Mortenson Center

Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 20:42:52 +0000

Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/14/2022 - 14:42

Tuesday, Sept. 20 | 12:00 p.m. | Zoom - Register Now

Safe, disaster-resilient housing is critical to our way of life, prosperity, and sense of security. Yet, many houses remain vulnerable to damage from earthquakes, hurricanes, and other hazards, affecting communities in the near and long term.

In this webinar, Professors Amy Javernick-Will and Abbie Liel will describe findings from research that their team conducted to enhance housing safety in the multi-hazard context of Puerto Rico.

Considering that a large portion of housing stock is built informally, where building codes and regulations may not be followed, they argue that how builders and residents perceive housing safety influences how housing is designed, built, and maintained.

Focusing on one misalignment, the installation of hurricane straps, they will discuss their initial efforts to build capacity in the region by partnering with a community-based organization.

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CU Boulder researcher earns major award to study water quality challenges in rural Canadian communities

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 20:41:03 +0000

CU Boulder researcher earns major award to study water quality challenges in rural Canadian communities Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/09/2022 - 14:41

Jeff Zehnder

Karl Linden has landed a major fellowship to research solutions to water pollution in rural and First Nations communities in Canada.

Linden, the Mortenson Professor in Sustainable Development in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been selected as a 2022 Fulbright Scholar.

The prestigious U.S. State Department program offers scholars the chance to teach and conduct research around the world to expand American partnerships and share knowledge. Linden will spend the fall 2022 semester at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a particular focus on water quality issues in Canadian First Nations Communities.

“The solutions engineers typically bring to small communities haven’t been working,” Linden said. “We have these intractable problems of water quality and treatment. We aren’t making the improvements in public health you’d expect to see. Somehow we’re missing something.”

Many First Nations communities in Canada are small and in remote areas, and some do not have safe running water or conventional sanitation.

“I want to help transform how we do engineering by incorporating more diverse solutions,” Linden said. “If we can build on engineering fundamentals but listen to and incorporate indigenous knowledge and values including the centuries of resilience embedded in these communities, we may find a whole new solution set of ideas and designs. It has to start with listening, rather than coming in with pre-conceived answers, which is how we engineers commonly approach problems. I am looking forward to taking the time to meet with communities and understand what kind of problems they want to solve, and then see what it takes to co-create solutions that work in the geographies and with the diverse cultures represented.”

Linden has focused his career on water quality and treatment efforts. He has made major contributions to the advancement of ultraviolet light systems for disinfection, which are now used by many municipal water systems.

“I’ve been working on UV solutions for decades, and it’s really exciting to see your research move into everyday use,” Linden said. “UV technology is now used for everything from single households up to disinfection for New York City, which has the largest water system in the world.”

A particular focus for Linden in Canada will be water quality issues due to algal blooms and heavy metals like mercury and arsenic from industrial mine tailings. These are topics in which his collaborators at St. Mary’s University have regional expertise.

“These metals and algal toxins impact the natural water quality, and the downstream users of these watersheds, including First Nations communities, are bearing the burden of this pollution, which needs to be treated to create safe and potable water,” Linden said.

He hopes to help communities improve their water quality and to broaden his own perspective through the fellowship.

“It’s a short time, just a few months, but I want to meet with community partners, local water utilities, and shadow researchers,” Linden said. “There are a lot of overlaps with water issues we have in rural areas of Colorado and in Native American communities in the southwest, and this is a chance to broaden my perspectives and bring ideas back to Boulder as well.”

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Sustainable WASH Systems learning partnership publishes end-of-project report

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:01:10 +0000

Sustainable WASH Systems learning partnership publishes end-of-project report Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/03/2022 - 10:01

The Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership led by CU Boulder has published an end-of-cycle report detailing work completed through the $15 million project with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Over the last five years, the learning partnership coordinated the efforts of seven organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia seeking to develop, test and document sustainable approaches to local water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to support initial infrastructure investments.

Professor Amy Javernick-Will
Co-principal investigator for the WASH project

The project was unique in that it partnered with local organizations to implement and compare activities across multiple countries and contexts — offering a more holistic picture of what works and what doesn’t from a systems level. The final report summarizes the work and shows how a systems-level understanding and engagement approach can help providers navigate challenges to service sustainability. It also shows how incentivizing preventive maintenance and fast repair times can improve rural water services and describes how collective action platforms can bring about policy change.

The Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership was organized and managed through the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering beginning in 2016. Professors Amy Javernick-Will and Karl Linden, both associate directors of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering and co-principal investigators for the project, said this final report serves as a cap to an incredibly productive and valuable research project.

Javernick-Will said sustainable services remain a daunting challenge in the WASH sector because governments, service providers and development organizations have traditionally focused on access and service expansion in WASH systems with less emphasis on sustaining existing services and infrastructure. She pointed to failed water hand pumps in Africa, which represent a total lost investment of between $1.2 and $1.5 billion over the last 20 years, as one example. The fact that more than half of all subsidized toilets are unused, misused or abandoned is another example.

“Gaps in service coverage remain significant and — meanwhile — implementation challenges are growing,” she said. “Our approach and findings summarized in this report show that the best way to strengthen these crucial local systems is to instead meaningfully engage with stakeholders on the ground to collectively identify priorities and address common barriers like financing while also consistently reviewing, measuring and adapting the systems toward overall sustainability.”

In all, the partnership has generated over 200 unique papers, materials and presentations over its life cycle, with five PhD, and two master’s students, along with five undergraduate students, working on aspects of the project at CU Boulder alone. A few highlights noted in the report, which were achieved in collaboration with partners, include:

Data on water pump functionality is now available for the first time to government maintenance service providers in Afar, Ethiopia.
A comprehensive sanitation assessment spurred stakeholders to form a learning alliance and convince decision-makers to prioritize sanitation with other development activities in Debre Birhan, Ethiopia.
The project conducted 64 analyses to improve stakeholder understanding of WASH systems, showcasing shifting prioritization toward maintenance.
The development of master plans to coordinate investments and align efforts for domestic and institutional WASH services in five districts in Uganda and Ethiopia.
Approximately 500 people from over 40 countries attended the online close-out with presentations on shared findings.

�鶹��Ժ, faculty and staff affiliated with the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering working on this project and related issues in Africa, Asia and beyond.

Strengthening interconnected systems

Javernick-Will said the project began with a theory of change that focused on understanding and strengthening local systems to better sustain WASH services. This theory recognized that sustaining outcomes depends on the contributions of multiple, interconnected actors from different areas and with different expertise or skills. With that in mind, the team at CU Boulder started their research with the premise that strengthening a local system means directly engaging with the people within it to understand the system and collectively identify needs and priorities.

The team eventually focused on four priorities to accomplish that goal: stakeholder understanding, network analysis, professionalized service models and collective action. Together, they resulted in work to identify collaboration gaps — such as disconnects between district-level stakeholders and user communities — and ways to professionalize maintenance models that proactively service, repair and replace hardware to deliver more reliable, guaranteed service. The full list of projects, approaches and activities for each priority is available online and will aid many future interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects in the field.

Linden said the Mortenson Center was well positioned to lead this type of large-scale research for a variety of reasons.

“The depth of research expertise on our team in these subjects — coupled with long-standing connections to the international organizations that work on these problems every day — is a powerful combination to develop lasting solutions and approaches,” he said. “This type of large-scale, ongoing research contributes to the overall body of knowledge in crucial global engineering areas like network analysis, professionalized service models and collective action. And we fully expect to keep working in these areas for years to come.”

Partners on the project included IRC WASH, Whave, Tetra Tech, Linc, Environmental Incentives, WaterSHED, and the University of Oxford. The project’s website contains links to over 200 knowledge products and presentations, and an annotated bibliography of resources.

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CU Boulder, Deloitte launch Climate Innovation Collaboratory to accelerate action on climate crisis

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 17:46:00 +0000

CU Boulder, Deloitte launch Climate Innovation Collaboratory to accelerate action on climate crisis Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/19/2022 - 11:46

Deloitte and the University of Colorado Boulder on Tuesday launched a new Climate Innovation Collaboratory to translate cutting-edge climate research and data into meaningful climate solutions for federal, state and local government agencies and communities.

Researchers work on a project to develop a blockchain and sensor platform for groundwater conservation in California. From left to right: Matthew Falcone, CU Boulder PhD student; Stephanie Tatge, The Freshwater Trust; Becky Rittenburg, The Freshwater Trust; and Nathan Wangusi, IBM Research

CU Boulder is a powerhouse of research and proven interdisciplinary approaches in the climate sciences and innovative technology solutions. Deloitte specializes in helping government agencies mitigate the impacts of climate change and achieve their ambitious climate equity, resilience and sustainability goals. The new collaboratory brings together the power and experience of both organizations.

Deloitte’s initial $2 million commitment will accelerate the research and application of climate solutions being developed by CU Boulder and Deloitte climate professionals.

