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The Bridge Newsletter Spring 2013, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

The Bridge Newsletter

-Bringing unique research capabilities to campus
-From trash into treasure
-Improving wellness
-Raising the roof

Community And Household Management Strategies For Water Supply And Treatment In Rural And Peri-Urban Areas In The Developing World, Ryan William Schweitzer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Eighty percent of the 780 million people worldwide that access water from an unimproved source live in rural areas. In rural areas, water systems are often managed by community based organizations and many of these systems do not provide service at the designed levels. The Sustainability Analysis Tool developed in Chapter 2 can inform decision making, characterize specific needs of rural communities in the management of their water systems, and identify weaknesses in training regimes or support mechanisms. The framework was tested on 61 statistically representative geographically stratified sample communities with rural water systems in the Dominican Republic. The results …

Exploring Travel And Activity Behavior In Transit-Oriented Developments: Insights Into Transportation Benefits And Travel Demand Modelling, Sanghoon Son

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

As a sustainable urban development and transportation planning strategy, researchers and planners are increasingly interested in transit-oriented development (TOD). By integrating transit system and neighborhood design, TOD aims to provide a livable environment that is alternative mode friendly, higher density, and mixed-use to residents and workers in the vicinity of transit stations. Despite the recent growing interest in TOE), however, transportation benefits of TOD are not well quantified and characteristics of TOD are not adequately reflected in travel demand models.

This dissertation contributes to understanding of the travel and activity behavior by comprehensively exploring them in the context of TOD. …

The Bridge Newsletter Winter 2012, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

The Bridge Newsletter

-Creating bridge beams that will last 100 years
-Great school, great price
-Recruiting technical minds
-Combatting obesity, diabetes

3d Digital Modeling For Urban Design + Planning, Emmanuel Velazco

City and Regional Planning

Cities throughout the country face a number of challenges in dealing with the changing development needs of the 21st century. In urban planning, the fusion of social, environmental, political, economic, and functional considerations are required. Today, local, state, and federal governments are experiencing an economic downturn, making resources scarce to plan for smarter development, attain greater public interest, and economic revival.

The primary objective of this project is to provide innovative solutions in city and regional planning using software applications, such as Google SketchUp, that enable assessment of various urban design projects. A second objective was to create a 3D …

Geospatial Assessment Of Sustainable Built Infrastructure Assets And Flood Disaster Protection, Alper Durmus

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research was initiated with a review and synthesis of infrastructure related to city and urban growth, built infrastructure to meet transportation needs and travel demand, and role of mass transit in reducing adverse impacts on the environment and greenhouse gas emissions. Floods are the most frequently occurring natural disaster in the world, which so far claimed millions of lives and resulted in billion-dollar economic costs. Built infrastructure assets in urban and rural areas are not spared from floods' aftermath. A major motivation for this thesis was the 2011 megaflood disaster of Thailand which devastated the green campus of Asian …

Adapting To Climate Change While Planning For Disaster: Footholds, Rope Lines, And The Iowa Floods, Robert R.M. Verchick, Abby Hall

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Sustainability Considerations During Planning And Design: A Framework Of Processes For Construction Projects, Rodolfo Valdes Vasquez

All Dissertations

With increased awareness of issues such as global resource shortages and climate change, sustainability efforts are becoming more common in the construction industry. While these efforts often consider economic and environmental factors, a truly sustainable construction project also needs to include such social considerations as its impact on the surrounding community and the safety, health, and education of the workforce. For the construction industry, social sustainability requires integrating processes for improving safety, health and well-being over the project life cycle. However, an empirical and comprehensive framework defining these social sustainability processes in construction projects has yet to be clearly delineated. …

Unlv Stars Unabridged Report, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Reports (USI)

University of Nevada, Las Vegas, by earning a 2011 Silver Rating in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Ratings System (STARS), is ahead of the curve among public universities – and improving.

STARS is a voluntary, self–reporting framework developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) to help measure sustainability performance over time and among colleges and universities nationwide. The UNLV Sustainability Council oversaw STARS, which by measuring sustainability can help UNLV to reduce energy consumption and waste, improve education, attract research, and generate jobs.

A rating of Silver puts UNLV in great company – with …

Hospital Vozandes Del Oriente Wastewater Treatment System Design, James Dykstra, Rachel Koopman, Ben Vander Plas, Sungmin Youn

All Engineering Faculty Research

Shell is a town located in the Eastern foothills of the Ecuadorian Andes approximately 94 miles Southeast of Quito. Hospital Vozandes del Oriente (HVO) is a hospital located in Shell owned and operated by Hoy Cristo Jesús Bendice (HCJB) Global. HCJB is a non-profit mission organization committed to Biblical values and community development principles.

