Students win contests for Chesapeake crossing challenge

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 20 May 2024 17:21:31 +0000

Students win contests for Chesapeake crossing challenge Nathan Kahl Mon, 05/20/2024 - 13:21

It’s such a part of the experience of spending time on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that those in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore metropolitan areas know it simply as “the bridge.” And woe to those who don’t plan summer travel just right, because they may spend hours queueing up, waiting to cross it.

The William Prestion Lane Jr. Memorial (Bay) Bridge, with two spans, one built in 1952 and one in 1973, carries around 30 million vehicles annually. The age of the structures, combined with ever-increasing demands on the route over the Chesapeake Bay, has several entities looking for new solutions for crossing the bay.

One of those solutions may come from a team of engineering students from ��ӽ紫ý’s Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR). The team won best paper in the climate and sustainability track at the Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Design Competition and best presentation in the decision analysis track at the General Donald R. Keith Memorial Capstone Conference at West Point.

The six-page conference paper, authored by team members Carolyn Vaseghi, Jose Zorrilla, Richard Collie, Fatima Alarcon, and Naif Al-Harbi, was also published in the West Point conference’s proceedings along with the other competitors' papers.

“We were tasked with designing a crossing that is part of a regional transportation system between metro D.C. and the beach communities on the Eastern Shore, not just a bridge,” said team lead Vaseghi.

“We started the design by conducting ‘customer interviews’ with over 30 different stakeholders for the stakeholder analysis and analyzing historic traffic flow data,” said Collie.

Team members Carolyn Vaseghi, Fatima Alacorn, Naif Alharbi, Richard Collie, and Jose Zorilla. Photo provided.

The team identified seven solutions that included bridges with different lane configurations and a tunnel, noting that new boring technologies have reduced tunneling costs. The tunnel option is safer, with no bridge collision opportunities as with the recent disaster at Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The team’s proposed tunnel can accommodate rail mass transit, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and providing access to the 30% of D.C. residents without access to cars.

“In addition to obvious measures like congestion and costs, we also identified a category of measures for social justice and climate change,” said Alarcon.

The students outlined the pros and cons of design options in a report for the Anne Arundel County Transportation Commission (AACTC) and the Maryland Transportation Authority. The report will next be sent to Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s office.

Vaseghi said it was a tremendous learning opportunity and a good exploration of the systems engineering process. She said they focused on the “left-hand side of the systems engineering ‘V,” noting that in that process they started with context analysis, moved on to stakeholder analysis and concept-of-operations requirements, finishing with a simulation, where “we camped out for a long time,” spending four weeks on that part of the process.

Professor Emeritus George Donohue, a member of the AACTC, said, “This team’s out-of-the-box thinking about the tunnel option and their detailed analysis provides decision-makers a strong basis to make a sound investment that will affect the region for the next 75 years.”

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George Donohue

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Systems Engineering and Operations Research

systems engineering

Chesapeake Bay

Students

College of Engineering and Computing

Assessing climate change costs on careers and coastal communities

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 30 May 2023 16:30:26 +0000

Assessing climate change costs on careers and coastal communities Nathan Kahl Tue, 05/30/2023 - 12:30

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Celso Ferreira

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Coastal communities worldwide are seeing stronger storm surges, more powerful waves, and potential devastation for homes, infrastructure, jobs, and a way of life. Celso Ferreira, an associate professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at the ��ӽ紫ý College of Engineering and Computing, studies the impacts of these threats and suggests ways to manage them.

In May 2023 he co-authored a paper, Jobs at Risk: Sea Level Rise, Coastal Flooding, and Local Economies. “This study is the first to evaluate potential future impacts of flooding from sea level rise and climate change to people’s jobs and incomes. This new methodology provides a more equitable analysis of the impacts of climate change and a vision into its potential implications for the region,” said Ferreira.

According to the study, approximately 263,500 jobs and $11.1 billion in wage income will be threatened by 100-year flooding in the Chesapeake Bay region by 2050. The nonprofit Resources for the Future, with whom Ferreira co-authored the paper states, “These (jobs) figures represent 3.3 and 5 percent of all jobs in the Chesapeake region now and in 2050, respectively. The study also identified several flooding ‘hot spots’ around the region—counties and cities in Maryland and Virginia where 25 percent or more of jobs are flood-exposed.”

“Working with MDDNR and TNC allows our research to directly impact decision-making at the state and local level. It has been a tremendous experience to see our research translated for stakeholders so they can benefit from the science that Mason is producing.”

In addition to quantifying the economic impact, the paper recommends ways to prepare for it. The recommendations include aiming government spending at developing areas outside current and future flood zones; giving coastal communities financial aid but with the condition that businesses are in areas with limited exposure to flooding; providing aid to enterprise zones that incorporates requirements for resilience, such as infrastructure changes to reduce potential flood damage; using FEMA dollars to relocate businesses to different areas within their existing community but out of flood zones; and encouraging communities to change zoning rules to account for climate change.

Ferreira visits the Chesapeake Bay to study the impacts of climate change

In a related project with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MDDNR), Ferreira and colleagues are assessing the ability of tidal wetlands, marshes, and sea grass beds to absorb storm surges and waves, protecting developed areas.

Ferreira says, “We place sensors that measure wave energy across the coastal habitats during extreme coastal storms, capturing unique data documenting its flood protection capacity. We then use computer models to predict future scenarios through 2100, with different projections of sea level rise focusing on coastal flood protection. We are looking at how will these ecosystems provide coastal protection into the future.”

These coastal barriers are essential to absorbing destructive storm surges. The first few feet of tidal marsh can reduce wave energy by 90 percent, according to TNC. In addition, marshes can trap tidal water sediment, allowing them to grow naturally with sea level rise. “Living” shorelines improve water quality while creating a habitat for fish and increasing biodiversity.

Nicole Carlozo of MDDNR says, “The data collected will help us make better decisions about where to restore and protect coastal habitats and make decisions about coastal restoration strategies. For example, how wide does a marsh need to be, to provide protection benefits.”

Researchers believe that their findings will provide input for statewide models to understand how habitats will transition as sea levels rise, allowing Maryland to make strategic decisions about anticipating and responding to such changes.

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Climate Change

coastal habitats

Chesapeake Bay

civil and infrastructure engineering

environmental engineering

Research

CEIE Success Stories

CEC faculty research

Chesapeake Bay

Students win contests for Chesapeake crossing challenge

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Assessing climate change costs on careers and coastal communities

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