Ethics on America Infrastructure

Manhattan

 

What is Ethics?  Ethics is natural for most humans.  It is the good or bad feeling a person gets when they do some thing.  Most likely the bad feeling is when a person does something wrong and probably unethical.  Not all people are like this and have the gut feeling of when something is wrong or they are doing something wrong.  For an example cereal killers don't have the feeling saying that what they are doing is wrong.  All people has different places where they place the line they wouldn't cross and know by crossing this line it is unethical.

The government came up with laws and regulations to follow about ethics.  The laws clearly state what isn't ethical or at least clear it up so there are less gray area.  Most professions have there own code of ethics.  That code of ethics is designed to fit that specific profession or career. 

The issue that I'm going to be talking about is the US infrastructure, and how it needs to be up dated.  The United States of America infrastructure is all of the following: Aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, rivers, ports, recreation areas, railways, roads, school builds, solid waste, transit, and more.  The infrastructure of the US is out dated because the US is constantly growing, and not updating everything that they should be updating.  One example of the infrastructure that needs to be un dated is the drinking water.  All of the drinking water in the US has too many contaminates in it to drink straight out of the well or the river.  Since the water is being contaminated more and more the public utilities need to update and improve their filtration systems. 

The current grade point average for the United State's infrastructure is a poor D+.  The parts of the infrastructure that needs to be updated the most are the levees and the inland waterways.  They scored a bad D-.  One example of the bad levees is the levees that broke and flooded New Orleans when hurricane Katrina went through.  That put the Public's lives at risk and people even died because of it.  The part of the infrastructure that the US scored best in was the solid waste it is a B-, well we have one thing going for the US it is recycling!

To successfully update the US's infrastructure the US needs to invest 3.6 trillion dollars between 2010 and 2020.  That means putting 454 billion dollar a year toward the infrastructure being repaired.  The government currently puts 253 billion dollars a year to help update the infrastructure, but they are falling behind by 201 billion dollars a year and at that rate the repairs will never catch up to everything that is needing it.  It is worth it to spend the extra 201 billion dollars on the infrastructure to keep the public safe.

I think that it is unethical of the government not to invest the full amount that is needed to repair the infrastructure.  Everyday that they government delays is another day that a disaster could happen and endanger the publics safety.  For Civil engineers it is unethical because they put the health, safety , and welfare of the public first.  Ethics / Ethical is there to help things be fair and for everything that is designed to be safe to the public.  Consider the I-35w bridge collapse, the bridge wasn't being kept up to standards, and it was also out of date.  I mean look at all the people that were injured and killed because of it.  Hurricane Katrina is another example the levee weren't being repaired, and kept up as  they should have been so they failed.

References:
 http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

Picture:
http://a2zcivilengineering.blogspot.com/2012/09/business-buildings_23.html

Analysis of Recent Disasters

Lately there has been more and more disaster happing from earthquakes in Chile, China, New Zealand, Haiti, Japan, and Asian tsunami, Chile tsunami, Japan tsunami, also the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  These disasters are making civil engineers more aware that they have to design their projects to with stand more and to be prepared for the worst.  It is the civil engineers job to come in after the disasters to assess the damage, and to save lives.  Civil engineers assess the damage and determine what can be saved depending on is stability.  They even help devise plans for when people are stuck under ruble on how to save them the safest possible way.



Chernobyl power plant 

 The earthquake in Japan that made a huge tsunami really put Civil engineers to the test, to save lives and to get the economy back up and going.  The earthquake in Japan made the nuclear power plant loose its capability to cool the reactor, but thankfully after some time they got it under control.  It is the Civil engineer job to come up with ideas to stop the nuclear reactors from getting any worse.  This made civil engineers think twice about how strong and durable they should make the nuclear power plants to avoid another Japanese incident or even what happened at Chernobyl!




Gulf of Mexico oil spill
 

When the oil spill happened the American Society of Civil Engineers reached out to the government to provide its help.  Civil engineers went to the coast lines, to the gulf, and to all the water lands that where invaded by the oil to figure out the better possible act to cleaning up the oil.  Civil engineers would first look at the damage and see how it is spreading to figure out the best way of stopping the oil and putting the environment back to the way it was before the oil spill.  Soon after this disaster the ASCE produce a Guiding Principles for the Nation's Infrastructure.  The point of it is to make a major shift in the thinking to risk management strategies, and to make the infrastructure of American the top priority.  It is designed to help the Civil engineers think about what could happen with their designs in the worst possible scenario, and how to combat it.  Environmental engineer figure out if the environment is being harmed, then they figure out the solution to the cause of the problem.  ASCE also published Disaster Risk Assessment and Mitigation; it basically takes an assessment of all of the risks and it sees what are the chances of it becoming a disaster.

Civil engineers are being taught by the professional community to design their products to try and with stand natural disasters.  ASCE is also pushing toward the mindset that you always have to be prepared for the for the worst and to have a plan in place to combat the disaster. They are also doing assessments of what is the risk of something to happen and will it become a disaster.


