Other Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Columbus, Nebraska: Southern Housing Development Design Proposal, Ryan Weyers, Caiden Dynek, Alex Papa, Brexton Robertson, Kaden Perala

Honors Theses

The following paper proposes the design and creation of a new housing development in the city of Columbus, Nebraska in a lot to the south of the city and directly north of the Columbus wastewater treatment plant. The goal of this proposal is to provide readers with confidence that our company is the most qualified to complete the project and will create the safest, most comfortable, most efficient, and most cost-effective final design. This proposal seeks to offer a solution to the lack of affordable housing for the growing workforce in Columbus. In order to arrive at this solution, each …

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. …

Assessing The Impacts Of Super Storm Flooding In The Transportation Infrastructure – Case Study: San Antonio, Texas, Marcio Giacomoni, Francisco Olivera, Cesar Do Lago

Publications

Flooding are likely to increase worldwide due to climate change. Large storms, referred here as superstorms, defined as events with return period equal or larger than 100 years, can lead to an increase of property damages and loss of life. The ability to predict and plan for the impacts of superstorms on transportation infrastructure is key to mitigate future damages and losses. This study analyzed 51 combinations of future projections for representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, which were used to calculate future 1st and 3rd quartiles, median, minimum and maximum intensity-duration-frequency curves (IDF). A HEC-HMS and GSSHA …

Spot-R By Triax, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Triax’s Spot-r system was developed to tackle the construction industry’s unique safety and productivity challenges, stemming from a demonstrated lack of total jobsite visibility and automatically collected, easily accessible field data. Spot-r by Triax combines a proprietary mesh network with sensor technology to record and transmit previously unattainable workforce and equipment location, activity and safety data within a defined area – all in real-time.

The Spot-r network is installed around the site and operates in a 900 MHz network, with a subset using a cellular connection to forward Spot-r sensor data to Triax’s custom, cloud dashboard. In the hazardous construction …

Mdp (Machine Drive Power) Intelligent Compaction Technology, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Caterpillar developed MDP (Machine Drive Power) technology to fill this gap. Rather than an accelerometer and vibratory drum, it uses the principle of rolling resistance to provide indications of soil stiffness. This allows it to perform more reliably on cohesive and granular soils with less variability than accelerometer systems. It also means that the technology can be used on both vibratory and static drum compactors, which are often used on larger sites. While the technology is quite useful on its own, it is even better as a complementary technology to the existing accelerometer-based systems. Contractors who use vibratory soil compactors …

Purdue’S Biowall, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Mechanical ventilation, energy recovery ventilation, and infiltration (air that leaks into a building) are commonly used to introduce fresh air. These are all valid approaches, but a living plant-based filter is an innovative complement to these traditional technologies. A Biowall has the potential to improve indoor air quality while reducing the quantity of air needed for ventilation, creating the potential for energy savings. Figure 1 shows a Biowall prototype being evaluated in the ReNEWW House, a research home located near the Purdue University campus (http://www.renewwhouse.com/).

The Effects Of Frequent Atmospheric Events And Hydrologic Infrastructure On Flow Characterization In Tims Branch And Its Major Tributary, Sc, Mohammed Albassam

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hydrological models are powerful tools used to predict water systems behavior such as flow and water level characteristics for rivers and streams. In this research, a fully dynamic 1-D model was developed using the MIKE 11 model for a specific stream called A-014, this stream is in the Savannah River Site (SRS), SC.

A field study was conducted in order to collect data needed as inputs for the model development. Data like water velocity and cross-section measurement played a major role in understanding the behavior of the A-014 and the validation of our model.

Results showed a correlation capable to …

Integration Of Hydrogeophysical Datasets And Empirical Orthogonal Functions For Improved Irrigation Water Management, Catherine E. Finkenbiner, Trenton E. Franz, Justin P. Gibson, Derek M. Heeren, J. D. Luck

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Precision agriculture offers the technologies to manage for infield variability and incorporate variability into irrigation management decisions. The major limitation of this technology often lies in the reconciliation of disparate data sources and the generation of irrigation prescription maps. Here the authors explore the utility of the cosmic-ray neutron probe (CRNP) which measures volumetric soil water content (SWC) in the top ~ 30 cm of the soil profile. The key advantages of CRNP is that the sensor is passive, non-invasive, mobile and soil temperature-invariant, making data collection more compatible with existing farm operations and extending the mapping period. The objectives …

