A hearty thanks to the civilengineeringschools.org site for listing our blog as one of the top 50 civil engineering blogs and granting us a Blog Frog award. We proudly display our award below and encourage everyone to check out the other Blog Frog award winners at:
http://www.civilengineeringschools.org/best-civil-engineering-blogs
Land surveying is a fascinating and challenging field. It's one of the few professions that involves the need to have a good understanding of a wide variety of topics. In one day, the surveyor is expected to juggle history, document and business management, searches of legal records, tree and plant identification, land development, drainage, investigative skills, dog and other animal avoidance, fence jumping, extreme weather, manual labor, understanding of property law, operation of technical equipment, geometry and trigonometry, and CAD/GIS. And this list could go on. What other profession demands such a wide variety of knowledge and skill?
I have to admit, because of these challenges, land surveying has always intrigued me. Since I first started working in this field as a surveying technician, I always dreamed of being a land surveyor. But even though I worked for many years in land surveying and even managed to get licensed as a surveyor in training, I reached a point where my opportunities were primarily in the civil engineering field. So I chose the professional engineer license instead. But land surveying has never failed to interest me, and many of my responsibilities still involve issues related to land surveying.
Fortunately there are some groups and resources online where I can still learn and stay current with the land surveying profession. The one group I would like to highlight today is the Land Surveyors United online group at http://landsurveyorsunited.com. This group was started up a few years ago using the Ning platform. Today I noticed they have a brand new look on their site. And based on an email I received from Justin Farrow, the group's creator, it looks like he is planning to add even more awesome features in the future such as:
So, if you're like me and are totally into land surveying, I would definitely recommend checking out this site and joining up as a member (it's free!).
Today I received my usual e-mail from ASCE that displays headlines of stories related to civil engineering and was surprised to see ASCE was finally offering a widget for their content. Well now, that was progressive, and I love widgets -sleek, functional, look great on your Website. So I clicked on over to get my very own ASCE widget, download the html, and install it on my Website.
When I got to the site I realized, instead of creating a true widget with tools like Widgetbox or Widgadget, ASCE was offering a program that you install for your desktop. Curious to see what they had set up, I did download the program and noticed that it appeared to be a weather application. This seemed confusing because I thought I was downloading something that would allow me to search and access ASCE content.
ASCE Widget for Your Desktop
It all made sense once the “widget” launched because in the end, it appeared as a small box on my screen that reported weather in my area and had Web links to the ASCE site. The only extra was an RSS display that shows up as an extra window on the screen with feeds from ASCE blogs and the ability to add other RSS feeds.
ASCE RSS Feed Display
Now, I am an ASCE member; it is a great organization, but I have to say this is a little disappointing. Most people hooked to the Internet probably already have a weather feed; weather displays seem to be one of the first applications people set up for themselves. And for me, having direct links to specific areas of the ASCE Website sitting on my desktop every day is not really valuable. I would prefer to access the main site when the need arises and go from there. As for the RSS feeds, again, I think most people have chosen their own method of delivery for these. My choice has been igoogle.
So while ASCE has made some strides in creating blogs such as Our Failing Infrastructure, (which I am not sure is such a good title for a blog about something for which we are responsible – think how that comes across to the general public) and they have set up a Facebook group and a group on LinkedIn, they sort of missed the boat on this widget thing.
As a member of ASCE, I would see more value from having a widget created with one of those other tools mentioned above that I could display on my own Website. This method of delivery would allow all members of ASCE to become mini feeds and info points that offer better access to the organization’s content and message. It is time for ASCE to take the plunge and immerse the organization in the viral wonder of Web 2.0.
(An added tip to ASCE: please think about using Twitter to deliver the headline information that you now send out in e-mail. It would really help me stem the rising tide of e-mails.)
Over the last few years the amount of information related to stormwater practices has dramatically increased. Some days it seems like every e-mail, magazine, or flyer I receive covers some topic related to the stormwater industry. However, it wasn’t until this weekend when our area had the worst rainfall event that I can remember, that I started realizing the primary focus of all this is on stormwater quality. And I am starting to wonder why there is such a comparative lack of information or concern over stormwater quantity.
Each time major rainfall events occur, people have to deal with damage to their homes from flooding/sewer backups. They probably are getting fairly tired of having to hear the engineers, myself included, talk about combined sewers that cause basement backups and about stormwater systems or levees that are only designed to handle a certain sized storm. During these events, the last thing on their minds seems to be the water quality of the receiving stream – it’s the quantity of water rushing into their home! Even in New Orleans, the situation was so bad that it seemed the regulations on water quality were waived to facilitate recovery. So at the end of the day, it makes me wonder why we are focusing so much effort on water quality and ignoring water quantity as if it is the ugly stepsister.
I definitely not saying we should cast aside the focus on water quality issues, but I think it is time our industry starts talking about and including the water quantity issues. Otherwise we are only doing half the job. We need to start questioning the standards under which we design – do they need to be updated to address any climate changes? Do we need to change them because damage to homes and businesses is greater today than in the past and could be high enough to push the design year up some? Should these discussions be done on a regional or national basis? What other professions or industries should be brought in on these discussions?
Then we need to take our analysis and recommendations to the politicians who have the obligation to weigh our advice against the wishes of the people and the state of our economy. Today, I don’t believe the public, in general, is aware of the regulations and policies under which storm sewer systems are designed; they have a false sense of security that the pipes will always handle the water. Then when they do not, everyone gets upset. Engineers, along with politicians, need to do a better job educating the public about how these systems are designed, the consequences of those design policies, and the costs for preventing or alleviating flooding. Only after careful consideration of this information can the people convey the right decision to their government representatives.
Then when all parties have weighed the evidence and considered all possibilities and choices, our industry can establish a new guideline for stormwater control that not only addresses water quality, but the quantity as well.
(And by the way, my first recommendation is to figure out a new way of referring to the type of storm event instead of saying it was a “500-year flood.” A local politician from a neighboring community was quoted in our paper complaining how he couldn’t understand how they knew it was greater than a 500-year flood because the town hadn’t been around that long. That terminology is not helping public education efforts.)