• Engineers group gives Illinois infrastructure low marks

    The ASCE says that the dilapidated Illinois infrastructure is endangering the state’s future prosperity; the group examined nine infrastructure elements; the two that got the highest grade – C+ — are aviation and bridges; the others fared worse

  • Aging infrastructure poses economic, security risks

    The World Bank says global infrastructure investment needs will be $35 trillion over the next twenty years; in the United States, a leading engineers group estimates that $2.2 trillion is needed over the next five years; the group gave U.S. critical infrastructure a D grade in 2009

  • Waterfall receives U.S. patent for SCADA solution

    SCADA, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, is used, among other things, to monitor and control the U.S. critical infrastructure assets and facilities; Waterfall receives a patent for unidirectional security gateways to be used in SCADA

  • DNI Dennis Blair: U.S. critical infrastructure severely threatened

    Blair: “The United States confronts a dangerous combination of known and unknown vulnerabilities, strong and rapidly expanding adversary capabilities, and a lack of comprehensive threat awareness”

  • Haiti earthquake a reminder that disasters are preventable

    While earthquakes are inevitable in earthquake zones, and hurricanes and tornadoes are inevitable under certain weather conditions — “there are no inevitable disasters,” a University of Colorado expert says; “There is no such thing as a natural disaster”; the scope of death and injury, the magnitude of damage to buildings and infrastructure, are the result not of nature – but of man-made decisions; what we see in Haiti is the result of decades of corrupt and ineffective Haitian governments, indifferent to the welfare of the Haitian people

  • Experts: U.K. must act now to prepare for rising sea level

    A joint study by the leading U.K. civil engineering and architectural associations says that steps must be taken now to protect coastal towns from rising sea levels; the reports says policy makes should consider three options for tackling rising sea level: “retreat” — moving critical infrastructure and housing to safer ground; “defend” — building town or city-wide sea defenses; and “attack” — extending the existing coastline and building out on to the water

  • Maximum height of extreme waves up dramatically in Pacific Northwest

    A new assessment concludes that the highest waves in a “100-year event” along the Pacific Northwest’s coast may be as much as 46 feet, up from estimates of only 33 feet that were made as recently as 1996, and a 40 percent increase; the new findings raise special concerns for flooding, coastal erosion, and structural damage; “The Pacific Northwest has one of the strongest wave climates in the world, and the data clearly show that it’s getting even bigger,” says one of scientists involved

  • Critical infrastructure executives fear China

    Operators of electrical grids, telecommunications networks, and other critical infrastructure say their systems are under constant cyber attack; more than 54 percent of the respondents said their critical systems have already suffered large-scale attacks or stealthy infiltrations

  • Haitian architects, urban planners say the need is to build a better Haiti

    A group of Haitian architects, engineers, and urban planners has met every day since the devastating quake, discussing not how to rebuild the country, but how to start anew; they should start with the country’s building code; one high government official participating in the meetings says dismissively: “There is a two-page building code [in Haiti]… that nobody used”

  • Cities say new FEMA flood maps contain many errors

    In 2004 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) started the $200 million-per-year project as a way to utilize advances in mapping technology better to identify areas susceptible to flooding; FEMA officials say the new maps will allow for better zoning and help prevent future catastrophes like the June 2008 flood in Iowa, which caused an estimated $10 billion in damage; cities, developers, and residents say new FEMA flood plain maps are full of mistakes that could prove costly

  • As more U.S. embassies come under threat, ATG Access’ bollards offer a solution

    ATG Access offers bollards to meet every security level required and has products impact-tested at 30, 40, and 50 mph with vehicles ranging from 7.5 ton up to 18 ton; the company says that the latest addition to the product family is a fixed bollard that will dead-stop a 7.5 ton truck traveling at 50 mph; what is more, the foundation of the company’s bollards is just 150 mm; with a foundation of only 20 cm (8 inches) deep — typical bollard requires 1.5 m (5 feet) — ATG’s shallow mount can be installed on pavements, on top of bridges, or in locations where other ordinary products may be impossible to install

  • Engineers urge overhaul of Haiti's archaic, anarchic building practices

    In Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, building codes, if they even exist, exist on paper only; all governments in Haiti, including the present one, have been corrupt, predatory, and utterly indifferent to the welfare of the people; a recent OAS report detailed a litany of flaws in Haiti’s attitude to buildings: weak or missing reinforcement, structures on steep slopes with unstable foundations, inadequate or nonexistant inspections, poor designs, materials, and techniques; Kit Miyamoto, a California structural engineer who went to Haiti last week: “No code, no engineering, means death”

  • Army engineers: Haiti's bad roads not damaged by quake

    Engineers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say that many of Haiti’s roads are not any worse than they were before because they have always been in poor condition; 80 percent of the major destruction is around the city’s capital; 200 million cubic yards of debris will need to be removed from Port-au-Prince

  • Quake-proofing U.S. buildings

    An Indian civil engineer has invented a sleeved column braces which help buildings withstand earthquakes; the sturdy brace apparatus surrounds a core of high-performance steel, but is spaced from the sides of the core; the sleeve thus absorbs and dissipates energy, but does not buckle under pressure; several large buildings in California, built in the last few years, have adopted the technology

  • U.S. structural engineers begin on-site damage assessments in Haiti

    U.S. engineers are going to Haiti to study the earthquake and its ramifications for structural engineering; the structural engineers emergency response committee (SEER) of the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA) — the SEER consists of volunteer structural engineers trained in the structural engineering aspects of emergency response to earthquakes, hurricanes, and other disasters — is in talks with the U.S. government and the private sector to identify ways in which the structural engineering community can lend its talents, skills and experience