Emerging Cyber-Solutions Are Updating Urban Infrastructure
By Gordon Feller Cities are working hard to adopt state-of-the-art technologies. Several forces are driving them to embrace emerging innovations: agencies are working on interconnected problems; increasingly diverse communities are pushing governments to meet their needs; and government operations are becoming more complex, working daily with massive datasets. As a result, municipalities have concluded that they must have reliable, next-generation connectivity. With the right infrastr...
The Very Model of Modern Major Terminal: Kansas City Replaces Three Outdated Terminals with a Cutting-Edge Jewel
Credit: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) Kansas City International Airport (MCI) has its origin in the “Great Flood of 1951,” which more or less destroyed the facilities of Mid-Continent Airlines and Trans World Airlines (TWA) at Fairfax Airport as well as damaging Kansas City Municipal Airport. The city already was planning to build a larger airport, and the catastrophe, of course, lent greater urgency to these plans. Ground was broken north of Kansas City in 1954, and the new airport’s...
You Can’t Build a Healthy Economy on Crumbling Infrastructure
On Feb. 10, 2022, Informed Infrastructure Editorial Director Todd Danielson interviewed Maria Lehman, president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and director of U.S. Infrastructure for GHD US. Maria Lehman, P.E., ENV SP, F.ASCE Director of U.S. Infrastructure for GHD US President-Elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) ASCE has 150,000 members in 177 countries and is the largest publisher of civil engineering materials, including conferences and o...
Propelling Wind Power Surveying with Drones
With 5G-connected drones and edge computing, dozens of towers can be inspected simultaneously. By Donavon Graves There are more than 52,000 utility-scale wind turbines across the nation that require ongoing maintenance, and total wind power capacity is expected to grow 62 percent by 2024. With the cost of a new wind turbine blade running nearly $1 million, it’s imperative to keep turbines functioning at peak capacity to maximize their lifespan. GE Renewable Energy’s “Stay Ashore!” pr...
Erosion Control Primer: Stay in Harmony with Nature
(Credit: Dropshots) The natural environment exists in a state of slow, but steady, change, and the same forces that shape the earth inevitably impact any infrastructure built on it. In earth science, erosion results from surface processes that move soil, rock and dissolved material from one place to another. Although erosion is a natural occurrence existing wherever soil conditions and climatic instigators collide, frequently the built environment is a compounding force that accelerates th...
One Hundred Above the Park: A New St. Louis Landmark
One Hundred Above the Park’s architecture has made it one of the most notable buildings in St. Louis, with views of Forest Park to the west and the Gateway Arch to the east. (Sam Fentress, courtesy of Clayco) Rising 36 stories above the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, a strikingly modern apartment tower called One Hundred Above the Park has become the city’s newest landmark. Completed in 2020 and designed by Studio Gang (www.studiogang.com), an internationally...
Making the Move to Reclaim Water: Extensive Rehabilitation of Arizona Facility Demonstrates Need to Reuse Water to Meet Increasing Demand
Florida began widespread use of reclaimed water in the mid 1960s, becoming one of the first states to begin using reclaimed water for agricultural purposes, and more communities have adopted use of the technology through time. Estimates vary, but the National Academy of Sciences claims water reuse amounts to less than 1 percent of total water usage in the United States; the General Accounting Office reports 36 states use reclaimed water. Those statistics, however, are just the tip of...
Plotting For Growth: Geospatial Technology Boosts Efforts To Rebuild Forests And Reestablish Landscapes
Imagine planting enough new trees to cover a plot of land the size of Switzerland. Now do it again and again, nearly 500 times, until you’ve covered 2 billion hectares. It’s a huge, seemingly overwhelming effort. Yet a Dutch company is using advanced geospatial technologies to make it happen. From its base in Amsterdam, Land Life Company works to restore lands degraded by natural or human activities such as wildfire, desertification, agriculture and urbanization. It’s one of a small handf...
Reality Now: Turning Data into Actionable Information
Much industry media coverage has been given to the capabilities of current reality capture (recap) tools such as drones, mobile lidar scanners, hand-held SLAM devices and even smartphone-based capture technology. And surely most readers of this publication are at least casually familiar with recap terminology such as point cloud, photogrammetry, orthomosaic, lidar and 3D mesh. It seems nearly every AEC and Infrastructure (AEC/I) software and hardware vendor has joined the chorus extolling the...
Knock on Wood: California’s Mass Timber Regulation Changes Expand the Building Material’s Viability
A project developed by SKS Partners and designed by Perkins&Will, this 134,000-square-foot triangular building is San Francisco’s first CLT building and California’s first multi-story fully mass timber building. (Image) Recent changes to California’s mass timber regulations have expanded opportunities for building design and construction that increasingly leverage the benefits of wood. Code changes went into effect July 2021 as an early adoption of what will be in the next formal code...
Video: New Roundabout Under Construction at McIver and Old Florence Roads in Darlington County
Promenade at The Point
June Issue 2026
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