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Water Wise Landscape Practices: A Case Study For The City Of Gering, Christina E. Land

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

This professional project is founded on my education, experiences, and networks. I have had the opportunity to use what I have learned thus far and be challenged to look at public planning from a different perspective. In partnership with the City of Gering I was able to get knee deep in the facility planning of the city owned property which is home to the Community Ever Green House. The project reviews how the property is integrated into the community and the impact it has. Then, identifies opportunities to improve overall functionality with a closer look at addressing hazard mitigation using …

Terra Dispositions: A Lithospheric Investigation Of Wet-Matter, Alec Rovensky

Architecture Senior Theses

Human intervention of the landscape by damming, filling wetlands and over-extracting is resulting in the rapid perversion of water bodies through the desertification or flooding of terrain and the ensuing contamination of reservoirs. In turn, these changes are disrupting ecosystems, reshaping geological borders, and causing irreversible damage that poses a threat to clean water supplies. As humans exert agency over local hydrology, there is scarce consideration of the ensuing ecological consequences. This thesis aims to expose the ecological transformations of territories laced with human agency by examining the residues left by water in order to deviate from the misplaced nostalgia …

Shower Atomization, Chirag Ayappa Ravishankar,

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The research will help to design a shower for Dr. Chelson’s shelter, which can control the water flow, pressure and duration of the shower, which optimizes the utilization of water. The showers could be used in drought-hit areas where water is very scarce, as daily sanitation needs are necessary to keep a person safe and healthy without wasting water. The report from, World Health Organization shows that showers consume the most water. A timed shower could help resolve this issue through eliminating the wastage. Eco-friendly environmentalists may also be attracted to the showers, as their main purposes are to save …

Reconnect: Amplifying Circulation Typologies To Radically Rethink Urban-Aqueous Relationships, Tiffany Pau

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a radical rethinking of city-water relationships to leverage existing infrastructural and architectural divides; because it holds great architectural and social value to work within and challenge existing systems, and because access to the waterfront– for sustenance, transportation, commercial, or leisure purposes– is a core human need. The project questions what happens when connections are scaled extra-large, yet aim to maintain the qualities that are imbued within them at the micro scale to generate increased public activity at the water’s edge. It looks to create a new type of urbanism, one that prioritizes the very act of circulation …

The Self Sufficient Pod, Brenna Merola

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis presents a typology of temporary relief housing that will be self sustaining and will better address the procedure and process of housing individuals affected by disasters. The proposed pod will be adaptable in order to fit the needs of different types of environmental conditions, while still encompassing the architectural necessities of light, heat, and energy.

Super Levee Breached: A New Infrastructure For Magangué, Nikole Cabrera

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis is an experiment meant to re-imagine fluvial edges as thickened places of habitation. These interventions must exist on land, on the edge, and in the water, acting as a system of infrastructure to spread excess water out, absorb it, and capture it to release it later when necessary. In order to reconcile the relationship between the built and natural environment, the proposed solution requires the integration of water into the overall design. The outcome is a community that can better withstand flooding, recover quickly, and continue on with their daily lives while maintaining their respectable livelihoods.

Borderline- Part 5, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Borderline- Part 2, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Borderline- Part 1, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

A large transitional body of water shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea was once the fourth largest inland Sea on Earth, dried due to Soviet Irrigation practices.

Nine years ago, with the support of the World Bank, the Kazakh government finished the construction of a 14km dyke to raise the level of the sea in the North, restoring its ecology as a massive constructed landscape.

Since then, the water level, and therefore regional ecology, is regulated by a 50m concrete spillway.

As a currently inexistant interface between tourism and fishing industries on site, this project investigated the capacity …

Borderline- Part 4, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Issue Brief: Auditing Your Town's Development Code For Barriers To Sustainable Water Management, New England Environmental Finance Center

Sustainable Communities Capacity Building

This issue brief is intended for town officials who want to understand how development regulations in their community affect local water resources. Municipal development codes – the set of regulations that control the built environment – can have a great influence on the availability of clean and healthy water for drinking, recreation, and commercial uses. This in turn affects the community’s social, environmental, and economic vitality.

