Archive Issue

Nationally, more than 800 people die in Red Light Running (RLR) crashes each year. Georgia averages 25 fatalities annually in RLR crashes, with more than 3,800 injuries in 5,200 crashes. The most severe crashes at intersections are angle- or side-impact. Combining engineering solutions with long-term and effective enforcement, particularly automated, should help reduce injuries and crashes at intersections. RLR cameras are an effective countermeasure that can potentially reduce the severity of crashes by deterring violators who receive citations and civil monetary penalties.
  &n.... READ MORE

Traffic Congestion and Its Effects
The dramatic growth of the metro Atlanta area continues to exceed the capacity of our highway system. The results are gridlock, pollution, reduced quality of life, and a greater risk of injury.
   
This year Forbes magazine ranked Atlanta #1 on its list of "Worst Cities for Commuters" due to the time residents spend in traffic. However, more than half of all traffic congestion in the metro area is caused by non-recurring incidents such as crashes. According to a AAA-commissioned study published in March, the monetary cost of crashes .... READ MORE

DLPE is a full service educational organization of the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) that delivers world class programs and degrees, both credit and non-credit to countries around the globe. During 2008, over 1000 courses were offered to more than 18,000 students which created an enrollment of over 20,000! DLPE has four mission and service areas: (1) distance delivered education, (2) professional masters and non-credit professional/executive programs, (3) English as second language and (4) professional meeting room rentals in the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center (GLC). The center is.... READ MORE

The holidays are hard on us, and the Georgia General Assembly tracks close behind. Legislative preparation has long been underway by those who deal in this currency.
   
The Georgia Engineers Legislative Coalition has been at it since June, debriefing the 2008 Session and thinking forward to 2009.  Then along came the financial/economic disorder, which may be trumping most everything else.  Disorder may not be the exact word to describe it, but the alternative is worse.  Then we had the national election—for months (some would say many), it sucked all the p.... READ MORE

If you're like most people, you've encountered situations where you had to do something, even though there was something else you really wanted to do. Perhaps you wanted to take the kids to a movie, but you had to finish a project for work. Or maybe you had to attend a meeting, but you wanted to spend the afternoon working out. Chances are that whatever you had to do won out, and what you wanted to do got put on the back burner…yet again.
   
Such a scenario happens all the time. People are torn being doing what they want to do (which usually involves personal activities.... READ MORE

Other than the introduction of high-occupancy vehicle lanes in the mid-1990s, the freeway system in metro Atlanta has not seen any major operational changes in the last few decades. While lanes have been added and some interchanges have been modified, the basic concept of a limited-access roadway with entrance and exit ramps has remained virtually the same. That changed in 2008 when the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) began implementing region-wide ramp metering on nearly all the freeway entrance ramps in the Atlanta metropolitan region. These devices introduced the concept of "con.... READ MORE

By: Jason Wiser, John Willis, Randy Shaw and Cliff Arnett

When the Columbus Water Works wanted to modify the existing meso-philic anaerobic digestion process at its South Columbus Water Reclamation Facility (SCWRF) to achieve Class A biosolids, it turned to the environmental engineering and consulting firm of Brown and Caldwell.  Together CWW and Brown and Caldwell developed what is now known as the Columbus Biosolids Flow-Through Thermophilic Treatment process, or CBFT3 .
   
The CBFT3 process is also being coupled with a Cogeneration System where methane gas.... READ MORE

It' s time to make our transportation network better. For everyone.  Georgia's Investing in Tomorrow's Transportation Today (IT3) initiative gives us the opportunity to do just that.
   
IT3 is developing a business case and a guiding strategy for improving Georgia's statewide transportation network—its roads and highways, public transit, bridges, railroads, airports and seaports. Rather than just building projects we can afford and then seeing if they get us where we want to go, as we do today, we'll first figure out where we want to go and then build the projects t.... READ MORE

Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, is the congressionally authorized process the Department of Defense has previously used to reorganize its base structure to more efficiently and effectively support our forces, increase operational readiness, and facilitate new ways of doing business. Base Realignments and Closures cause near-term social and economic disruption in local economies that serve and benefit from military facilities located in their communities. There are many success stories from previous closures. If approached correctly, a base closure can actually be an economic opportunity.... READ MORE

In January of 2006, Mayor Rex Millsaps told me directly that the water department budget is going to be in the black or we are going to get out of the business. Needless to say, the Mayor had my attention! I was determined to demonstrate the potential for producing up to 80 percent of the city's daily water needs from the wells that we had. Most were drilled over the last 22 years but there are two that are much older. Well #1 was drilled in 1915, and well #14 was drilled in 1945. The city relies on Gwinnett County to make up the difference the wells cannot supply. The city does not have the c.... READ MORE

On average, Americans spend approximately $4,000 on every 1,000 gallons of bottled water purchased—while the same quantity of tap water costs approximately $1, and it takes three to seven times as much water to produce a bottle of water as it does to fill it up at the tap.  Did you know that Americans use 25 billion single-serve plastic water bottles per year and 20 billion of those end up in landfills?  Did you also know that producing single-serve bottles for American consumption in 2006 required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil producing 2.5 million tons of ca.... READ MORE