Pure Pastaza, a senior design team from Calvin College, in conjunction with HCJB, has designed a wastewater treatment system for HVO. The design promotes the protection of human and environmental health by providing a sustainable solution to wastewater treatment and sets an example of stewardship to …

Addressing Water Quality Issues In Rural Cameroon With Household Biosand Filters, Laine Klopfensten, Laura Petrasky, Valerie Winton, Jeff Brown

Publications

This paper describes an ongoing collaboration between the Hope College student chapter of Engineers Without Borders – USA and the rural community of Nkuv in the Northwest Province of Cameroon related to improving drinking water quality using Manz biosand filters. The collaboration began in 2006 and focused on developing a community-based construction and distribution model for household water treatment units. Results from microbiology testing of the constructed filters indicate that this water treatment method is effective for improving water quality in rural areas. The results also highlight the need for ongoing assessment and adapting community education programs to provide necessary …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2010, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

The senior design competition helps to focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 3, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

This report is the third in a series of efforts by students at the Muskie School of Public Service, Community Planning and Development Master’s program, in a core class called “Sustainable Communities.” In this course students seek to understand principles of sustainability and how efforts to implement Sustainability programs can become more successful. The report assembles term papers students completed on particular efforts by municipalities, universities, and other groups to achieve sustainability goals. Students worked on each project in a service learning format with real world clients. They were asked to fashion their papers around lessons learned by other organizations …

Mercury In The Environment: Field Studies From Tampa, Bolivia, And Guyana, Joniqua A'Ja Howard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tampa (US), Guyana (SA), and Bolivia (SA), are geographically, socially, economically, and politically unique which make them ideal sites to study issues of mercury and sustainability. Mercury’s innate ability to bioaccumulate and biomagnify in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems poses a severe threat to both human and environmental health. The most vulnerable populations affected by mercury consumption include coastal communities, children, women of child-bearing age, the indigenous poor and persons with high environmental/occupational exposure factors. Communities in the regions of Florida, Bolivia, and Guyana whose diets are high in fish and are environmentally/occupationally exposed to mercury may be at a higher …

Agenda: World Energy Justice Conference And Appropriate Technology Arcade, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center For Energy & Environmental Security, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law

World Energy Justice Conference (October 23-24)

The 2009 CEES Energy Justice Conference took place at the University of Colorado Law School on October 23rd and 24th, 2009. It featured 11 sessions, more than 40 speakers, and attracted over 200 attendees. The Conference brought together leading international and U.S. decision-makers in politics, engineering, public health, law, business, economics, and innovators in the sciences to explore how best to address the critical needs of the energy-oppressed poor (EOP) through long-term interdisciplinary action, information sharing, and deployment of appropriate sustainable energy technologies (ASETs).

The Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy (CJIELP) at the University of Colorado Law …

Hydraulic Modeling To Inform Stream Maintenance Practices In South Carolina, Kelly Owens

All Theses

The Crabtree Canal located in Horry County, SC is the main conveyor of stormwater in a watershed that has undergone considerable urbanization in the last few decades. Evidence of bank instability and inchannel erosion is widely seen in the Crabtree Canal system. Principal sediment inputs are landscape sources and in-channel sources. A study was initiated to provide a working management tool to determine hydrodynamic conditions on the watershed driven by a hypothetical storm event and alternative channel configurations. The management tool comprised of a one-dimensional HEC-RAS model of the Crabtree Canal and was developed to aid the Horry County stormwater …

South Burlington Vt: New Urbanist South Village, Jack Kartez, Richard Barringer

Planning

The 220 acre master plan for South Village, the largest project in the City of South Burlington’s history, encompasses multiple housing types and innovative provisions for affordable housing. It integrates housing with open space and natural resource conservation, including a major Community Supported Agriculture project developed by a nonprofit partner, the Intervale Foundation. While not a mixed-use project (that is, commercial as well as residential development), South Village nonetheless represents a qualitative change in approach for South Burlington by incorporating large-scale open space preservation as part of development and multiple housing-types in one project. The case study recounts events leading …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2009, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

The senior design competition helps to focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 2, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

The Portland Municipal Climate Change Working Group prepared a report in March 2008 that outlined several recommendations as a commitment by the City to address greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) produced during daily municipal operations. The Municipal Climate Action Plan was written in partnership with Clean Air – Cool Planet and Portland officials, and acknowledges under Recommendation #2 that an employee energy efficiency program would provide significant positive impact on the City’s reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Best practices from three cities show that focus on the greening of City Hall is critical in developing a program that promotes partnerships, community …

Development Of A Green Roof Environmental Monitoring And Meteorological Network In New York City, Stuart R. Gaffin, Reza Khanbilvardi, Cynthia Rosenzweig