Evaluation Of Variable Rate Irrigation Using A Remote-Sensing-Based Model, John Burdette Barker, Derek M. Heeren, Christopher M.U. Neale, Daran Rudnick

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Improvements in soil water balance modeling can be beneficial for optimizing irrigation management to account for spatial variability in soil properties and evapotranspiration (ET). A remote-sensing-based ET and water balance model was tested for irrigation management in an experiment at two University of Nebraska-Lincoln research sites located near Mead and Brule, Nebraska. Both fields included a center pivot equipped with variable rate irrigation (VRI). The study included maize in 2015 and 2016 and soybean in 2016 at Mead, and maize in 2016 at Brule, for a total of 210 plot-years. Four irrigation treatments were applied at Mead, including: VRI based …

Datumate, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Datumate is digitally transforming civil engineering processes used in construction, surveying and infrastructure inspection markets with fully automated, highly precise, cost effective and safe tools. It utilizes state-of-the-art image processing and advanced drones and camera technologies dramatically reducing the amount of time surveying crews spend in the field, speeding up construction progress checks and shortening infrastructure inspection duration, while maintaining survey grade accuracy. The intuitive, simple and automated solutions increase productivity by saving field and office time in civil engineering and inspection projects of roads, intersections, stockpile volumes, topography, piping, industrial facilities, bridges, property surveys, building facades, railways, cellular infrastructure …

Technology To Manufacture Oriented Pvc (Pvc-O) Pipes, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The development of Molecor´s technology, which is based on the application of a Molecular Orientation process, has delivered a significant turning point in the pipelines sector. With this technological development, the company has begun to manufacture TOM® PVC-O pipes, the most eco-friendly pipes on the market. The Molecor technology enabled eradicating many of the existing disadvantages of thermoplastic pipes.

This technology delivers a clear objective; to provide the water industry with a solution for pipes carrying pressurized water in an environmentally friendly, yet cost efficient manner. This also extends a service life compared to pipeline materials currently in use.

The …

Simulation And Prediction Of The Groundwater Level In The Surrounding Area Of The Nebraska Management System Evaluation Area Site In Central Nebraska., Cesar Augusto Gomez Peña

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An efficient water budget is necessary to develop sustainable practices in irrigated lands and determine future trends. Despite a lack of detailed knowledge, climate change is found to profoundly influence groundwater resources through changes in groundwater recharge, groundwater elevation, and groundwater flow processes. Prediction of the groundwater level (GWL) under a changing climate is essential to improve agricultural management.

The goal of this research is to predict the GWL from 2056 to 2060 in the surrounding area of the MSEA. In order to achieve the target, the first research task is to develop a groundwater flow model and then simulate …

Netpoint®, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The vast majority of construction scheduling software uses a combination of spreadsheets and Gantt charts for developing and depicting Critical Path Method (CPM) schedules. While this paradigm works for the expert scheduler, it is not conducive to collaboration, and it is prohibitively difficult for non-scheduling experts to understand.

NetPoint® provides a dynamic, visual interface conducive to touch and gestural input. Activities are drawn directly on a time-scale and may be placed on the same row or arranged automatically using codes or the WBS. Such control of the presentation makes it easier to communicate the plan to any type of audience. …

Fluid Isolator, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The reliability of concrete infrastructure is vital to ensuring daily life, as well as commerce, can progress without interruption. From the pavement of interstate highways to the driveways and sidewalks in a local neighborhood, concrete is expensive to install and often even more expensive, and intrusive, when it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, to maintain functionality in winter climates concrete is heavily exposed to deicing salts. This not only affects the roads, driveways, and sidewalks where salt is applied directly, but many other areas such as parking and residential garages where vehicles (and people) will track salt along with water …

Smartvid.Io, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The collection, organization, and retrieval of industrial media is a pervasive challenge that is especially glaring for companies in the AEC industry. Construction projects often generate large volumes of pictures & videos from the field for tracking progress and communicating between engineers, contractors, and subcontractors. It is not uncommon for field personnel to capture hundreds of photos per week on any given jobsite.

Smartvid.io is a cloud-based software solution designed for the specific needs of industrial media. The application’s internal deep-learning engines, collectively nicknamed VINNIE (for ‘Very Intelligent Neural Network for Insight and Evaluation’), use speech and image recognition to …

Hillman Composite Beam (Hcb®), Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The Hillman-Composite Beam (HCB®), is an innovative structural member for use in highway and railroad bridges as well as marine facilities. The HCB is essentially a lightweight reinforced concrete beam strengthened and protected by a corrosion-resistant and resilient Fiberglass Reinforced Polymer (FRP) shell.