“This collaboration will expand government access to critical climate data and science, encourage the exchange of public information, and support the work being done at CU Boulder’s 12 research institutes and more than 75 research centers,” said Terri Fiez, vice chancellor for research and innovation at CU Boulder.

Findings from the 2022 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change speak to the urgent need for action on climate change. CU Boulder and Deloitte will continuously connect work from the Climate Innovation Collaboratory to market applications and support government agencies with collaborative proposals and response efforts.

“We’re proud to team up with the University of Colorado Boulder to develop the tools and resources that government agencies need to accelerate their progress on climate solutions at this critical time,” said Deborah Sills, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, who serves as the global consulting leader for Deloitte’s government and public services (GPS) practice and a member of Deloitte’s U.S. Board. “Working together, we will help design and implement data-driven approaches to address the climate crisis; build a more equitable, sustainable society; and foster a more resilient environment for generations to come.”

The collaboratory will start with two research and technology development projects addressing environmental challenges in the western United States, including one project on wildfire risk assessments and another project on drought mitigation.

“This is a critical moment to redefine the nation’s wildfire risk,” said Jennifer Balch, professor of geography and director of Earth Lab, an Earth data synthesis center housed at CU Boulder. “Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated, thousands of homes have been lost and over a hundred people lost their lives in blazes in just the past three years. An amazing wealth of data on fire and homes—from government data and satellite imagery—offers an opportunity to build resilience solutions to acute wildfire risk.”

“The current 20-year megadrought throughout the western United States is the worst in more than 1,200 years and is intensifying social and economic stressors,” said Evan Thomas, professor of environmental engineering and director of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering and director of the collaboratory. “We have an opportunity with technology and with collective community action to improve management and conservation of our surface and groundwater resources.”

The collaboratory, hosted by the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering, will also focus on a wide range of climate priorities, including but not limited to building public-private innovation and entrepreneurship capacity, expanding the deployment of technologies, enhancing organizational decision-making with robust earth science data, improving the analysis of energy systems and advancing climate equity and environmental justice.

“This innovative collaboration with the University of Colorado Boulder will help government officials access, analyze and interpret the latest climate data and research to strengthen their program execution,” said Mike Canning, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte’s GPS leader. “We are committed to this alliance and to helping those on the front line better protect their communities, mitigate the climate crisis and make an impact that matters for generations to come.”

As a global leader in climate, environmental and energy research, the University of Colorado Boulder is partnering with United Nations Human Rights to co-host the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit in fall 2022.

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Civil PhD lead author on rural water infrastructure maintenance paper

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:31:37 +0000

Civil PhD lead author on rural water infrastructure maintenance paper Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/30/2022 - 09:31

Caleb Cord (PhDEnvEngr'22) is the first author on a new paper in Science of The Total Environment that looks at water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services in developing countries from the systems level.

The work is part of the recently completed $15 million Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS) on campus that was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). That overarching five-year project was run through the University of Colorado Boulder’s Mortenson Center in Global Engineering. It coordinated the efforts of seven organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia seeking to develop, test and document high-potential engagements with local WASH systems across multiple countries and contexts.

We asked Cord about the overall project, how his research in the paper fit into the larger discussion and where the work will go from here.

Question: You recently graduated with your PhD from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. How did you first get involved in the WASH and SWS research projects?
Answer: I joined the Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS) in August 2018, and it has been so rewarding to collaborate with many great minds around the world on it. Looking back, I am beyond thankful for the lessons (academic, professional, and personal) I learned. Now that the project has wrapped up and my PhD is finished, I will be starting a job with Tetra Tech ARD as a deputy project manager and staff associate on their international water, sanitation, and hygiene programs.

Q: Can you explain what the USAID SWS project is at a high level and how this paper fits into it?
A: After decades of focus on constructing new water and sanitation infrastructure in low-income areas, we now face an immense global challenge in providing sustainable services and ensuring this infrastructure remains functional. Under SWS, eight partners across four countries (Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Cambodia) tested new ideas, approaches, and tools to build stronger systems for service delivery. When we talk about systems, we are referring to the actors and factors – institutional, social, environmental, technical, and financial elements – that influence service sustainability.

