What Does Diggs Do For Me? Better, Faster, Cheaper Is the Goal!
For the past decade, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been at the forefront of advancing geotechnical data management associated with its investment and leadership related to DIGGS (Data...
Seeing into the Subsurface: Harnessing Geophysics to Remotely Monitor the Condition of Earthworks
Condition assessment of geotechnical structures is essential for cost-effective maintenance and prevention of hazardous failure events. Early identification of deteriorating conditions generally allows...
Correction to "Highway Embankment Failure on Soft Clay — Bad Input = Bad Output"
Advanced Data Analytics in Geotechnics
Embankment, Dams, and Slopes (EDS) Technical Committee Performs Reconnaissance on Dam Failures
Ethics is the Linchpin for Avoiding Failure
What Lies Ahead?
How will trends in climate change, alternative energy, high-tech construction, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and public funding affect communities, infrastructure, and the practice of civil engineering...
From Fame to Failure: The St. Francis Dam (Part 1)
One of the most devastating engineering disasters in American history, the 1928 St. Francis Dam failure has had a lasting impact on the profession of civil engineering....
From Fame to Failure: The St. Francis Dam (Part 2)
In the July/August issue, History Lesson examined the construction of California's St. Francis Dam and its catastrophic failure in 1928. This month's instalment examines the causes and aftermath of the...
The Transcona Grain Elevator Failure Revisited: A Modern Perspective a Century Later
More than a century ago, a seminal event in the then world of foundation engineering took place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, when the mat-foundation-supported Transcona Grain Elevator underwent catastrophic...
The New Paradigm Of Post-Disaster Reconnaissance: Using Virtual Methods to Enhance Systematic In-Field Data Collection
Virtual reconnaissance is the act of gathering information after an extreme event through virtual means. This information could be data on damaged regions, cultural data for an impacted region, and previous...
Innovation and Ideas against the Failure of Imagination
Failures Inspire Progress: Protecting Sensitive Buildings from Tunnelling
Tunnelling in urban areas is always a challenge, and it’s especially so when construction is proximate to densely populated districts. Such was the case on January 25, 2005, when a 10-m length of a Barcelona...
Multidisciplinary Course Addresses Tomorrow’s Smart Cities
Sean Qian, Ph.D., M.ASCE, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, teaches a multidisciplinary course that focuses on...
Helicopter-Based Geophysical Reconnaissance of Levees: A Faster, Cost-Effective Tool for Assessing Their Risk
As with much of the nation's infrastructure, people are becoming more and more aware of the condition of levee systems in the United States. The media cast a spotlight on the New Orleans levee failures...
Compliance with the Standard of Care: Hurricane Katrina Canal Breaches in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward
Hurricane Katrina Canal Breaches in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward. On August 29, 2005, more than 50 levees and flood walls failed to protect New Orleans, LA, during Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating...
Forensic Investigations Get to the Facts: East Side IHNC Flood Wall Breaches during Hurricane Katrina
East Side IHNC Flood Wall Breaches during Hurricane Katrina. I served as a geotechnical expert for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) supporting the defense of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)...
ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
The journal will meet the needs of the researchers and engineers to address risk, disaster and failure-related challenges due to many sources and types of uncertainty in planning, design, analysis, construction,...
What's New in Geo? The Future of Numerical Geo-Modeling: Is 3D Here to Stay?!
Application of soil mechanics in engineering practice has undergone remarkable changes over the past 50 years as a result of developments in computer technology. Each improvement in computing capability,...
Design of Submarine Pipelines Against Upheaval Buckling
This paper describes part of a comprehensive joint-industry project on upheaval buckling. It develops a semi-empirical simplified design method and detailed design methods based on a new numerical analysis,...
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