The beam is comprised of three main components, a concrete arch (compression reinforcement), an FRP bottom flange encapsulating steel strands tying the ends of the arch together (tension reinforcement) and the FRP shell. Galvanized Rebar “shear connectors” are used to make the beam composite with the concrete deck in the same manner as pre-stressed concrete beams.

The …

Industrial-Grade Monitoring Solution: Hoistcam, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Safety and productivity are top priorities for contractors and industrial operations. Improving either makes a company more profitable and competitive. Technology advancements that can do both are important for every company to consider. HoistCam^TM industrial-grade video monitoring solutions can improve employees’ productivity and workplace safety in the construction industries. HoistCam also improves efficiency of operations and reduces job site accidents resulting in substantial cost savings to a contractor.

HoistCam™ is an integrated, wireless video system. The use of HoistCam eliminates blind lifts, blind spots and can share the live video with anyone, anywhere with solid security and easy control. …

Purdue Ect Report - Fourth Quarter 2016, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Fourth Quarter 2016

This is a quarterly report from the Purdue ECT.

Bicp Global Bim Study - Lessons For Ireland’S Bim Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Reports

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) has been promoting the benefits of digitisation in the construction and engineering industry in Ireland since its formation back in 2002. Whilst the Alliance has always strived to ensure that its members are exposed to a wide spectrum of contemporary digital tools and processes, the concept of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has dominated the focus of its activities over the past five years.

BIM can be described as a digital tool that facilitates everybody to better understand a building or structure through the use of a digital model which draws on a range of data …

Road Zipper™, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

Construction work zones are growing in number around the world. The natural aging of existing roadway infrastructure ensures that more and more maintenance and rehabilitation will be required. Work zones, by their very definition, create two major problems that must be addressed in some way: safety and mobility. In the United States, highway work zones are responsible for almost 25% of all non-recurring congestion and 10% of overall congestion. Vehicle accidents are more common in work zones, and traffic congestion through work zones on urban arterials and freeways is often considered to be “unavoidable." To address these issues, ROAD ZIPPER™ …

Center Pivot Irrigation Handbook (Ec3017), Derrel Martin, William Kranz, Tyler Smith, Suat Irmak, Charles Burr, Ron Yoder

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Center pivot irrigation has been the most rapidly expanding form of irrigation in the Central Great Plains and across the United States. The amount of land irrigated with sprinkler, gravity and drip or trickle systems was determined for all states in the USA in the Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey1 by the USDA in 2012. Results of the survey for the Great Plains States shows that approximately 85% of the land in Nebraska is irrigated with center pivots and that very little land was irrigated with drip systems in 2012 (Figure 1). The percentage of land irrigated with sprinklers in …

A Geospatial Variable Rate Irrigation Control Scenario Evaluation Methodology Based On Mining Root Zone Available Water Capacity, K. A. Miller, Joe Luck, Derek M. Heeren, T. Lo, Derrel Martin, J. B. Barker

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Increasing concern for sustainable water use has the agriculture industry working toward higher efficiency in use of irrigation water. Recent advancements have improved the capabilities of center pivot irrigation systems to vary water application depths across the field, a technology known as variable rate irrigation (VRI). The goal of this study was to provide a geospatial method for potential VRI technology adopters to evaluate control scenarios and potential water savings using freely available datasets. Root zone available water capacity (R) was estimated spatially across two case study fields using the Natural Resources Conservation Service Gridded Soil Survey Geographic Database. The …

Lucidpipe™ Power System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

In most gravity fed water transmission pipelines, it is desired to reduce excess pressure head to prevent undue strain on a pipeline and lower the incidence of leaks. Normally this is done with pressure reducing valves that essentially burn off this excess pressure as heat. The LucidPipe™ system converts it to low cost electricity thereby removing unwanted pressure and generating energy at the same time - energy that can be put used behind the grid or put back on the grid. The LucidPipe™ system extracts a small percentage of pressure head providing nearly invisible operation allowing water operators to fulfill …

A Five-Year Performance Review Of Field-Scale, Slow-Release Permanganate Candles With Recommendations For Second-Generation Improvements, Mark Christenson, Ann Kambhu, James Reece, Steve D. Comfort, Laurie Brunner

