The city of Madison, Wis., sits within a chain of five lakes, each connected to the other in a staggered linear formation via the Yahara River, which winds roughly 42 miles through south central Wisconsin. Lake Mendota, widely viewed by freshwater scientists…
Thoughts From Engineers: Hidden, But Not Harmless: The Unsettling Impacts of Land Subsidence on Urban Centers
The core assumptions that have shaped for decades how we plan, build, develop our cities and even live from day-to-day are losing ground. For example,…
Thoughts from Engineers: FEMA: An Agency Long Linked to Crisis and Risk Prevention
Few U.S. agencies are so regularly at the center of the public’s attention like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It’s an agency…
Thoughts From Engineers: Stormwater Brings Change to the Modern American City
Every age has its infrastructure challenges. The Industrial Revolution, for example, drove scores of people to the largest cities in search of work. Urban areas grew as they never had before, and widespread illness and death resulted from improper sewage disposal…
Thoughts From Engineers: Machine Learning and Gauging Flood Risk
Long before there were “tech kids” by any definition, I was never more content than in the company of the “huge mainframe” computer residing at the local university computing center while still in high school. (I even crafted an elaborate plan…
Thoughts From Engineers: Reusing Captured Stormwater
The residents of ancient Mediterranean cities presumed a state of water scarcity, which meant they valued water and collected it any way they could. The central hallways of homes of the wealthy in the ancient city of Pompeii, for example, often featured a…
Thoughts From Engineers: Coastal Barrier Protection Informs Adaptation Strategies
We’ve closed out 2024 with record-breaking national disasters and, as a country, we’re starting to rethink foundational paradigms and long-established policies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued a new Federal Flood Risk Management…
Thoughts From Engineers: Protecting Source Water Through Watershed Planning
During a road trip through the Catskill Mountains of New York state during the summer, we stopped at one of 19 heavily monitored and secure reservoirs. The Downsville Reservoir is in a heavily wooded area on the East Branch of the Delaware River and drains…
Thoughts From Engineers: Investigating Biodiversity and Resilience
Extreme weather events such as the 2018-2020 drought in central Europe, the 2022 heat wave and drought in the wider European region, and other record-breaking events across the planet are becoming common. The International Panel on Climate Change issued statements…
Thoughts From Engineers: Climate Adaptation Planning through Stress Testing
In this age of climate uncertainty, water systems of different scale and scope—from large dams to riverine ecosystems to reservoirs and other water-supply systems—are increasingly vulnerable to shifting hydroclimatic conditions. The question of how to…
