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