For example, one of our partners, Whave, is a rural water service provider in Uganda. Under Whave's approach, rural communities sign contracts and make regular, affordable payments in exchange for reliability assurance from Whave, who performs preventive maintenance and repair services on the hand pumps that communities use for water access. Building on over 12 months of my own fieldwork in Uganda and over three years of Whave's implementation, in this paper we examined 22 implementation cases from three districts to uncover the conditions that led to high levels of consumer contract retention. High levels of retention show there is consumer demand and that they are willing to pay for this service – an important indication of the social and financial sustainability of this system-strengthening approach.

Q: What are some real-world applications of this work?
A: Professional approaches to providing rural water services in low-income contexts are emerging and growing rapidly. Especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In the paper we provide targeted recommendations not only to service providers themselves, but also show that long-term success is going to rely on the efforts of many actors.

Caleb Cord

In the global WASH sector, we are continuing to move away from the voluntary, unsupported, unregulated, and underfunded arrangements of the past that have failed to improve sustainable services. As these important paradigm shifts take place, we need to build the body of evidence on what works and under what conditions. This study specifically sought to build evidence of the conditions needed for sustainable rural water service provision, and it is just one part of SWS's contributions to the global WASH sector as we shift our minds toward more sustainable service delivery.

Q: Was this a research question or area you were particularly interested in before joining the project?
A: Absolutely. I came to CU Boulder to connect with and be part of the thought-leading global engineering research that happens here. And since my background was in water supply systems, this line of work was a great fit.

That said, these specific problems and research questions emerged after I joined the project and learned more about the challenges facing the WASH sector today. I spent a lot of time working alongside our partners in Uganda and learning from their immense and dedicated efforts to build stronger systems for rural water services. This work stemmed directly from those interactions and would not have been possible if not for our close collaboration with the amazing minds behind Whave's work in the field and our other partners' work across SWS.

Q: What was it like working with professors Karl Linden and Amy Javernick-Will on this project?
A: They are the best advisors I could have asked for. They always pushed my work to be the best it could be and stood alongside me as I navigated some of the toughest situations I have ever been in, always providing the resources and room to grow. Managing SWS was no easy feat because there are so many partners with so many different interests, incentives, and ideas. In the end, the project – and my own success – has largely been a result of their dedication and personal investment in everything they do.

Read the full paper

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Newly published paper revolutionizes global engineering curriculum

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:43:56 +0000

Newly published paper revolutionizes global engineering curriculum Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/28/2022 - 10:43

A new publication headed by the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering seeks to create better alignment among academic programs and sector needs when it comes to training engineers in global development.

The publication comes after the center hosted over 100 participants from universities, donors, government agencies and industry partners for a virtual workshop series as part of a National Science Foundation grant to advance engineering education. Together, that group established a comprehensive global engineering body of knowledge which was recently published in Development Engineering.

CU Boulder authors on the report come from the Mortenson Center, the Environmental Engineering Program, and the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering.

Mortenson Center Managing Director Laura MacDonald is the first author on the report. She said it is intended to support and provide consistency to graduate programs across the country as they prepare and educate the next generation of global engineers.

“What we present in the paper ensures that global engineers have the technical skills they need to succeed, but also the transversal and interdisciplinary skills that are required to work across sectors, with the ultimate goal being global poverty reduction,” she said. “We worked with a broad set of stakeholders, and the resulting paper reflects the breadth and depth of expertise we drew from to create the body of knowledge.”

MacDonald added that the biggest takeaway from the report is that a traditional engineering education is necessary, but not sufficient, for equipping engineers to work effectively in a context that is heavily influenced by historical, economic, and geopolitical factors.

“The role of engineers must evolve and account for structural and systemic barriers to global development and equity. Engineering education must change to support this evolution,” she said.

Associate Professor Evan Thomas is the second author on the publication and the director of the Mortenson Center. He said this type of collaborative effort builds on the center’s history of leadership in the field and as an inter-institution and interdisciplinary hub for groundbreaking research and foundational work.

“The Mortenson Center is uniquely positioned to facilitate this work because of our long history in global engineering graduate education and our ability to incorporate new approaches and perspectives,” he said. “Our faculty and staff are practitioners with personal experience. That fact ensures our results are both practical and applicable outside of academia.”

MacDonald said the team of contributors is already circulating the report for feedback and plans to have another event soon to continue engaging with workshop participants and their networks on these topics. She added that, while the emphasis of this research was on international development, the Mortenson Center is increasingly focused on the need for similar efforts domestically to address inequitable access to basic services and to work toward climate resilience in the United States, especially in underserved communities.

“We’re seeing more students entering our program who want to engage in domestic work and improve the livelihoods of people in the United States. I anticipate that the global engineering curriculum we’ve developed will increasingly be applied in domestic contexts,” she said.

