The Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Utah hosted the second annual National Transportation Summer Institute Camp on July 13 – July 17, 2015. The department hosted 21, incoming, 9th grade students. The camp targeted students who are interested in exploring engineering, specifically transportation engineering, as a career.

As part of the camp, the students worked on creating a video for the American Road & Transportation Builders Association video contest. Students divided into four groups and covered various topics about transportation. Groups focused on defining transportation engineering, explaining how infrastructure is built and paid for, cost of transportation infrastructure, and new innovation and design of traffic systems. Students spent time learning about these topics throughout the week and interviewed each other about what they learned. At the end of the week, each group gave a short presentation on what they learned about their assigned topics.

One of the camp activities included listening to various speakers from Union Pacific, UTA, UDOT, Salt Lake City, and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Students were able to interact with industry professionals and ask questions about the different aspects of transportation engineering.  A favorite activity of the students was driving the simulator in the Civil Engineering Traffic Lab. Students also tested the speed of cars driving around campus with radar guns. The students participated in numerous field trips throughout the week including visits to the TOC at UDOT, several construction sites in the local area, as well as the Front Runner and Light Rail facilities. The week wrapped up with the students testing concrete materials in the lab that they had created earlier in the week.

Overall, the camp was a great success. The participants enjoyed the field trips and learning more about transportation engineering.

Rainwater could save people in India a bucket of money, according to a new study by scientists looking at NASA satellite data.

The study, partially funded by NASA’s Precipitation Measurement Missions, found that collecting rainwater for vegetable irrigation could reduce water bills, increase caloric intake and even provide a second source of income for people in India.

The study, published in the June issue of Urban Water Journal, is based on precipitation data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which provided observations of rainfall over the tropics and subtropics from 1997 to 2015.

“India has severe problems getting potable water to all of its residents,” said Dan Stout, research assistant in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Utah and one of three authors of the study. “We considered collecting water in a relatively small tank, and it’s amazing the effect that doing something that small and simple can have on the Indian people.”

Rainwater harvesting is not a new concept, but the team said it is currently a largely untapped resource in India. Other researchers have studied rainwater harvesting as a potential solution for the country’s water problems, but they mostly focused on its use to replenish groundwater levels, which does not provide any direct benefit for immediate water supply. The water must run off into the ground before being pumped again for use aboveground.

Here, the team examined the possibilities if Indians collected precipitation in cheap 200-gallon tanks that they could easily engineer to fit in densely populated urban areas, such as many of India’s growing cities. The team analyzed satellite data of precipitation in different areas to evaluate the availability of rainwater for direct harvesting—information that would have been nearly impossible to obtain if not for TRMM.

Read the full press release on the NASA website.

Due to global climate change, mismanagement, politics, inadequate technology, rapid population growth, and economic hardships, Pakistan’s water crisis could go from bad to worse.

The Middle Eastern country nestled between Afghanistan and India could become a “water-starved” country in the next six to seven years, according to the country’s minister for water and energy, Khawaja Muhammad Asif. A 2013 report from the Asian Development Bank called Pakistan “one of the most water-stressed countries in the world.”

University of Utah civil and environmental engineers are working to change that.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced that the University of Utah has partnered with the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology in Jamshoro, Pakistan, to create a center to research and develop solutions for water problems plaguing Pakistan.

The USAID-funded Partner Center for Advanced Studies in Water will be headquartered at the U with another office in Mehran University. U Civil & Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Steven Burian will become director of the center, which is receiving $10 million in funding over five years. It has not been determined which U building the center will be housed in, but research from the center has already begun.

“This is the most exciting project that I will likely work on in my career, and it’s because of the fact we are representing the university and the United States,” Burian said. “We have so many people involved from across campus, and engineering is the lead. We are doing things where we will see real impact. It’s going to be incredible.”

The center’s research will focus on topics such as treating and reusing wastewater, desalination, storage and irrigation efficiency, flood control, water quality management, public health protection, climate resiliency, water governance, and community-based solutions. But it also will look at how the country’s social, economic and political factors affect the country’s water resources. Michael Barber, chairman of the U’s civil and environmental engineering department, who also will be working at the center, says research they do to aid Pakistan will also benefit the rest of the world.

“There are all sorts of challenges that will direct our research,” he said. “Desalination is a worldwide problem, and we want to help them develop technologies that might be applicable to anywhere. Yes, it will help Pakistan, but yes, it could help Southern California.”

Meanwhile, the center also will have an educational component. A curriculum in water research will be developed, and there will be student exchange programs between both offices, as well as scholarships and community outreach programs.