Comprehensive plans, zoning codes, and building standards are just a few examples of regulations that intentionally or unintentionally regulate the way water is transported, collected and absorbed. Regulations that produce dispersed development or large …

Sourcing Scarcity, Muneerah Alrabe

Architecture Senior Theses

Water is an essential element to human development and urban vitality. As a response to future oil depletion in cities, a new appearance of water emerges in cities: Hydro-urbanism. Through rethinking the potential of water infrastructure in cities, HydroUrbanism situates itself as a spectacular functional event that aims to collect, purify, store, and generate energy within a city. The project reconsiders the production process of water on the periphery of the city and hypothesizes for an integrated process of the production of water to work within the city at an urban scale. Exposing the water infrastructure, fantasizing water, and re-connecting …

Revitalizing Waterfront: The Sinking City, Clifford Shih

Architecture Senior Theses

The existing waterfront condition presents a separation between the water and urban. I propose this separation between the water and urban is an interacted space of urban and water. Waterfront constructed in this way protects the city from floating, yet a solution of creating a public space, ports, and water filtration facility will blend the separated condition. Thus, architecture exemplifies a vehicle to constitute physical and visual connection for dichotomy edge created by the waterfront in a rapid stratified urbanization and industrialization.

Borderline- Part 3, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Drinking Water Resource Directory, New England Environmental Finance Center

Sustainable Communities Capacity Building

This document is intended to help local and regional planning agencies, and their constituent water utilities, integrate drinking water infrastructure planning and investments into plans for sustainable development. Resources listed here provide guidance on making land use decisions that protect water resources, setting adequate and sustainable drinking water rates, controlling water loss, funding water infrastructure projects, and managing water utilities.

The directory was developed by the Environmental Finance Center Network through the Capacity Building for Sustainable Communities program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency. Through this program, EFCN is providing capacity …

Sustainable Water Management On Brownfields Sites, Ryan Fenwick, New England Environmental Finance Center

Sustainable Communities Capacity Building

This practice guide was developed by the Environmental Finance Center Network (EFCN) through the Capacity Building for Sustainable Communities program funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Through a cooperative agreement with HUD, EFCN is providing capacity building and technical assistance to recipients of grants from the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an interagency collaboration that aims to help towns, cities, and regions develop in more economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable ways.

Sourcing Scarcity, Muneerah Alrabe

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Water is an essential element to human development and urban vitality. As a response to future oil depletion in cities, a new appearance of water emerges in cities: Hydro-urbanism. Through rethinking the potential of water infrastructure in cities, HydroUrbanism situates itself as a spectacular functional event that aims to collect, purify, store, and generate energy within a city. The project reconsiders the production process of water on the periphery of the city and hypothesizes for an integrated process of the production of water to work within the city at an urban scale. Exposing the water infrastructure, fantasizing water, and re-connecting …

Assessing Impermeable Surface Area Impacts On Modeling: Implications For The Combined Sewer Overflow Long Term Control Plan In Omaha, Nebraska, Andrew D. Szatko

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

The report looks at assessing the accuracy of estimating impervious surface areas (ISAs) by zoning code, the method utilized by the City of Omaha, Nebraska. A 101 acre subcatchment had all ISAs manually digitized and compared the actual with the estimated value. The subcatchment was then modeled with 10 percent decreases of ISAs to establish the relationship with peak flow rates and total volume in the combined sewer service area. The results show a significant relationship between the two that may provide insights into a new approach to manage CSO events with the integration of green infrastructure.

Resurfacing Infrastructure, Ewelina Peszt

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Fire Island, Kristi Anderson

Architecture Thesis Prep

The intention of this thesis is to integrate a contemporary building type into a historical urban context. To show that contemporary construction can be sensitive can reinforce/clarify the existing architectural conditions. The intent is to create a firehouse that acknowledges and celebrates its place as a public building. By creating a unique building in the city this thesis hopes to clarify the role of the public building in the contemporary city structure without denying the historical roots from which it grew.

Federal Water Pollution Control Act Section "404" Evaluation For Dickey-Lincoln School Lakes, New England Division, United States Army Engineer Division, United States Army Corps Of Engineers

Dickey-Lincoln School Lakes Project

The purpose of this report is to relate various aspects of the proposed Dickey-Lincoln School Lakes Hydroelectric Project to appropriate considerations defined by Section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972.