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Newest AAAS fellows honored for work on nuclear winter, water treatment, STEM education

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 17:13:59 +0000

Newest AAAS fellows honored for work on nuclear winter, water treatment, STEM education Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/26/2022 - 10:13

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society, today announced that three CU Boulder researchers will join the ranks of its newest class of AAAS Fellows.

CU Boulder faculty named to the prestigious fellows program are: Noah Finkelstein, professor and vice chair of the Department of Physics; Karl Linden, Mortenson Endowed Professor in Sustainable Development; and Brian Toon, professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and research scientist in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). AAAS honored the researchers for their work studying everything from physics education and nuclear winter to using ultraviolet light to keep water supplies safe for drinking.

Noah Finkelstein. (Credit: Noah Finkelstein)

Brian Toon. (Credit: CU Boulder)

Karl Linden. (Credit: CU Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Science)

The 2021 class of fellows draws from 564 scientists from across the country. Nearly 30 other scientists from CU Boulder have also received this honor since the late 1970s.

“AAAS is proud to bestow the honor of AAAS Fellow to some of today’s brightest minds who are integral to forging our path into the future,” said Sudip Parikh, AAAS chief executive and executive publisher of the Science family of journals, in a statement. “We celebrate these distinguished individuals for their invaluable contributions to the scientific enterprise.”

Terri Fiez, vice chancellor for Research and Innovation at CU Boulder, saluted Finkelstein, Linden and Toon for their new achievements.

“We are thrilled that AAAS is honoring these three pioneering researchers,” Fiez said. “They epitomize CU Boulder’s commitment to research that can improve the lives of people around the world, and to ensuring that this spirit of excellence and innovation translates into education and opportunities for our undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs.”

A lifelong educator

Finkelstein likes to say he has been teaching continuously since he was 12. He first shared his knowledge of Hebrew and computer programming with younger kids through summer camp programs in the early 1980s.

Today, AAAS has recognized Finkelstein’s work in “establishing and advancing the fields of physics education research and institutional transformation in STEM education with an inclusive mindset.”

Finkelstein explores how students learn about physics—and how educators can improve the experiences of budding scientists in their classrooms. He’s studied how college physics classrooms can be more inclusive for women and people of color who are historically underrepresented in the field. In particular, Finkelstein said he wants STEM classrooms to be about more than just memorizing facts.

“If I could snap my fingers and do one thing, it would be to support people in broadening our definition of what education is,” Finkelstein said. “Education is also about socializing individuals so that students coming out of classes think of themselves as science capable and engaged– so that our majors can walk and talk like physicists. They can not only recognize and apply Schrodinger’s Equation but also make sense of it.”

Finkelstein serves as one of the directors of the Physics Education Research group at CU Boulder. He was also a founding co-director of the Center for STEM Learning and sits on the Board of Trustees for the national Higher Learning Commission. He received his doctorate from Princeton University and joined the CU Boulder faculty in 2003.

Clouds overhead

Toon has long had an eye on the skies. AAAS honored the scientist “for fundamental contributions toward understanding the role of clouds and aerosols in the climates of Earth and other planets, and for warning the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons.”

Throughout his career, Toon has examined “virtually every cloud and aerosol system in the solar system and some on exoplanets.”

He’s delved into how the plumes from massive volcanic eruptions and wildfires can influence Earth’s climate and studied the potential dangers of nuclear warfare. Toon and his colleagues previously discovered even a relatively small-scale nuclear conflict could kill tens of millions of people and wreak havoc on food crops across the planet.

“This work influenced the recent United Nations agreement to ban nuclear weapons globally as land mines, biological weapons and poison gases have been banned in the past,” Toon said.

Toon earned his doctorate from Cornell University and has been at CU Boulder since 1997. Among other achievements, Toon received NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1983 and 1989 and was one of the lead scientists who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Clean water to drink

Linden, professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, works to help rural communities, municipalities and other entities to control the spread of harmful pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 in air, on surfaces and in water.

He is acknowledged by AAAS “for distinguished contributions to the field of water treatment engineering, particularly using ultraviolet light for pathogen disinfection and abatement of organic contaminants in water reuse.”

Municipal and industrial water treatment facilities around the world use ultraviolet disinfection to eliminate harmful pathogens like E. coli and Giardia from water supplies in seconds. Linden, however, wants to go smaller—creating nimble and durable technologies that rural communities and countries with limited resources can use to treat their own water supplies.

