EDC Graduate Students Use Smartphones to Evaluate Rural Drinking Water Systems in Nicaragua
Fourteen graduate students from the Engineering for Developing Communities program at the University of Colorado Boulder traveled abroad this summer to gain field experience in community development.
The students partnered with nonprofit organizations, private companies and universities for four- to 12-week “practicum” experiences in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, Uganda, Nepal and China.
The Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities at CU-Boulder arranged the practicum experiences, which included support for drinking water and sanitation systems, low-carbon approaches to affordable housing, cook stove optimization and emission testing, and other community development projects.
Among the CU students who went abroad were Chalie Nevárez, Katie Spahr and Chance Steffey, who helped to implement a monitoring and evaluation system that uses smartphones to assess the sustainability of community-based drinking water and sanitation projects in Nicaragua.
The three students worked with El Porvenir, a nonprofit organization based in Denver that provides technical assistance and training for rural communities lacking access to government services to build and manage their own drinking water and sanitation systems.
Over a period of seven weeks, Nevárez, Spahr and Steffey helped train El Porvenir staff and local university students in the use of the smartphone system, and supervised the rollout of a pilot evaluation system in 44 rural communities.
The evaluations will help El Porvenir determine the factors that influence communities’ ability to operate and maintain their water and sanitation systems in the long term. According to Rob Bell, executive director of El Porvenir, these factors could include hygiene education, environmental education, training of young people, or incorporation of women into the water and sanitation committees.
For students, the practicum experience gave them the opportunity to apply their engineering skills to a real-world project. The experience opened Nevárez’s eyes to the world of development and has encouraged her interest in working in the field upon graduation.
“I learned that community development is not a linear problem and solution, and it’s not just about the technology. There are many factors you have to consider such as politics, power, organization and economics,” said Nevárez, who expects to graduate from CU in December with a master’s degree in civil engineering and who is bilingual in English and Spanish.
“The experience in Nicaragua was a great opportunity for me and I was so impressed with the ability of the local students and staff,” she said. “The smartphones made the evaluation so much quicker; we uploaded a survey every 15 minutes and we got richer data with pictures of the projects.
“I would love to go back and keep working in the field as a development engineering consultant,” she said.
The Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities promotes integrated, participatory and sustainable solutions to the engineering challenges of the developing world, with a focus on clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene; energy; sustainable and disaster-resistant building materials and shelter; and cook stoves and indoor air quality.
The center sponsors courses in engineering and sustainable community development; administers a graduate certificate in engineering for developing communities; conducts research and design on appropriate technologies for developing communities; and provides technical assistance and training related to sustainable community development and appropriate technologies.
For more information about the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities, visit their website.
CEAE Faculty Lead $7 Million Initiative Aimed at Military Vehicle Safety
University of Colorado Boulder engineering faculty are leading a $7.2 million multidisciplinary research initiative on soil blast modeling and simulation for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The research, which starts this month, is aimed at creating a more accurate representation of the impact of buried landmines and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, on light-armored military vehicles so that the vehicles can be better designed to withstand such blasts.
The award is administered by the Office of Naval Research as part of the defense department’s competitive Multi-University Research Initiative or MURI program, which supports basic science and engineering research at U.S.universities related to long-term national security needs.
MURI awards are provided to accelerate progress in cutting-edge research areas by supporting multidisciplinary teams with larger and longer awards than other DOD research programs.
The grant will provide $4.2 million to CU-Boulder and $3 million to co-investigators at four other institutions. The other schools involved are the University of California, Berkeley; University of Texas at Dallas; University of Tennessee Knoxville; and the University of Utah.
Richard Regueiro, assistant professor in CU-Boulder’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, is the principal investigator. CU-Boulder professors Ronald Pak, John McCartney and Stein Sture of civil engineering, and Oleg Vasilyev of mechanical engineering, also are involved.
The research initiative will involve experiments using CU-Boulder’s large 400-g ton geotechnical centrifuge coupled with computational modeling. The objective is to develop and validate a model that accurately represents explosive blasts of varying charges, depths and soil types.
CU-Boulder’s proposal was one of 27 MURI awards made to academic institutions in different topical areas in 2011. The proposals, which are being funded with a total of $191 million over five years, were selected from a field of 332 proposals, including 17 on the topic of soil blast modeling and simulation.
CEAE Professor Develops Energy Efficiency Technology
Professor Gregor Henze, in conjunction with Chicago-based Clean Urban Energy (CUE), has developed a cloud-based optimization engine that integrates energy system operations in large commercial buildings with the operation of the electric grid system. The software has been exclusively licensed to CUE for commercial use. The full press release can be viewed here.
Professor Henze’s work has also earned him the 2011 Excellence in Energy Efficiency Technology Commercialization Award from the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association.
2011 NSF Graduate Student Fellowships
Three CEAE graduate students were awarded three-year fellowships through the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. This highly competitive program provides funding for students pursuing graduate degrees in engineering, mathematics, and science.
Julie Korak, a doctoral student in the environmental engineering program, is working with Professor R. Scott Summers to develop an analytical method for detecting hydraulic fracturing fluid in groundwater. Hydraulic fracturing is widely used for the extraction of oil and natural gas. There is a growing concern that the chemical compounds, some of which are toxic, used in the fracturing process have the potential to contaminate groundwaters or enter surface waters during disposal. Julie plans to use fluorescence spectroscopy to develop an economic and simple method for detecting the presence of these compounds. Such a method would benefit both rural and urban communities wherever there is a prevalence of oil and gas development.
Austa Parker, a doctoral student in the environmental engineering program, is working on a research project with Professor Karl Linden, examining the use of advanced oxidation technologies to destroy chemical contaminants in drinking water. Her work will utilize advanced analytical chemistry techniques such as mass spectrometry and toxicity testing to identify oxidation byproducts for select chemicals on the US EPA Candidate Contaminant List. Her work will provide important information on the treatability of these contaminants, supporting policymakers, water utilities, consultants, and other academics.
Melissa Stewart, an MS candidate in the geotechnical engineering and geomechanics program, is working on a research project with Professor John McCartney involving centrifuge modeling of soil-structure interaction in energy foundations. After she completes her MS degree, Melissa will continue will her PhD degree at CU-Boulder, focusing on the impact of heat exchange on the deformation response of geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures.
CEAE Faculty Funded through Vision Research Program
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CEAE assistant professor Richard Regueiro’s research proposal “Simulation of blast loading on an ultrastructurally-based computational model of the ocular lens” has been funded through the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Vision Research Program (VRP). The goal of the VRP is to support research targeting the causes, effects, and treatment of eye damage and diseases that result in impairment or loss of vision in service members. Professor Regueiro’s research objective is to better understand how traumatic cataract is formed in the combat soldier as a result of blast loading. Better understanding of these mechanisms, through computational modeling and tissue experiments, could help maximize vision recovery for injured soldiers and civilians and improve how protective eye gear is designed.