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

In 2009, we identified a TCE plume at an abandoned landfill that was located in a low permeable siltyclay aquifer. To treat the TCE, we manufactured slow-release potassium permanganate cylinders (oxidant candles) that had diameters of either 5.1 or 7.6 cm and were 91.4 cm long. In 2010, we compared two methods of candle installation by inserting equal masses of the oxidant candles (7.6-cm vs 5.1-cm dia). The 5.1-cm dia candles were inserted with direct-push rods while the 7.6-cm candles were housed in screens and lowered into 10 permanent wells. Since installation, the 7.6-cm oxidant candles have been refurbished approximately …

Identification Of Groundwater Sources For Municipal Wells Using Geochemical Data On The Platte Alluvial Aquifer And Underlying Limestone At The Lincoln Water Well Field Near Ashland Nebraska, Juanita Cruz Torres

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Alluvial aquifer systems where pumping of municipal wells induces recharge from the adjacent river are the primary source of water for many cities. The city of Lincoln, NE has a primary water source in an alluvial aquifer adjacent to the Platte River. The Lincoln Water System manages the stream/aquifer system by using integrated models for a better understanding during periods of high stress such as a drought. The integrated models set the limestone aquifer as an impermeable boundary to understand the alluvial aquifer system without having a secondary water source. The limestone aquifer is permeable and the purpose of this …

Preparing Nebraska Future Water Leaders: Nwla Academy Class Iii (2013), Connie I. Reimers-Hild

Nebraska Water Leaders Academy: Publications and Materials

Group communications, Phyllis Schoenholz, UNL

Communication and transformational leadership. Dr. Mark Burbach and Dr. Connie Reimers-Hild, UNL

Nebraska's instream flow laws and applications, Ann Bleed, board member, Lower Platte Natural Resources District

River Basin Compacts; Nebraska's obligations, Michael Jess, water resources engineer; consultant.

Conservation along the Central Platte, Mark Peyton, senior biologist, Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District

Central Platte River water issues in regard to habitat for endangered species, Jason Farnsworth, natural resources specialist, Headwaters Corporation & Jerry Kenny, executive director of the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program

Rowe Sanctuary; discussion and viewing …

Microbiologically Enhanced Mixing Across Scales During In-Situ Bioremediation Of Uranium, Reinaldo E. Alcalde

McNair Scholars Research Journal

Production of nuclear fuels for weapons and electric energy has resulted in groundwater uranium contamination at Department of Energy (DOE) sites. Reduction of uranium by dissimilatory metal-reducing bacteria (DMRB) is an effective approach for in-situ bioremediation of these sites. In this process, an organic electron donor is typically delivered through a well into groundwater in order to promote the biological reduction of soluble and toxic U(VI) to insoluble and less toxic U(IV). A key challenge is mixing the organic electron donor with U(VI) in groundwater where laminar flow conditions prevail. A potential solution is to enhance reaction beyond the scale …

The Nebraska Water Leaders Academy: Blending Water Policy And Science With Leadership Theory, Mark E. Burbach, Connie I. Reimers-Hild

Nebraska Water Leaders Academy: Publications and Materials

Water Challenges are Growing
Population Continues to Grow
New and Innovative Leadership is Needed
Nebraska Water Leaders Academy (NWLA) was born!

NWLA Objectives
•Develop scientific, social and political knowledge about water and related natural resources
• Examine the economical and beneficial uses of Nebraska’s water resources
• Develop and enhance leadership and critical thinking skills
• Develop interpersonal skills to become actively involved with water policy issues at the local, regional, state, and national levels
• Develop life-long water resources management skills
• Challenge traditional paradigms while encouraging critical thinking and creative solutions.

Do Invasive Riparian Woody Plants Affect Hydrology And Ecosystem Processes?, Julie Huddle, Tala Awada, Derrel Martin, Xinhua Zhou, Sue Ellen Pegg, Scott Josiah

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

© 2011 Copyright by the Center for Greot Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Preserving Assets In At-Risk Municipalities: Financial Strategies For Climate Change Adaptation, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

A large share of America's population, businesses and economic activity now occurs in coastal areas. At the same time, during this century many coastal communities are likely to be severely impacted by sea level rise and increased storm surge and tidal flooding.

“What to do” about this vulnerability is the subject of this brief. It is intended to help municipalities identify courses of action and steps they might take toward increasing their resilience, especially regarding financial resources that will need to be allocated toward the various strategies identified.