problems here in New York City,” says Smyth. “This is our laboratory.”

Columbia University says that Smyth has installed sensors to analyze vibration on some of the city’s bridges and in landmark buildings and museums, while Culligan has focused, among other things, on the functioning of the city’s water system.

They are just two of many Columbia faculty members involved in the upkeep of a city which was founded in the seventeenth century and has been growing ever since. Other faculty study a wide range of infrastructure related issues — everything from bringing more wind and solar power to the city to maintaining and improving its vast transportation system.

The Smart Cities Center in Columbia’s Data Science Institute, which Smyth chairs and Culligan, associate director of the Data Science Institute, is affiliated with, includes faculty from the Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning and the School of International and Public Affairs as well as professors of economics, computer science, and civil, mechanical and electrical engineering, all working to better understand how cities function and use data to make them more livable.

Much of New York’s infrastructure is aging and needs to be restored, improved and potentially replaced, Smyth says, and at a time when the population is growing. “There is decreasing capacity and increased demand,” he says. “You can’t just take things offline to do repairs.”

The subways, for example, run twenty-four hours a day and often need to have electrical switches replaced. As any transit rider knows, certain lines are taken down, usually at night or on weekends, so repairs can be made. Engineers face similar problems with bridges; they are constantly exposed to the elements and persistent traffic loads, which ages the structures and can lead to cracks, yet they are critical to the city’s transportation grid.

Smyth, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California and joined the Columbia faculty in 1998, has used vibration-based diagnostic techniques to look for signs of deterioration on many of the city’s bridges. His graduate students — volunteers in