What FEMA Accepts on a LOMR, and Where the Time Actually Goes
Summary: On a National Flood Insurance Program submittal, the schedule is set by review cycles and engine-version compliance, not by how fast the model solves. FEMA accepts named…
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Rainfall Data in Transition: NOAA Atlas 14 to Atlas 15
Summary: NOAA Atlas 14 remains NOAA’s current precipitation-frequency standard and authoritative source for the areas it covers, while Atlas 15 will gradually replace it with updated, seamless, nonstationary…
Locating Wetlands for Better Model Development and Planning
As hydrologic engineers, we would be remiss not to use all information available to us in the course of understanding water flow within a drainage basin. Increasingly, geospatial…
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The AI High Speed Train
Climbing aboard the AI high-speed train: Will hydrologists be next? Articles don’t typically have “shelf lives,” but this one certainly does. There’s a definite possibility that twelve months from now, the points made in this post could be completely out of date. Changes are happening fast; ever since AI went mainstream in…
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The Evolution of Civil Engineering
How BIM is Reshaping the Future Civil engineering, the backbone of infrastructure development and architectural innovation, is undergoing a monumental transformation. At the heart of this revolution is building information modeling (BIM). This innovation refers to a digital representation of a building’s characteristics, all contained within a single file, allowing for easy…
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Hanging on Every Word
Photo By Kim Shiflett – KSC-20160408-PH_KLS0003_0047, Public Domain, Link Photo By Ben Stanfield – Link, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Photo By Los Angeles Air Force Base Space and Missile System Center – 171025-F-PP655-236, Public Domain, Link Successful business people of the past and present attain almost mythological status. Note the outpouring of…
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A Coffee Bar and Other Perks
The workplace is changing, and signs of this change are everywhere. From companies with in-house bistros to Google’s dog-friendly spaces and Microsoft’s family benefits, the workplace is slowly evolving. Companies state that the underlying goal of these programs is to support employees, attract the best job candidates and foster work environments that…
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The Lesser Known Engineer: Nikola Tesla
Public Domain, Link Over a century ago, a gifted man by the name of Nikola Tesla toiled away on his inventions in an upper flat of a derelict New York City apartment house until the early hours of the morning. In the afternoon when he took his daily walk, he would make…
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How Do We Plan for the Next Flood?
We are at a crossroads. For several years now, we have been aware of the fast-declining state of our country’s roads, bridges and other elements of our country’s infrastructure. The ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) issues a report every four years on the state of our nation’s infrastructure. According to ASCE,…
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Keep the Beast out of the Bay
The massive volume of water that makes up the Great Lake ecosystem boggles the mind. Consider that the Lake Superior basin alone contains the largest quantity of freshwater found anywhere in the world. According to Dan Egan, author of the recently (2017) published and much acclaimed book, The Death and Life of…
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The Military Missions, Discoveries and “What If” Moments that Led to the Development of GPS
In 1954, the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. Sputnik I was a man-made marvel that made it possible for radio signals to be detected from anywhere on earth with simple radio equipment. George Weiffenbach and William Guier from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) picked up radio…
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A Sandbar in Frontier Chicago and the Canal that Shaped a City
How can a shoreline considered too wild to comfortably travel by foot or other means be transformed into a global hub for business and trade? Today, the Port of Chicago, with facilities at the mouth of the Calumet River (Iroquois Landing) and further inland at the junction of the Grand Calumet and…
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Alexander von Humboldt and Building a Better Bridge
Photo By Joseph Karl Stieler, Public Domain, Link Today’s scientists, engineers and resource managers know that a project’s success depends on a variety of factors, including the analysis of several environmental parameters. We know that the natural systems we are analyzing are complex. We know that water temperature, flow velocity, substrate type…
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