Last summer I had the pleasure of attending an I3P (Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection) meeting in Berkeley, California. I wrote about my travel experiences on this blog.
During my travels back to the San Francisco airport (with some detours on the shuttle since we picked up commuters) I also had the experience of going over the Bay Bridge and to see the replacement bridge under construction, which is scheduled for completion in 2013. At that point, the existing eastern span bridge will be torn down.
Bridges have always fascinated me for their design and as critical links in joining communities and regions. It also helps that my favorite uncle has educated me over the years about bridges, since he worked for decades as a bridge designer in NYC and has received numerous awards for his engineering work.
The New York Times has a very interesting article, "A Bridge Built to Sway When the Earth Shakes," written by Henry Fountain, which states that designing the replacement bridge so that it stays intact in an earthquake has always been the engineers' chief goal. Remember the earthquake of 1906 that destroyed much of San Francisco as well as the earthquake of 1989 that partly severed the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.
According to the article there is a 2 in 3 chance that an earthquake of a magnitude of 6.7 or higher will hit the San Francisco area before 2036 and this new bridge was designed to be able to handle the largest movements of the earth expected to occur in 1,500 years!
What also very much impressed me and this I am sharing with my students in the Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare course that I am teaching is that the bridge, even after a major earthquake / disaster is expected to be serviceable and the damage reparable. Moreover, according to the article (note the foresight in terms of emergency preparedness and response):
Emergency vehicles and personnel, at the least, should be able to use the new bridge within hours of a major earthquake, after crews inspect the structure and make temporary fixes.... Given that the Bay Area's two major airports would be expected to be out of service after such a disaster, this bridge and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, another seismically secure span about 20 miles to the northeast, would be "lifeline" structures to bring assistance to the stricken region from an Air Force base inland.
We have developed metrics to identify critical nodes and links in transportation and other infrastructure networks and also how to assess performance of critical needs supply chains subject to disruptions, as one would expect to occur in a natural disaster, for example. The latter work is reported in a paper, "A Bi-Criteria Indicator to Assess Supply Chain Network Performance for Critical Needs Under Capacity and Demand Disruptions ," Qiang Qiang and Anna Nagurney, to appear in Transportation Research A: Special Issue on Network Vulnerability in Large-Scale Transport Networks.
It is very good to see that California understands the importance of the replacement bridge for the San Francisco Bay.
And if you are wondering where the steel for this bridge (it's actually the eastern span) is coming from -- it is coming from China and is being transported 6,500 miles to Oakland!
According to an article that appeared last summer in The New York Times: The assembly work in California, and the pouring of the concrete road surface, will be done by Americans. But construction of the bridge decks and the materials that went into them are a Made in China affair. California officials say the state saved hundreds of millions of dollars by turning to China.
This is really "the ultimate in outsourcing."
Showing posts with label Bridge Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bridge Design. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Forensic Engineering and Learning from Disasters
I have just about finished reading Henry Petroski's book, "The Essential Engineer," which was published in 2010. It is filled with excellent ideas about why engineering is different from science and how science and engineering and their practitioners and innovators must work together to address the grand challenges today from renewable energy to reducing vulnerability and even to securing cyberspace.
Henry Petroski is a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University.
Coincidentally, in today's New York Times, there is an article by William Broad, "Taking Lessons from What Went Wrong," which begins with the eye-catching sentence: Disasters teach more than successes, with the overall thesis that disasters can spur innovation. The article includes an interview with Petroski and a graphic photo of the BP oil rig disaster.
Technological feats that define the modern world are sometimes the result of events that some might wish to forget, from the collapse of the Tacoma-Narrows bridge in 1940 due to winds (with no lives lost), to the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge in 2007 (with 13 lives lost), to the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage (with over 1,500 deaths, some due to hypothermia), and even the World Trade Center disaster (with approximately 3,000 deaths). Now we are all reeling from the BP oil rig disaster with ups and downs on almost a daily basis as to progress or lack thereof regarding the spill containment and the propagation of the massive effects on the environment and affected economic sectors and regions.
Interestingly, Petroski uses as vivid examples in both of his two books noted above the challenges of engineering design in the context of bridge design. He considers bridge designers as very creative individuals who develop mental constructs of a bridge, combined with aesthetics, and then design mathematically the functional structure, which, I might add, should last for many years and support the weight of numerous vehicles.
My uncle, Stanley Jarosz, is an award-winning bridge designer, who, although he is almost 92 years old, still works several days a week at an engineering firm. He is one of my greatest inspirations and an exceptional role model and gentleman (who, I might add, is also a big opera aficionado).
I had the pleasure recently of seeing my uncle and my terrific cousin, Andrew (who, I might add, is a fellow Brown University grad), in NYC. I discussed Petroski's "The Essential Engineer" with my uncle and noted Petroski's almost mystic adulation of bridge designers.
