Looking to Sustainable Cities as Key to Smart Future
The world is entering an age of urbanization. Every year more people relocate to cities, creating new challenges around affordable housing, transport congestion, access to jobs and environmental impacts. Even though Australia is the planet’s sixth largest country by land area, two-thirds of its population is concentrated in four prosperous metropolitan regions: Sydney, Melbourne, South-East Queensland and Perth. Australia’s population grew by 30 percent in the last 20 years. The four major re...
Water Supply Planning and Drought
The Environment Agency’s draft guidance for the next generation of Water Resource Management Plans makes it clear that water companies must understand how their systems will perform during periods of drought. Ralph Ledbetter is a senior hydrologist at HR Wallingford. He explains why water companies need to look beyond their historic records if they want to see the bigger picture when it comes to effective planning for drought. Why consider droughts beyond the historical record? The draft En...
Smart Cities: Revolution in Every Area of Life
By Enzo Peduzzi, Director of Industry Affairs, Siemens Building Technologies, and President of Euralarm The current process of urbanization is reflected not only in housing shortages and sky-rocketing rents. European cities, in particular, were built based on 19th-century principles, and the individual supply systems are often viewed in isolation. The exploding population is rapidly driving cities to their limits with respect to energy supply, security, digital communication, transportation a...
Road Innovations Improve Productivity, Increase Efficiency, Reduce Risk and Add Value
Road networks globally continue to require substantial investment in order to maintain safe passage for the traveling public. Funding continues to be an issue, so the industry is responding by improving process and leveraging innovation to deliver projects. Sharing these lessons, whether good or bad, is paramount in moving the industry forward. This one-day forum provides a great opportunity to meet with other industry leaders and visionaries, as well as hear how organizations are responding to...
YII2015 Building and Facilities Forum - Focusing on Business and Project Delivery Performance
BIM, BIM, BIM. Everyone is still talking about BIM. The building industry continues to search for process improvements to make project delivery more efficient, reduce waste, and produce higher performing assets. We have learned that the technology is only part of the puzzle and more attention needs to be given to process and people. Expanding digital connectivity is making possible new capabilities for data sharing, bringing a focus to data quality assurance and the benefits of use over the life...
Reality Computing Goes Underground with Ground Penetrating Radar
Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a non-destructive method for locating and mapping underground objects by transmitting high-frequency radio signals into the ground that bounce back when they hit a buried object or a boundary between different material types. GPR surveys were first used in 1929 to measure the depth of a glacier in Austria and, in the following decades, likewise used to map the thickness of ice sheets and glaciers. In the 1970s, people started to use GPR for applications not invo...
Geodesign Summit Europe Comes Into Focus
What better place to be in September than the historic city of Delft, the Netherlands? Famous for its canals and blue pottery, Delft is also a place steeped in the study of technology and engineering, as it is home to universities that specialize in those fields. One of the city's most famous residents was Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the lens maker whose improvements to the microscope revolutionized the instrument and allowed him to be the first to observe and then describe single-celled organisms....
Three Things You Should Know About Managed Services
The simplicity of the user experience that we have grown accustomed to with our smartphones and tablets is in stark contrast to the growing complexity of the cloud computing technology that makes it possible. Enterprise information technology has experienced a series of disruptions and an increasing rate of change over the last ten years that indicate we have entered into a whole new era of computing. Small wonder then that the IT shop in the typical architecture, engineering and construction...
Autodesk Acquires David Benjamin's Architecture and Design Studio to Create a new Autodesk Studio
Autodesk continues to expand the boundaries of design tool capabilities with close collaboration with designers that are pushing the use of computer hardware, software and materials exploration. Continuing along this path, the company announced the acquisition of David Benjamin's architecture and design firm, The Living, to create an innovative, first-of-its-kind Autodesk Studio. According to Autodesk: As part of Autodesk Research, the studio will create new types of buildings, public instal...
A Mobile App Aids City Planners with Details for Cycling and Walking
It has been notoriously difficult for city officials to really learn how residents move around major cities, particularly when taking into account the routes of joggers, walkers and cyclists. They take unique paths to get to work or their homes, and many of those routes aren’t tied to paved road. Maybe they’re cutting through parking lots or running alongside the waterfront. Maybe they’re weaving in and out of bike lanes. Without knowing exactly how many people are traveling between differ...
Stormwater Interview with Robert Page, P.E., Vice President, HNTB
Santa Barbara County North Branch Jail Expansion
February Issue 2026
