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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Before LiDAR: Early Aerial Mapmaking
The first maps on record that took advantage of an aerial perspective were sketched from the deck of a hot air balloon under the auspices of the Civil War’s Union Army Balloon Corps. Aerial reconnaissance exercises took place regularly during the American Civil War and creating a rough map was strategically key.…
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A Peek at the High-Tech Playbook: Lessons from Software Giants on Creating a Unique Work Space
Milton Hershey of Hershey Chocolate company fame, maker of unremarkable but affordable chocolate, established a company town in Hershey, Pennsylvania in 1903, complete with worker lodging, parks for employee enjoyment and other enviable conveniences. As we move into 2019, we learn that Microsoft Corporation is investing $500 million to create affordable housing in…
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The Team that Could
When it comes to managing a company, we have come a long way. Thankfully, employees are no longer just cogs in the machinery of a business. In Charles Dickens’ s satirical book, Hard Times, published in 1854, factory workers were referred to as “hands.” Nothing more: just hands. Thankfully, today the employee…
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LiDAR Makes Waves in Engineering
Out with human surveying teams slogging across a project site to map a floodplain and in with slick UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle or drone) performing photogrammetry and collecting millions of elevation points in a matter of minutes. With the growing sophistication and cost-efficiencies of UAVs, the technologies of photogrammetry, lidar (Light detection…
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Hail to an Engineer Who Did It All
Photo By Geof Sheppard – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link Legend has it that on January 12, 1828 during the construction of the Thames Tunnel in London, England, everything was fine—until it wasn’t. When the water started coming in there was little possibility for escape. This was the first project in…
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At Work with the Intrapreneur
I came of age in the 1970s with the understanding that once I finished school I would, much like my dad and grandfather, work fairly regular hours at the same job, performing more or less the same duties, for the next 40 years until I retired. At that time, companies were managed…
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The Onward March of Artificial Intelligence
More than just ordinary tools, in most cases your electronic devices can perform a series of tasks better than you can. Computers gain competencies daily in a variety of fields. Autonomous software agents trade on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NEST security cameras distinguish between faces as they sort…
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The Making of the First Digital Computer
Photo By The original uploader was TexasDex at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Andrei Stroe using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, Link In a scene from the 2014 movie The Imitation Game, the brilliant Alan Turing is urged by his colleague at Bletchley Park, Joan Clarke (played by Keira Knightley), to…
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How My Date with an Angel went South
It was right after the Dot-com crash, and we were strapped for operating capital. I was frustrated with a languishing business situation that seemed to offer no opportunity for real growth. Sales had bottomed out and I didn’t have the capital to expand our software line in a way that I knew would…
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Six Ideas to Give your Meetings a Winning Edge
As the old saying goes, time is money. And there is nothing worse than feeling like you just frittered away valuable time at a meeting that tanked for lack of a tight agenda, the key people, etc. What are the key components of a meeting we can all be proud of? A…
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