Solving the grand challenges faced by our civilization will require the cooperation and the working together of our best, creative minds, as well as capturing, in a quantifiable and rigorous manner, the risk associated with the resulting innovations.
Henry Petroski is a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University.
Coincidentally, in today's New York Times, there is an article by William Broad, "Taking Lessons from What Went Wrong," which begins with the eye-catching sentence: Disasters teach more than successes, with the overall thesis that disasters can spur innovation. The article includes an interview with Petroski and a graphic photo of the BP oil rig disaster.
Technological feats that define the modern world are sometimes the result of events that some might wish to forget, from the collapse of the Tacoma-Narrows bridge in 1940 due to winds (with no lives lost), to the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge in 2007 (with 13 lives lost), to the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage (with over 1,500 deaths, some due to hypothermia), and even the World Trade Center disaster (with approximately 3,000 deaths). Now we are all reeling from the BP oil rig disaster with ups and downs on almost a daily basis as to progress or lack thereof regarding the spill containment and the propagation of the massive effects on the environment and affected economic sectors and regions.
According to Petroski, disasters are “ a great source of knowledge — and humbling, too — sometimes that’s necessary.” He is also the author of “Success Through Failure,” a 2006 book. “Nobody wants failures. But you also don’t want to let a good crisis go to waste.”
I had written earlier on this blog about forensic accounting and we had even hosted Dr. Brian Levine who spoke on his research on the forensic investigation of the Internet and mobile devices.
Interestingly, Petroski uses as vivid examples in both of his two books noted above the challenges of engineering design in the context of bridge design. He considers bridge designers as very creative individuals who develop mental constructs of a bridge, combined with aesthetics, and then design mathematically the functional structure, which, I might add, should last for many years and support the weight of numerous vehicles.
My uncle, Stanley Jarosz, is an award-winning bridge designer, who, although he is almost 92 years old, still works several days a week at an engineering firm. He is one of my greatest inspirations and an exceptional role model and gentleman (who, I might add, is also a big opera aficionado).
I had the pleasure recently of seeing my uncle and my terrific cousin, Andrew (who, I might add, is a fellow Brown University grad), in NYC. I discussed Petroski's "The Essential Engineer" with my uncle and noted Petroski's almost mystic adulation of bridge designers.
Solving the grand challenges faced by our civilization will require the cooperation and the working together of our best, creative minds, as well as capturing, in a quantifiable and rigorous manner, the risk associated with the resulting innovations.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
MacArthur Fellows, Designing Bridges, and an Uncle who Turns 90 Today
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced the 2009 Fellows, each of whom will receive $100,000 a year for the next 5 years to pursue their work without any strings attached. The information on the awardees, which includes 4 recipients from Massachusetts, can be found on the MacArthur Foundation website. There are scientists, an engineer, an applied mathematician, an economist, lawyers, and creative artists and writers on the list. The recipients range in age from 32 to 69.
Theodore Zoli, who received his BS degree in Civil Engineering and Operations Research (one of my major areas of expertise) from Princeton University, is among the twenty-four 2009 MacArthur Fellows. He designs bridges to withstand disasters, a topic dear to my heart, since infrastructure planning and its resilience is one of my research areas. Plus, my uncle, Stanley Jarosz, who turns 90 years old today, still works in Manhattan as a bridge designer and has garnered numerous awards for his bridge designs, including the Roebling Award in 2001.
L. Mahadevan, a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Harvard, and another 2009 MacArthur Fellow, who applies mathematics to problems ranging from the wrinkling of skin to tightrope walking said it well in today's Boston Globe when discussing his research interests: In the end ... it is driven by what drives all of us -- curiosity.
Congratulations to all the 2009 Fellows and Happy 90th Birthday to my amazing uncle!
Theodore Zoli, who received his BS degree in Civil Engineering and Operations Research (one of my major areas of expertise) from Princeton University, is among the twenty-four 2009 MacArthur Fellows. He designs bridges to withstand disasters, a topic dear to my heart, since infrastructure planning and its resilience is one of my research areas. Plus, my uncle, Stanley Jarosz, who turns 90 years old today, still works in Manhattan as a bridge designer and has garnered numerous awards for his bridge designs, including the Roebling Award in 2001.
L. Mahadevan, a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Harvard, and another 2009 MacArthur Fellow, who applies mathematics to problems ranging from the wrinkling of skin to tightrope walking said it well in today's Boston Globe when discussing his research interests: In the end ... it is driven by what drives all of us -- curiosity.
Congratulations to all the 2009 Fellows and Happy 90th Birthday to my amazing uncle!
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