Publications and Research

Green roofs (with plant cover) are gaining attention in the United States as a versatile new environmental mitigation technology. Interest in data on the environmental performance of these systems is growing, particularly with respect to urban heat island mitigation and stormwater runoff control. We are deploying research stations on a diverse array of green roofs within the New York City area, affording a new opportunity to monitor urban environmental conditions at small scales. We show some green roof systems being monitored, describe the sensor selection employed to study energy balance, and show samples of selected data. These roofs should be …

Community Managed Rural Water Supply Systems In The Dominican Republic : Assessment Of Sustainability Of Systems Built By The National Institute Of Potable Water And Peace Corps, Dominican Republic , Ryan W. Schweitzer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In the Dominican Republic economic growth in the past twenty years has not yielded sufficient improvement in access to drinking water services, especially in rural areas where 1.5 million people do not have access to an improved water source (WHO, 2006). Worldwide, strategic development planning in the rural water sector has focused on participatory processes and the use of demand filters to ensure that service levels match community commitment to post-project operation and maintenance. However studies have concluded that an alarmingly high percentage of drinking water systems (20-50%) do not provide service at the design levels and/or fail altogether (up …

Sustainable Development Extension Plan (Sudex): Community Mobilization Through Proactive Participation And Synergistic Alliance To Alliviate Poverty And Achieve Sustainable Self Sufficiency, Stephen Forbes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation describes a sustainable development extension plan (Sudex Plan) to help communities in developing countries achieve Goal 1 of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Goal 1 focuses on reducing poverty and hunger by 50% by the year 2015, but all the MDG are interrelated and one can not be achieved without considering the others, and to attain any is an empty accomplishment without ways to ensure that they can be sustained and continuously improved with the means to pass on the information, knowledge and lessons learned from community to community, generation to generation. The Sudex Plan is …

Green Roofs For A Green Town: Possibilities Of Green Roof Implementation In The Town Of Normal, Lindsey Sihau, '09

Outstanding Senior Seminar Papers

Green roofs have been growing in popularity throughout the world. Scientists have been studying them since the 1980’s. This research project reviews the literature regarding both the benefits and barriers to green roof construction and management. Policies around the nation are then examined and analyzed. Suggestions are made regarding possible additions to the local Stormwater Management Policy that would emphasize the importance of sustainable building techniques such as green roofs, and hopefully offer incentive to their implementation.

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 1, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

When the Sustainable Portland Task Force Report was released in November 2007, under the leadership of Mayor Jim Cohen, Portland Councilor Kevin Donoghue had the idea that students at the Muskie School of Public Service might be able to help implement recommendations from the report. It may have helped that Kevin was himself a graduate of the Community Planning and Development Master’s program at the Muskie School, but it was a good idea nevertheless. He approached Professor Sam Merrill in the CPD program, who spoke with the new Mayor Ed Suslovic about a possible partnership between the City and the …

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Changing Maine, 1960-2010: Teaching Guide, Richard Barringer, New England Environmental Finance Center

Maine History & Policy Development

Unlike forty years ago, none of us is now certain what the future holds for Maine – except that it will be different. Maine has been transformed by the events of the recent decades. We have come into a new world, a new time – a new historical era, if you will. This new era, like previous eras in Maine history, will require of us new ways of thinking, new ways of understanding, new ways of organizing ourselves as a community of people, if the values and culture we share and cherish are to endure and flourish.

Context Sensitive Design – Thinking Beyond The Pavement: Documentation Of Workshop Development And Training, Jerry G. Pigman, Donald L. Hartman, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Kenneth R. Agent, Lenahan O'Connell, Nikiforos Stamatiadis, Patrick Tyndall

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This report documents the development and presentation of the workshop titled “Thinking Beyond the Pavement – A Workshop on Context Sensitive Design”. Work began on the workshop development in 1998 after the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet was selected as one of the pilot states to implement a training program for context sensitive design. The Kentucky Transportation Center at the University of Kentucky was selected to develop and deliver the training to state personnel and consultants who were commonly involved with project development. The training course was comprised of the following four modules:

• Facilitated Communication and Public Involvement,
• Environmental Issues,
• Liability Issues, …

Investigation Of Hydrocarbon Phytoremediation Potential Of Lupinus Chamissonis In Laboratory Microcosms, Wendy Martin, Yarrow M. Nelson, Kenneth Hoffman

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Controlled laboratory microcosms were used to research the phytoremediation potential of lupines (Lupinus chamissonis) for hydrocarbon-contaminated groundwater at a former oil field near Guadalupe, California. During oil production in the Guadalupe Oil Field, a kerosene-like hydrocarbon mixture was used as a diluent to improve the flow of the heavy crude oil. Leaking tanks and pipes resulted in diluent contamination in the soil and groundwater. Native plant species were planted at a pilot-scale field site to investigate the feasibility of using phytoremediation to remediate the groundwater contamination. In the field, biological and hydrological factors make it difficult to determine the specific …