Refernce from:
http://www.asce.org/default.aspx
Pictures:
 http://gulfofmexicooilspillblog.com/2010/11/15/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-blog-oil-spill-clean-up-581-million/
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/chernobyl_disaster_25th_annive.html

Review of AutoCAD, and Computers

Macintosh 11 1992

In this post I will be talking about AutoCAD 3D, computers, and other programs and how it has improved the way civil engineers design.  AutoCAD first came out in 1982, and this AutoCAD could only use basic shapes, line segments, and a little more.  AutoCAD was very rare the 1980's and 1990's for anyone to have.  It was also very slow because of the computing power of the computers back then.  I wasn't until about the mid 2000's that AutoCAD started to become more popular.  The 2007 version of AutoCAD that came out in 2006 made it more user friendly, easier to use, and efficient because of the better computers.  That is when AutoCAD really took off in the civil engineering world. 

AutoCAD 2013

In 2006 the computers were becoming faster,and AutoCAD was easy to work with and had way more option with designing, and there were other computer programs coming out that could simulate how all the different materials would hold up in all the different designs.  Civil engineers use computer to design and simulate how they design is going to with stand time and different variables like earthquakes and other natural disasters.  Civil engineers need computers and AutoCAD because it is a better way of designing then using paper and pencil. 

I have some experience with AutoCAD, other software that is design to test the weaknesses of your design, and I have a lot of experience dealing with computers.  Computers in general are the way of the future for civil engineer because they make it easier to do their job and design their projects.  AutoCAD is one of the better computer programs for designing and that is why it is so well known.  Once you learn how to use AutoCAD you are not done there because there are always new ones coming out so it is a continual learn process.  I thing that I have notice is that AutoCAD 2013 has a limited viewing window so you want to make sure to set that first.  Using AutoCAD uses a lot of you computers ram or memory, and also requires a good CPU in your computer, so to use AutoCAD you are going to need a good computer which can be expensive, but with all the new leaps in technology the computers with amazing computing power are becoming more and more affordable.  One thing you want to do when your using AutoCAD is to save your work all the time because computers when using AutoCAD have a tendency to crash or freeze then you loose all your work. 

Computers are being used by Civil engineers all the time now.  That is because of the accessibility of the computers and their programs.  Civil engineers need computers now days because the computers make the process of designing faster and faster.   One thing you should take away from it is that computers, AutoCAD, and other software all have their problems and that they all have flaws, but it is the way of the future.  Civil Engineers are using these things more and more everyday so they can produce a better product! 



 Reference from:
http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/autocad_history/

Civil Engineering Discription

Civil Engineers design everything that doesn't move from building to bridges and even dams.  Civil Engineers design these things so that they are safe for the public, and for the continued growth of our communities.  They even design the homes you are living in!  There are 6 types of civil engineers; there are ones that design water systems so people can get clean drinking water. Waste water systems engineers that design the filtration systems for the human waste. Structural engineers design building, bridges, airports, homes, and anything that is a standing structure. Geotechnical engineers design the footprints for building, roads, bridges, dams and more. Transportation engineers design roads, and traffic systems. The last one is Environmental engineers which help with mainly cleaning up the environment.  For an example they would clean up toxic areas, and spills so urban housing or other things can be built there.  YOU NEED CIVIL ENGINEERS FOR EVERYDAY LIFE!  By the way I haven't decided with one I want to peruse yet.

Well let's see how you are affected by Civil engineering in your everyday life.  First you wake up in the morning and you in a house that was designed by a Civil engineer the structure part of it.  Next, you hop on the road in your car.  The road you drive on was also design by Civil engineers.  Not only that but the highway system and how it works was designed by a transportation engineer.  Let's say you cross over some type of bridge on your commute to work, and what do you know it, it is design by a structural engineer.  Well when you finally get to work that build's footprint was designed by a geotechnical engineer, and then a structure engineer came in and designed the rest.  Now that, is only on the commute to work what about other places in your life.

When you drink water where do you think it comes from?  You should thank water system engineers for the readily available water and that it is clear water too.  There are waste management engineers that design what to do with all of you trash.  The last engineer is the environmental engineer that makes sure you safe and the environment is safe.  They deal with anything that is harming the environment or even how to clear it up like toxic waste.  So you should that the Civil engineer for some of the conveniences of everyday life.

I said earlier that I haven't narrowed it down to one but I have narrowed it down to 3 different types of Civil engineer.  The first one is a structure engineer because I like to design things and come up with new ways of making things, and whenever I walk into a building I look at it to see how it is being structurally being held up.  I like to look at bridges and see all the cool and different designs civil engineer are coming up with.  The second one I am looking at is the transportation engineer, because when I am on the road I'm constantly thinking of new ways of designing the road way and how the traffic should flow.  The last one that I'm interested in is geotechnical engineering, because I also catch my self think like how can they stability put this road way or building here with out fearing that it is going to collapse or get destroyed.  Those are the 3 fields of Civil engineering that I am interested in.

 

http://www.30before30project.com/2010/02/i-want-to-jump-off-this-bridge.html