“That to me is one of the exciting parts, that our students and our faculty will get to learn about cultural challenges and integrate the economics and societal challenges into a project,” Barber said. “We’ve got to think differently, we have to expand our views.”

While the U’s civil and environmental engineering department will lead the operation of the center, it will involve faculty from many disciplines, including researchers in biology, geology, geophysics, law, political science and public health. In all, 17 University of Utah professors will be involved, including four from civil and environmental engineering.

Read the full press release in the U News Center.

The Civil Engineering Alumni Society held their annual banquet on Tuesday, April 28, 2015 to honor contributing members of the civil and engineering field at the Jewish Community Center, located next to campus. 

The night brought together alumni, friends, graduating seniors and department faculty and staff. During the event, keynote speaker Lane Beattie, President & Chief Executive Officer of Salt Lake Chamber, captured the audience with his outlook on the future of civil engineering, as well as Dean Brown who spoke about the department’s persistent academia growth. 

The night recognized the following people: Distinguished Alumni’s, Carlos M. Braceras, Arthur Parry Brown and Larry Milner; Outstanding Faculty, Steven Burian; Outstanding Mentor, Ramesh Goel; and Student Research, Amir M. Motlagh.

Sponsors for the event included: Energy Solutions, Reaveley Engineers and Associates, Caldwell Richard Sorensen, J-U-B Engineers, Inc., Parsons, Okland Construction, VIA Consulting and Blaine Leonard.

Mark your calendars for Meet an Inventor Night, an annual event held by the U’s College of Engineering in which local high school students are invited to learn about the vast possibilities available through an engineering career. University researchers and alumni will be talking about what it takes to bring an idea to market. Meet an Inventor Night will be held Thursday, April 23 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the University of Utah’s Warnock Engineering Building, 72 S. Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City. Students can register for the free event at www.coe.utah.edu/k12_events.

Dr. Daniel Fagnant explains why self-driving cars will help ease traffic patterns in a recent article, 5 reasons self-driving taxis are going to be amazing, from www.vox.com.

“In recent years, lots and lots of pundits — including me — have speculated about how self-driving cars will change American cities. But almost all the talk has been just that — speculation. Because we can’t collect data on the social effects of a technology that isn’t available yet.

But a recent study does the next best thing: it starts with detailed data about today’s traffic patterns, and then uses a computer simulation to predict what would happen if drivers switched to taking rides in self-driving taxis. The research, by University of Texas at Austin professor Kara Kockelman and the University of Utah’s Daniel Fagnant, provides unprecedented insight into how self-driving vehicles will change the urban landscape.”

Read the full article here.

The Utah Chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) awarded its 2014 Educator of the Year to Professor Richard J. Porter at the ITE Utah Chapter Annual Conference on January 22nd.

The event was held at the Rice Eccles Stadium. There were over 200 transportation professionals from public agencies, consultants, academia, students, and vendors.

This year the CE Academy Banquet will be held on Tuesday, April 28th at the Jewish Community Center in Salt Lake City. There will be a social hour from 5:30- 6:30 pm, dinner at 6:30 pm and a presentation starting at 7:00 pm. This banquet will feature keynote speaker, Lane Beattie, who is the president and chief executive officer of the Salt Lake Chamber. Lane is a former state senator and was the President of the Senate during his last term. He is an advocate for state funding for water and transportation infrastructure, an important topic for all engineers. The awards banquet will honor the CE distinguished alumni. The banquet will also celebrate the 2015 graduates and honor the top professors and student research within the Department. Please click here to reserve your ticket or to sponsor the event. For more information visit the CE Academy page.

University of Utah civil and environmental engineering student Jeffrey Taylor has devoted four years of research for his master’s thesis on determining how motorists react on the nation’s roads, and he hopes one day he can help reduce the number of crashes by better predicting how drivers react.

His thesis, a methodology for estimating how drivers react to the motorists in front of them, was honored Jan. 10 with this year’s Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award at the annual Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) awards banquet in Washington D.C. Each year, CUTC National Student Awards are given out to four graduate students — two for their master’s theses and two for Ph.D. dissertations — for their accomplishments in transportation research and education. Taylor received a $1,500 award along with a plaque.

“It feels nice to be recognized for the hard work that went into it and acknowledging the support that I received from everyone in the university’s [civil and environmental engineering] program,” said Taylor, referencing his faculty advisors, U civil and environmental engineering professors R.J. Porter and Xuesong Zhou.