ASCE Participates in Resilience Event
September 07, 2018
ASCE, along with other advocacy groups, policymakers, and business leaders, participated in an event entitled “Partnerships & Progress: Driving Climate Solutions” held by The Hill and the Bipartisan Policy Center to discuss bipartisan congressional initiatives on clean energy, resilience, and disaster preparedness. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) kicked of the event......
Congress Hosts Series of Disaster Recovery Hearings
April 12, 2018
This week Congress held multiple hearings offering status updates on post-disaster recovery efforts and lessons learned after 2017’s deadly hurricane season. It started off with a field hearing held by the House Committee on Homeland Security entitled “Houston Strong: Hurricane Harvey Lessons Learned and the Path Forward.” Witnesses included officials from the U.S. Army Corps......
September 27, 2017
Within the past month, major hurricanes hit Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico, two earthquakes only days apart, led to the loss of over 100 lives and the destruction of massive amounts of infrastructure in Mexico, and hundreds of thousands of acres of land have burned in the Pacific Northwest from wildfires. These events coincided with......
White House Holds Summit to Discuss Disaster Financing and Resilient Recovery
August 03, 2016
On Wednesday the White House hosted a Forum on Smart Finance for Disaster Resilience to “highlight innovations in disaster mitigation and resilience finance, including emerging public-private collaborations with banking, insurance, and financial services sectors.” According to NOAA the U.S. has sustained 196 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1......
White House Summit on Resilience
May 12, 2016
An important aspect of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure is resiliency. While Congress has been hit or miss on infrastructure issues this Congress, yes on Surface Transportation, not so much on resilience and building sciences, the White House has recently begun to place more emphasis on resiliency. Highlights of the White House emphasis include a February......
Historic Agreement Reached in Paris to Reduce Global Climate Emissions
December 17, 2015
This week more than 190 countries adopted the most ambitious climate change agreement in history. The Paris Agreement sets up a long-term framework to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and should keep global temperature rise below the 2 degrees Celsius tipping point. Implications for infrastructure and the civil engineering profession are profound: the plan will......
ASCE Provides Expertise at Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Academies
August 04, 2015
Each year the federal government spends billions of dollars rebuilding infrastructure following natural disasters. As we approach the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which cost the federal government $98 billion, and three-year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which cost $41 billion, federal agencies are beginning to rethink the way government responds to disaster. Prompted in part......
Infrastructure’s Latest Buzz Word: Resilience
March 11, 2015
Infrastructure projects that incorporate elements of resilience—the ability of a project or program to respond adaptively to threats such as storm surge or extreme weather and bounce back from disasters—are attracting new attention and challenging the engineering profession to design for a changing world. As much of our infrastructure in the U.S. reaches the end......
Virginia’s Infrastructure Struggle for Status Quo
January 23, 2015
With a state that’s growing as fast as Virginia, you’re bound to have growing pains, but none are as striking or obvious as the traffic gridlock across the state. So, would you be surprised that the Virginia Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave roads a D grade in their new 2015 Report......