• Developing Digital Twin for Electricity Grid to Ease Transition to Renewables

    The rapid transition to renewable energy threatens to cause major problems to the very expensive electricity grid in the Netherlands. Researchers are now working on a “digital twin” to make it possible to study the grid effectively.

  • Greenland’s Ice Loss “Faster Than Expected”

    Greenland is losing ice faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s high-end climate scenario. As a result, 40 million more people will be exposed to coastal flooding by 2100.

  • Protecting Bridge During Catastrophic Earthquakes

    More than one million people have died in the 1,800 magnitude 5+ earthquakes recorded worldwide since 2000. Bridges are the most vulnerable parts of a transport network when earthquakes occur, obstructing emergency response, search and rescue missions and aid delivery, increasing potential fatalities.

  • Formula 1 Technology Helps in the Construction of Skyscrapers

    Researchers are drawing on Formula 1 technology for the construction of “needle-like” skyscrapers. The researchers are developing new vibration-control devices based on Formula 1 technology so “needle-like” high-rise skyscrapers which still withstand high winds can be built.

  • The Drums of Cyberwar

    A recent study found that if hackers were to take down the electric grid in just fifteen states and Washington, D.C., 93 million people would be without power, quickly leading to a “rise in mortality rates as health and safety systems fail; a decline in trade as ports shut down; disruption to water supplies as electric pumps fail and chaos to transport networks as infrastructure collapses.” The cost to the economy, the study reported, would be astronomical: anywhere from $243 billion to $1 trillion. “Sabotaging critical infrastructure may not be as great an existential threat as climate change or nuclear war, but it has imperiled entire populations already and remains a persistent probability,” Sue Halperin writes.

  • Invasive Grasses Are Fueling Wildfires Across the U.S.

    People alter fire regime patterns by adding ignition sources, such as campfires or sparking power lines; suppressing fires when they develop; and introducing nonnative invasive plants. My research suggests that nonnative invasive grasses may be fueling wildfires across the United States. Some fires are occurring in areas that rarely burn, like the Sonoran Desert and the semiarid shrublands of the Great Basin, which covers most of Nevada and parts of five surrounding states. In the coming months, some of the grasses that help feed these blazes will germinate, producing tinder for future fires.

  • Bolstering Florida’s Flood Resilience

    Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science have received a $1,688,955 grant from the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) for a pilot project to create a framework for their Watershed Planning Initiative. In 2017, Florida had 1.7 million flood insurance policies included in the Presidential Emergency Declaration. This is roughly 35 percent of all National Flood Insurance Program policies across the country and serves as an indicator of the impact of Hurricane Irma on the National Flood Insurance Program.

  • Bolstering Florida’s Flood Resilience

    Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science have received a $1,688,955 grant from the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) for a pilot project to create a framework for their Watershed Planning Initiative. In 2017, Florida had 1.7 million flood insurance policies included in the Presidential Emergency Declaration. This is roughly 35 percent of all National Flood Insurance Program policies across the country and serves as an indicator of the impact of Hurricane Irma on the National Flood Insurance Program.

  • Grid Reliability under Climate Change

    Researchers are using a new modeling approach for infrastructure planning of a long-term electricity grid that considers future climate and water resource conditions.  Those conditions include reduced hydropower production as well as reduced availability of cooling water due to reduced streamflow and increased streamflow temperature.

  • Device Helps Building “Negotiate” with Power Grid during Peak Demand

    Like its name suggests, Intelligent Load Control (ILC) technology is a smart tool for automatically managing electricity loads in buildings, particularly at times when the power grid needs help with meeting broader demand.

  • How Much Energy Does Humanity Really Need?

    Two fundamental goals of humanity are to eradicate poverty and reduce climate change, and it is critical that the world knows whether achieving these goals will involve trade-offs. New research for the first time provides a basis to answer this question, including the tools needed to relate basic needs directly to resource use.

  • Crisis Architecture: Building to Defend against Active Aggressors

    A study of mass shootings in the United States shows that a consistent feature of these attacks is that they are over quickly. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Tadd Lahnert write that “The average time between an attacker entering a structure and the end of the shooting was a mere 9 minutes and 48 seconds.” They call for the adoption of an architectural paradigm they call crisis architecture – “The focus of this paradigm is designing the built environment in a way that increases the likelihood that individuals will survive an active aggressor incident,” they write.

  • The Sea Wanted to Take This California Lighthouse. Now, It’s Part of a Conflict Between a Town and Two Tribes

    For decades, the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse stood like atop the coastal bluff overlooking the rocky outcrops of Trinidad Bay in northern California. But then, climate change began to take its toll: “the ground began to crumble. Rain moved the earth. The bluff cracked, a sidewalk warped, and thus ended the charmed life of the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse, which suddenly threatened to slide into the Pacific,” Hailey Branson-Potts writes.

  • Port Neches Plant Rocked by Multiple Explosions, Was Declared High Priority Violator by EPA

    The Southeast Texas chemical manufacturing plant, owned by Houston-based Texas Petroleum Chemical Group, has a long history of environmental violations and been out of compliance with federal clean air laws for years.

  • Newly Proposed Barrier Could Have Limited Radiation Release at Chernobyl, Fukushima

    Following the most serious nuclear accidents in the history — at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), in which release of radiation occurred as a result of core meltdown — many countries around the world have committed to phase out nuclear power. Afuture powered by nuclear energy, however, may be neither a lost cause nor a game of “Russian roulette,” according to researchers.