President's Monthly Message
August 2008
Specialties Are Our Specialty
It has been said that ASCE's Institutes and its Technical Activities Committee (TAC) are the "heart and soul" of our Society. Every member survey tells us that a primary reason engineers join ASCE is to obtain access to the specialized technical information that flows from the institutes and the TAC.
To enhance the value of ASCE membership, our members may choose to belong to one of our eight technical specialty institutes at no cost. The institutes focus on technical, educational and professional issues within a particular area of professional practice. By joining an institute, professionals are better able to share information, exchange ideas and gain access to technical resources. Our Technical Region, an important component of our new governance structure, represents the nearly 103,000 individuals who belong to the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI,) the Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI), the Construction Institute (CI), the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI), the environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI), the Geo-Institute (G-I), the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI), or the Transportation & Development Institute (T&DI).
When advances are made in practice or through research, technical committees working within ASCE’s institutes or within the TAC's divisions and councils bring this information to out members, as do conferences, workshops and such technical publications as manuals of practice and journals. The TAC's divisions and councils include the Aerospace Division, the Council on Disaster Risk Management, the Energy Division, the Geomatics Division, the Pipeline Division, the Technical Council on Cold Regions Engineering, the Technical Council on Computing and Information Technology, the Technical Council on Forensic Engineering, the Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering, and the Technical Council on Wind Engineering. Moreover, the TAC has a very active Committee on Sustainability. These bodies orchestrate the work of approximately 200 committees that help define the standards, direction and focus of the various areas of our profession.
The TAC is also active in investigating disasters, both natural and man-made. It has dispatched teams to Japan and Peru and at present has a team in China studying lifeline damage caused by the various earthquakes there.
The TAC organized two conferences in 2008. The Aerospace Division's Earth & Space 2008 was held in Long Beach, Calif., in March, and the Pipeline Division’s Pipelines 2008 took place last month in Atlanta. The five conferences that the TAC has scheduled for 2009 will concern themselves with lifeline and earthquake engineering, computing in civil engineering, pipelines, forensics, and engineering in cold regions.
The EMI, the Society's newest institute, seeks to place engineering in a broader context by providing a forum for researchers, practicing engineers, industry representatives, citizen groups, public officials and others. It hopes to become a leading group in the field by effectively serving the needs of the worldwide mechanics community and promoting research work and the application of scientific and mathematical principles to address a broad spectrum of problems, many of which will have societal aspects. In May, its very successful inaugural conference featured nearly 500 technical presentations and a dozen concurrent sessions, the participants coming from 34 countries (See "Engineering Mechanics Institute Holds Inaugural Conference in Minneapolis," ASCE News, July 2008, page 1.)
The AEI's 2008 Architectural Engineering Conference will be held in Denver September 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center. In addition to a number of half-day and full-day workshops, participants will have access to technical presentation sessions and panel discussions. Students also will benefit, as a job fair and various activities are planned.
COPRI has published the proceedings of its Solutions to Coastal Disasters Conference, which was held in April of this year in Hawaii. The work promises to be a valuable resource for engineers, managers, planners, scientists, geologists, economists, oceanographers and meteorologists working in coastal zones because the 90 papers contained therein address themselves to, among other topics, coastal inundation and flooding, shoreline erosion and beach nourishment, shoreline management, coastal hazard migration, the vulnerability of coastal structures and the rise in sea levels. Furthermore, COPRI's Waterways Committee will soon be publishing a manual entitled Navigation Engineering Practice and Ethical Standards, a work designed to help engineers ensure that their endeavors are fully consistent with the standards set forth in our Code of Ethics.
The CI, in conjunction with the San Francisco Section and the Sacramento Section’s own Construction Institute, will host a workshop in San Francisco September 26-28 that will feature technical sessions, site tours and networking opportunities for construction engineering students. The gathering will also provide an opportunity for students to rub shoulders with construction industry leaders and representatives of potential employers.
The G-I will conduct its 2009 annual meeting during the International Foundations Congress and Equipment Expo ’09, which will be held in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., March 15-19. The conference will also bring together members of the International Association of Foundation Drilling and the Pile Driving Contractors Association. Engineers, foundation contractors, researchers, equipment manufacturers and suppliers of tools and services will be discussing the latest technological advances in the foundation and earth retention industry.
The proceedings of the SEI's Structures Congress 2008, held in April in Vancouver, B.C., are now available in CD-ROM format. The various topics addressed in the papers include international structural engineering, business and professional practice, bridges, special structures and multidisciplinary projects. To order the CD online, visit http://content.seinstitute.org.
The T&DI is making progress on a number of fronts. In April I had the opportunity to address those attending the First International Symposium on Transportation and Development Innovative Best Practices, which was held in Beijing. This was an opportunity for ASCE to raise its stature in the international arena. Indeed, transportation is a vital part of every nation’s economy and has much to do with defining the quality of life. Securing resources for building and maintaining transportation infrastructure is a challenge that every country faces. The T&DI's successful Web seminars (“webinars”) and training sessions, which are focusing on, among other topics, traffic engineering and the application of intelligent transportation system (ITS) technology, are drawing large numbers of participants. The T&DI continues its successful series of workshops exploring bus rapid transit (BRT), and it is also championing an approach to transportation design that takes the setting of a project into consideration so that those who live near it and use it will see the finished work both as an aesthetic and as a functional improvement.
As an active member of the World Water Council, the EWRI is helping to plan sessions for the 5th World Water Forum, which will be held in March in Istanbul, Turkey. I traveled to the EWRI’s World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2008, which was held in May in Honolulu. Special attention was given to sustainable development and to the problems faced by nations bordering the Pacific. Water resources of course loom large in any discussion of public health, economic vibrancy and the quality of life. Next year’s World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, to be held May 17-21 in Kansas City, Mo., will provide an important opportunity for the best minds at work in the environmental and water fields to exchange ideas and bring their expertise to bear on important topics, The congress will pay particular attention to the engineering challenges posed by the world’s great rivers as societies seek to balance the sometimes competing goals of environmental stewardship and economic development. The conference's organizers hope that insights from researchers and practitioners will promote efforts to develop practices for managing and restoring watersheds, ensuring the safety of dams and other hydraulic structures, and addressing environmental issues.
Several institutes have seen a marked increase in the number of section and branch technical groups seeking affiliation as institute chapters, and I believe that this increase can be attributed in part to the work of the Technical Region’s leadership.
All ASCE members are eligible for membership in one institute at no additional cost, and the cost of each additional institute membership is a mere $20. Click on any institute link on the Institutes/Technical Practice home page (http://www.asce.org/instfound/) to explore the various benefits conferred by institute membership. I urge you to play an active role in institute programs and to put your heart and soul into the heart and soul of ASCE. Only through member involvement and commitment will our technical programs continue to develop and flourish.
-- David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE