Urban Livability, Sustainability & ResilienceDr. A. Emin Aktan

Roebling Professor of Infrastructure Studies

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

The Urban Engineer1. URBANIZATION CHALLENGES

2. CRITICAL FOUNDATIONS of A CITY

3. VISION for a new URBAN

SCIENCE

4. LIVABILITY, SUSTAINABILITY

& RESILIENCE

5. VISION for CIVIL

ENGINEERING 2025

6. CONVERGENCE FOR a new

URBAN SCIENCE

7. SMART CITY CONCEPTS for LIVABILITY, SUSTAINABILITY

AND RESILIENCE

8. EDUCATING new URBAN ENGINEER/SCIENTIST?

ELECTED OFFICALS AND

GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Challenges due to Urbanization • Stratified growth and increasing inequality

• Environmental concerns (degradation/loss of natural assets, air/water pollution, energy demand, climate change, solid and liquid waste, …)

• Cost of urban services (Housing, Health, Schooling, etc.)

• Disutility of critical infrastructures and their services

• Cost of maintaining the deteriorating built environment

• Increasing complexity of

natural and man-caused

hazards due to climate change; population growth and

accelerating urbanization

• Challenges to effective and good governance due to multiple

levels of government,

overlapping ownership and

interdependent service

providers with different org

cultures

UN Habitat 2016

Complex Foundational Systems of a CityMunicipal Engineer Volume 165 Issue ME2 Resistance and Resilience – Rogers, Bouch, Williams, et al (2011)

Urban PlanningIn 1898, Sir Ebenezer Howard started the garden-city movement

in London. United States held its first urban planning conference

in New York City, bringing together architects, public health

officials, and social workers.

Urban planning education continued to evolve from the

interactions of civil engineering, architecture, medicine, public

health, and sociology. By the 1960s, urban planning included

social sciences and economics as well. Today, over 70 US

Programs offer accredited degrees.

Today urban planning and design is evolving into urban science,

including urban informatics and smart-city technologies, GIS,

urban modeling and simulation, and mobility. Solutions to noise,

building energy, transportation, resilience, and hazards risks and

emergency response are investigated.

Foresight Future of Cities (2013-17) Project

UK Government Office for ScienceThe project team visited 20 cities to understand and integrate the work of – think-tanks, universities, research centers and lobby groups.

Municipal Engineering – Deals with municipal infrastructure and designs, constructs and maintains pavements, water supply networks, sewers, street lighting, municipal solid waste management, public parks,

bicycle paths, etc. working closely with Urban Planners.

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Livable, Sustainable and Resilient City

• United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (1987). Our Common Future. Triple Bottom Line extended sustainability to Social, Environmental and Financial-economic bottom lines - Elkington (1994).

• NAE (2008). 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century - Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure.

• NAP (2012). Disaster resilience: A national imperative.

• The White House (2014). “Smart Cities” Initiative to Help Communities Tackle Local Challenges and Improve Services.

• Rockefeller Foundation (2015).100 Resilient Cities.

• Bloomberg Philanthropies (2015). What Works Cities.

• Habitat 2016 – A New Urban Science.

• MILKEN INSTITUTE – Best Cities for Successful Aging (2017) - highlight the nation’s most livable metropolitan areas

The Vision for Civil Engineering By 2025 (ASCE) civil engineers serve competently, collaboratively, and ethically as master:

• planners, designers, constructors, and operators of society’s economic and social engine--the built environment;

• stewards of the natural environment and its resources;

• innovators and integrators of ideas and technology across the public, private, and academic sectors;

• managers of risk and uncertainty caused by natural events, accidents, and other threats; and

• leaders in discussions and decisions shaping public environmental and infrastructure policy.

URBAN INFRASTRUCTURES - issues

1. Culture of ownership and organizational accountability; Process vs Performance based!

2. Finance and lifecycle revenue mechanisms

3. Project delivery mechanisms and lifecycle costs

4. Quality and robustness metrics for services

5. X-Sector Coordination for Asset Management

6. Innovative paradigms & technology

7. Managing the intersections & interdependencybetween infrastructures and services

8. Managing multi-hazards Risks, Emergencies and Resilience

challengePERFORMANCE and ASSET MANAGEMENT OF THE BUILT URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Transforming the Practice of Engineering of

Large Complex Systems

Inter-Agency Working Group

on the Engineering of Complex Systems

Working Group included Directors fromNSF, DOD, DOE, NASA, NIST & US Army Corps of Engineers

Approved for public release by DOPSR on 11/27/2013http://www.acq.osd.mil/se/docs/IAWG-Position-Paper_DoD_12DEC2013.pdf

The complexity of engineered systems has swelled in the last several

decades, and this trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

While projects are becoming more complex, current engineering

practice has largely evolved from a top-down approach that is the

legacy of past successes. A fundamental rethinking of engineering

methodologies is urgently needed if our nation is to ensure that the

large complex systems critical to our national security, economy, and

quality of life are resilient in the face of natural disasters, creative

adversaries, and an unforeseeable future.

https://esd.mit.edu/symp09/presentations/day1.walkerlunch.peterson.pdf

Thomas W. PetersonFormer Asst. Director, NSF Provost atUniv of CALMerced since 2012

CHALLENGE: IDENTIFICATION, MODELING, SIMULATION

and CONTROL OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

ABET DOES NOT REQUIRE COVERING SYSTEMS LET

ALONE COMPLEX SYSTEMS

HOW TO LEVERAGE DESIGN THINKINGFOR LIVABLE SUSTAINABLE RESILIENT URBAN REGIONS

IRVING WLADAWSKY-BERGER Nov 4, 2016 Wall Street Journal http://on.wsj.com/2eH8Crw

• Design is no longer just for physical objects.

Design thinking is now being applied to abstract

entities, such as systems and services, as well as

to devise strategies, manage change and solve

complex problems.

• By now, it’s been a generally accepted that design

thinking can be applied to just about all disciplines

and professions. One cannot design what one

cannot imagine; therefore, enhancing creativity is

an important precursor to effective design.

• Desirability is central to Design Thinking.

HAZARDS and INFRASTRUCTURE DISUTILITY RISK

Natural Hazards Manmade HazardsATMOSPHERIC: Hail, Hurricane, Tornado,Lightning, Storm Surge, Flood/Flash Flood

TERRORISM: Blast, Fire, Explosion, Implosion, Chem-Bio Agents, Poison Gas, Gunfire , Cyber

SEISMIC: Fault rupture, Ground shaking, Falling Debris, Fires, Liquefaction, Tsunami

POLITICAL: Decision-making driven mainly by politics w/o Impacts, Utility and Feasibility

GEO: Avalanche, Expansive soils,Landslides, Mudslides, Rock falls, Subsidence, Slope Failures, Sinkholes

POLICY: A Lack of Policy (for innovation, accountability, responsibility), Bureaucracy, disconnected PLANNING vs EXECUTION

HYDROLOGIC: Coastal flooding, River flooding, Erosion and sedimentation, Desertification, Salinization, Drought, Ice

KNOWLEDGE: Lack of Modeling, Research, Technology Tools for Sustainable Management of Complex Multi-Scale Socio-Tech Systems

VOLCANIC: Tephra (ash, cinders, lapilli),

Gases, Lava flows, Mudflows, Pyroclasticflows, Projectiles and lateral blasts

CULTURE: Societal valuation and commitment to quality of life? Quality of education? Public demanding performance from Government, Planners, Engineers and Managers?

WILDFIRE: Brush, Forest, Grass, Peat ACCIDENTS: Highway, Rail, Subway, Airplane accidents; Leaks; Spills; Cascading failures due to Interdependency; Epidemics;

INCREASING UNCERTAINTYDeterministic - Random - Epistemic

Neon Swan Events:Immensely Important and Blindingly Obvious. Can be avoided if willed!

Black Swan Events:Highly Improbable withSignificant Uncertainty.Difficult to Mitigate, Resilience is Essential

Hazards with Very Important Consequences randomly occurring within established Return Periods. Risk may be mitigated by proper planning and preparation

HAZARDS, UNCERTAINTY, PLANNING, PREPARATION AND RESILIENCE

Livable, Sustainable and Resilient CityUS Smart and Connected Communities Framework (2015)

DOE, DOT, NIFA, NIH, NIST, NSF, NASA

The NSF Cyber-Physical Systems Group will coordinate efforts among Federal agency and with public-private partnerships for smart and connected communities. The relevant agency activities include:

• Performing foundational research and accelerating innovation and transition in scalable and replicable smart city solutions

• Applying advanced cyber-physical systems concepts, coupled with sociotechnical system understanding, to integrate city-scale IT and physical infrastructures

• Enabling replicable smart city solutions that provide powerful new safe, reliable, sustainable, resilient, secure, privacy-enhancing, and cost-saving platforms and services

• Promoting discovery, innovation, and entrepreneurship in smart city technologies

• Facilitating the ability of communities to apply cyber-physical systems concepts to solutions that make them more livable, workable, safe, and sustainable and that support an informed and engaged populace

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Vision 2025 Calls for

a new Urban Civil Engineer:

• Understand the evolving concepts of Urban Livability, Sustainability and Resilience together with the complex systems that make up an urban region;

• Join Elected Officials, Urban Planners, Architects, Economists, Social Scientists, Public Health, Industry and Community Leaders:– Preservation of Natural Assets and Ecosystems– Infrastructure Owner/Manager Culture (Financing, Revenue &

Organization), Performance and Preservation based on Lifecycle X-Sector Asset Management - including Sustainability & Social Equity

– Mitigate Disutility of Critical interdependent infrastructure services– Reliability Evaluation and Smart Renewal of the Built Environment– Identify and Mitigate Natural and Man-caused Hazards Risks and

Design/Prepare Scenarios for Effective Emergency Response Planning

– Leverage Technology (e.g. Cyber-Infra Systems, UAV’s, Data Analytics) for Innovating and Improving Urban Livability