The Dirt

Alaska Gas Pipeline

Check out this PROJECT featured in the New York Times . . . it's likely to become the largest construction project in North America.

New Bridge in China Breaks Three World Records

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China's Sutong Bridge has set a new world's record for the longest cable-stayed span . . .

From ENR.com:  "Sporting the world's longest cable-stayed span, largest piled foundations, second-tallest towers and longest cable, the Sutong Bridge in China's Jiangsu Province will also serve the more mundane purpose of cutting off almost an hour off the crossing of the Yangtze River between the cities of Nantong and Suzhou–currently done only by ferry." 

See the complete story, photos and video.

The Widest Street in the World

Do you know where the widest street in the world is? The flag above is a hint.

This past week, I was reminded that I've actually seen it, and had to cross it twice as a pedestrian. Select the .kmz file below to have Google Earth take you there.

Download the_widest_street_in_the_world.kmz

Civil Engineering Jargon

Mark D. Stucky is a technical writer whose humorous column appears regularly in Intercom Magazine, a publication put out by the Society for Technical Communications.

In a recent column called "Dr. Jargonlove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technobabble", he said: "Jargon didn't originate ex nihilo just to confuse people...unless the Genesis 11 story of the Tower of Babel was not really about the divergence of world languages and cultures, but about the rise of civil engineering jargon."

Love it.

Kite Aerial Photography

In my last post, I mentioned that I attended the VII International Conference on Easter Island and the Pacific that was held at Gotland University in Visby, Sweden. There I met many of the world’s leading archaeologists who study Rapa Nui (Easter Island). I also had the pleasure of meeting Elaine Dvorak. Elaine and her husband Don are kite aerial photography (KAP) experts who have flown their camera-carrying kites on Rapa Nui.

This has to be one of the most ingenious and affordable methods of remote sensing that I have ever come across. I simply had to do a posting about it. For about $400 and a digital camera you too can do aerial photography. Many of you are laughing right about now, but imagine you are on Rapa Nui, the most remote, inhabited island on the planet. You have little to no budget, so it is out of the question to have your site flown by an aerial photogrammetrist outfit like Sanborn, etc. Or imagine that you are a government surveyor in India or Ethiopia with similar economic challenges, but are desperate to obtain this crucial data for analysis, planning, GIS, construction, etc.

KAP may be the ideal solution. Just check out these results Elaine and Don gained on Ahu Tepeu on Rapa Nui (the same site I spent three days surveying in February). One simply has to georeference the photos with Raster Design and voilà!

For those of you who are interested on pursuing this further, here are just a few sites:

Parts and KAP Kits:
http://www.brooxes.com
http://www.kapshop.com

KAP Sites:
http://arch.cedberkeley.edu/kap/kaptoc.html
http://scotthaefner.com/kap
http://www.bults.net/kapnet/index.php
http://www.kaper.us

Thank you, Elaine, for your time and for sharing this innovative solution with me!

Cardboard Bridge

Not your usual bridge building material. Here's an interesting blog post that was forwarded to me about a Cardboard Bridge.

The Grand Canyon Skywalk

Here is another example of engineering wizardry. The Grand Canyon Skywalk opened a few months ago at the Grand Canyon here in my home state of Arizona, and it’s been booked solid ever since. Not for the faint of heart or for those who don’t like heights, the skywalk takes you seventy feet past the canyon edge on a platform made of glass. The structure is ¾ of a mile above the Colorado River.

An article featuring the Skywalk’s design and construction is in the July issue of PE Magazine.

Great Manmade River (GMR) Water Supply Project, Libya

Libya’s GMR project, the world's largest engineering venture, will transport water from aquifers beneath the Sahara, and convey it along a network of huge underground pipes to the northern coastal belt, “to provide for the country's 5.6 million inhabitants and for irrigation. Intended to be the showpiece of the Libyan revolution, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi called it, ‘The eighth wonder of the world.’"
It has been a while since I came across a civil engineering project of this magnitude! Check out the whole story HERE.

I am so impressed by the scale of this project and others that are either planned or underway in Libya that I hope to attend the Projex Libya Conference in Tripoli this December. Stay tuned!

Chinese River Diversion Project

Image from The New York Times

A huge, I said HUGE, 50-year, multi-billion-dollar river diversion project is underway in China.
The project creates three channels that connect the Yangtze river with the Hai, Huai, and Yellow rivers farther north. Each of these channels will be over 600 miles long and will carry about 680 billion gallons of water every year—as much as the entire current outflow from the Yellow river— to drought-stricken northern regions.

The first phase of work began in late 2002 on the eastern and middle channels. This phase is estimated to cost about $19 billion and will take five to ten years to complete. The ultimate cost of the river diversion mega-project—the largest ever planned— is expected to exceed that of the $24 billion Three Gorges Dam.

The Chinese government argues that the river diversion project is badly needed. According to China Daily, water shortages affect two-thirds of China's 600 major cities, costing $14.5 billion each year.

Wow!

The MMMBT Project

Here is another amazing example of civil engineering. This is a photograph of the Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel (MMMBT) a 4.6-mile-long combination bridge-tunnel system connecting two Virginia communities across the mouth of the James River. In this case a tunnel was a more practical design than a bridge. The amount of ship traffic here is particularly large due to the presence of the US Navy. Check out the location with Google Earth by picking here:  Download MMMBT.kmz