Closed for the Holidays

If anyone wants to know why I have been writing less the past month, it is because the economy has begun recovery in my area and work is coming in strong and steady. I also participated in the Greening of the IMU project (writeup to come soon) and I have been involved with the latest efforts from the ASCE/EWRI Rain Garden project (writeup also to come soon).

IMU is pursuing LEED EB (image courtesy of Indiana Univ.)

Green Infrastructure for everyone!

I will be away from the computer most of the holidays, so wanted to wish everyone a good break and I will be writing again in about two weeks.

In the meantime, I will leave everyone with some fun websites to visit:
(Gen)erative scapes
Prepare to have your mind blown

Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air
Absolutely the best white paper/book/opinion ever produced on cutting through to the essential quandaries of providing sustainable energy for an entire country. If you do anything related to sustainability this winter, please start by reading this in its entirety. (Download full PDF here)

Building Green, Being Green
A structural engineer describing sustainable design from her own experiences

Bad British Architecture
Name says it all

Design Intelligence
Blog from the DI publishers

Reclaimagination
An inactive blog, but one from a civil engineer with great photos of a senior design project at CMU (created about 5 years after my own class' project at CMU, a writeup on this topic also coming soon)

Green Building Law Blog
"Pre-Consumer, Non-Recycled Content Regarding Green Building and the Law" - I've said it before and I'll say it again: The LEED certification process has torn down the walls that separate professionals and it has already changed the world. This blog about green building from a lawyer's perspective is evidence of the LEED legacy that will be remembered for many years to come.

Engineering Humour: Movies for Architects

Movies for Architects, by Blair Fink

Dirty Rotten Spandrels

Stucco on You

Girder, My Sweet

The Bad News Barriers

Take the LEED

Battman

The Gable Guy

Flashingdance

Requiem for a Beam

Gone With the Windows

You Got Surveyed

Fear of Litigation No Excuse for Poor Policy

A recent Supreme Court decision has important implications for civic management. In the case regarding the promotion of fire fighters in New Haven CT (Ricci v. DeStefano) the city's council refused to promote fire fighters to management positions after testing results revealed that certain minority groups tested poorly and were not eligible for advancement.

This case is strongly associated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII in particular), which has always been a contentious issue. Much of what I am discussing here is the court's opinion, not necessarily my own, so please don't bash this post if you don't agree with the Supreme Court's ruling. This post is only concerned with the beneficial aspects of the Supreme Court clarifying an incredibly complex issue, one that will allow it to come to decisions quicker and with more authority.

In the case of the New Haven firefighters, the Supreme Court found in favor of the firefighters, ruling that the city had imposed disparate-treatment based on prohibited actions. Basically, even though the city extensively studied the test and the test-takers it could find no reason to throw out the results. Because it still threw out the results, its decision was based solely on racial considerations.

This case is important because no good option existed for the city. Any decision they made would have been greeted with anger, lawsuits, and unhappiness. It is not unlike most decisions facing civic governance throughout the US. Cities must make decisions to operate, and this court ruling helps cities decide how to decide.

Based on the arguments made in court by the city, it became clear that the city's main motivation was to avoid liability under Title VII. There was no other basis for their decision. The court found this argument unacceptable. Decisions must be based on evidence, not fear of litigation.

Complicated issues must be decided by cities all the time. If no actions are taken, then the city becomes paralyzed. This has occurred in many cities already. The city officials and employees are so afraid of running afoul of legislation that they cease making decisions at all. This ruling has clarified the issue at hand - how to come to a decision when either path presents a prima facie liability. It is an easy solution: gather evidence and base the decison on that evidence.

Cities still have to make hard decisions. They still have to deal with the consequences of their decisions. But they can no longer hide behind their fear of litigation, because that in itself is a horrible option.

Metastable Equilibrium

One of the key concepts in engineering theory is metastable equilibrium. Systems are designed to resist forces, but a large shock can cause catastrophe.

The classic example of this is a marble resting on the dish. The marble can move in any direction but will come back to rest in the middle of the dish - unless it is pushed hard. Then it is given enough energy to seek a new equilibrium position. Maybe the new equilibrium position is inside a larger dish. Maybe it's on the floor, rolling straight towards a heating vent.


The principle at work here is minimization of potential energy. Every object at every scale seeks to minimize its energy level. It explains the throwing off of photons from excited electrons in a neon light, it explains the shape of water condensate, it governs the flow of hot gas up a chimney, and, unfortunately, it means that our buildings fall down in high winds.

You can never prevent minimization of potential energy because you can't stop entropy. However, you can slow it down. You can trick systems into finding a local minima, just like the marble was tricked into the middle of the saucer. This is called metastability. The system is not at its preferred state, but a further investment of energy is needed to push it over the edge. Until that energy is provided the system will remain in its metastable state.

This concept is not only useful in structural engineering, it is broadly applicable. For instance, we can use the principles to discuss why sustainability is important. If we look at the ecological system here in the Midwest, we see that everywhere people are constantly altering small aspects of our environment. None of these actions by itself cause much damage. But if we consider the sum total of all of the actions, we realize that a destabilizing force is being applied.

An ecological system is merely metastable. Most people believe that humans can act as responsible stewards of the environment (e.g. recent tuna conservation debate). The current theories of resource management assume that we can study natural systems and determine where the tipping points are. As long as we don't push nature over the edge then we can optimize our utility of it.

The problem is that balancing nature on the edge means only a small shock will lead to disaster. History is full of civilizations who have learned too late that nature should not be pushed too far. A recent study pointed out that the Nazca civilization may have been decimated by a combination of over-harvesting Huarango trees before a severe El-Nino event. The old forests are now deserts, having suffered a complete ecological collapse in CE500. The people kept pushing that marble towards the edge, never expecting the strong shock that forced it over.

We are now playing the same game on a global scale. We don't have to think too hard to find the next shock to the system. Climate change is expected to be capped at a 2degC change, but could go higher if politicians don't find a way forward in Copenhagen (current rate is 6degC - BBC). This rapid climate change could force our ecological systems over the edge and hurtling out of control.

Not only will these changes devastate our natural resources, especially for those areas fenced in by human development, it will cause our carefully cultivated croplands major problems. Imagine trying to curb world hunger and disease when global crop capacity decreases by 30%.


As an engineer, I am familiar with the effects of upsetting metastability. Our industry is always studying disasters and trying to learn from them. Of course, the disasters leave human tragedy in their wake. Society buries its dead. Survivors return to the scene of the tragedy and face a pile of debris that was once the source of their community. Amid all the calls to rebuild, everyone begins to doubt if what was lost could ever be replaced. We must remember that certain things can never be replaced.