Environmental Engineering Commons^™

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts Econcrete Resource Analysis, Guianina Ferrari, Shervon Stephens, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy impacted 443,000 people and caused nearly $19 billion (about $58 per person in the US) worth of damage within New York City. As part of the New York City infrastructure reparation plan, the Living Breakwaters project in Tottenville addressed coastal resilience, allocating $100M of public funds to a series of artificial breakwaters by the southwest coast of Staten Island. Each breakwater is constructed and designed to mitigate water flow in storm events. ECOncrete, a primary element of the breakwater, is a specialty cast cementitious product that is marine organism-friendly that encourages biocalcification and photosynthesis. …

Investigation Of Mechanical Properties Of Recycled Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites Reinforcing Cement, Caleb Mull, Fnu Archie, Harry Lee, Guyuan Zhang

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

The usage of fiber-reinforced polymer composites in various fields has increased significantly due to their advantageous physical and mechanical properties. However, the sustainability of composite parts has not been fully solved for a long time. Most end-of-life (EOL) composite parts have been landfilled without recycling due to the recycling cost and lack of application of recycled composites. Mechanical composite recycling that shred the EOL composite part and reuse it for downgraded applications is one of the most commonly used recycling processes for the EOL composite part. In this research, mechanical composite recycling process was demonstrated for the construction application. The …

Applying Gis Software To Visualize Temporal Changes In Drinking Water Quality Sources, Salam Radhaa

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The Chippewas of the Thames First Nation Reserve in southwestern Ontario has been under a Boil Water Advisory for an extended period of time. This project aims to create a framework to address this issue by detecting possible pollutants and presenting in a visual manner.

Several sample sites are utilized to determine the source of pollution as there are many possibilities: upstream overflow events, farm runoff, other point sources upstream. Extra care will go to sampling within 24hr of a significant precipitation event to measure spikes in pollutants that have accumulated during dry periods.

ArcGIS software (ArcMap) is utilized as …

Usri Restore Research Group Internship, Tristan Paventi

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

A powerpoint presentation summarizing my summer internship at RESTORE environmental research group. This internship mainly focused on geophysics of electromagnetic mapping of high salinity zones. Electromagnetic instruments such as the EM31-MK2 and the GEM-2 were used to detect salinity, as well as electrical resistivity Tomography (E.R.T.). Another focus was waste rock from mines, where we conducted acidity tests and sieve analysis to discover the cumulative acidity from acid mine drainage.

Multi-Objective Optimization Of A Microgrid For An Islanded Community, Roozbeh Ghasemi, Martin Wosnik, Weiwei Mo

Student Research Projects

Microgrid design for islanded communities is seeing renewed interest due to the increased accessibility of solar, wind, and energy storage technologies. Islanded communities are often economically disadvantaged, which requires cost-effective microgrid designs. This paper investigates the potential to achieve economic and environmental benefits via optimizing the sizing of various components of a renewable energy system. We used Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island, Maine, USA as a testbed for developing an optimization framework. A system dynamics (SD) model was first developed to simulate the daily operation of the island microgrid system and then the model was calibrated and validated using …

Household Preferences Of Decentralized Solar Photovoltaic And Thermal Systems, Roozbeh Ghasemi, Yue Li, Zhongming Lu, Ju-Chin Huang, Weiwei Mo

Student Research Projects

Small-scale, residential solar systems have been increasingly recognized as a key sector of future solar capacity growth and carbon emission reduction in cities. This study investigated customer preferences of solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) systems to facilitate their broader residential penetration. A discrete choice experiment was designed and administered through Amazon Mechanical Turk targeting two testbeds: Boston, Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia. Six system features were investigated, including system type, ownership, upfront cost, annual savings, environmental benefits, and neighbor’s choices. The collected data were then analyzed using latent class choice modeling to identify the hidden classes of unique preference characteristics and …

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts: Conceptual Scheduling, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused nearly $19 billion in damages in New York City including 69,000 residential units across the five boroughs. This disaster precipitated a post-disaster-rebuilding (PDR) project including roughly $4.2 billion in a Community Development Block Grant allocated towards PDR projects. A portion of the grant was used to construct a living breakwater in Tottenville, Staten Island, consisting of a resiliency approach to risk reduction through erosion prevention, wave energy attenuation, and enhancement of ecosystems and social resiliency to improve resistance to storms for the community of Tottenville. The ridges of each breakwater are designed with …