Linden leads a five-year, $15.3-million project called the Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership through the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering at CU Boulder. In 2020, he won the Borchardt-Glysson Water Treatment Innovation Prize and was named the Clarke Prize Laureate for outstanding achievement in water science and technology.

“I am so honored to become a fellow of AAAS—an organization at the forefront of defending the integrity of science, promoting science-based policy and decision making, strengthening diversity in science and advocating for educational and career opportunities in science and technology,” Linden said.

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Research In Focus: How Professor Sherri Cook Uses Sustainable Water Treatment Systems

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 23:27:21 +0000

Research In Focus: How Professor Sherri Cook Uses Sustainable Water Treatment Systems Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/01/2021 - 16:27

When working with University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor Sherri Cook, you'll push beyond the boundaries of what's possible. Watch and learn how she's building a more sustainable future, for everyone, through clean water systems.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0YzzbunfbI]

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Chinowsky: As heat waves intensify, tens of thousands of US classrooms will be too hot for students to learn in

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 17:54:56 +0000

Chinowsky: As heat waves intensify, tens of thousands of US classrooms will be too hot for students to learn in Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/30/2021 - 11:54

Rising temperatures due to climate change are causing more than just uncomfortably hot days across the United States. These high temperatures are placing serious stress on critical infrastructure such as water supplies, airports, roads and bridges.

One category of critical infrastructure being severely affected is the nation’s K-12 schools.

Ideally, the nation’s more than 90,000 public K-12 schools, which serve over 50 million students, should protect children from the sometimes dangerous elements of the outdoors such as severe storms or extreme temperatures.

But since so many of America’s schools are old and dilapidated, it’s the school buildings themselves that need protection – or at least to be updated for the 21st century.
How The Conversation is different: We explain without oversimplifying.

Twenty-eight percent of the nation’s public schools were built from 1950 through 1969, federal data shows, while just 10% were built in 1985 or later.

As a researcher who studies the impact of climate change, I have measured its effects on infrastructure and health for over a decade. During that time, I’ve seen little attention focused on the effects of climate change on public schools.

Since 2019, climate scientist Sverre LeRoy, at the Center for Climate Integrity, and I have worked to determine if the nation’s schools are prepared for the heat waves on the approaching horizon.

Comparing the climate conditions under which U.S. schools were built with the projected conditions over the next two decades, we looked at the vulnerability of all K-12 schools to increasing temperatures. We determined whether current schools have air conditioning or not and whether they would be required to add air conditioning in the future.

The results of our study, “Hotter Days, Higher Costs: The Cooling Crisis in America’s Classrooms,” show that by 2025, more than 13,700 schools will need to install air conditioning, and another 13,500 will need to upgrade their existing systems.
Woman wearing hat and holding umbrella walks by school sign showing temperature is 104 degrees
Excessively hot days are occurring more regularly during the school year than in previous decades. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Hot classrooms

Research has shown that high classroom temperatures can make it harder to learn. Hot school days cause difficulty in concentrating, sleepiness, a decrease in energy and even reduced memory capacity.

Local school districts have policies for extreme heat events. However, rising temperatures mean these guidelines are no longer limited to rare occurrences.

Over the past several years, schools across the U.S. are increasingly forced to take “heat days,” cutting school days short because of classrooms that are too hot for students to effectively learn.

This is happening in places that range from Denver to Baltimore and Cleveland.

Compounding the increase in temperatures is the national trend that seasonal temperatures are rising in both the spring and the fall. For example, both Rhode Island and New Jersey have seen average spring and fall temperatures rise over 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 Celsius). Rather than high temperatures only occurring when students are on summer break, these heat events now occur regularly during the school year too. �鶹��Ժ today in a greater number of cities are beginning and ending the school year in classrooms that often exceed 80 F (27 C).
Expensive upgrades

The problem of more hot days is due to average temperatures increasing over the past 40 years. The number of days with high temperatures has risen across the country, with notable increases in large northern cities. For example, Chicago has seen the number of days over 80 degrees during the school year increase from 27 in 1970 to 32 in 2020 and a projected 38 by 2025. These increases affect schools in two distinct ways.

Schools in the traditionally cooler north – especially older schools – will need to be retrofitted with new air conditioning systems at an accumulated cost of US$40 billion by 2025. For schools in the traditionally warmer South and West, many existing systems will need to be upgraded at a projected cost exceeding $400 million.

Temperature increases are especially costly in large cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles, where existing efforts and continued needs will result in outlays exceeding $500 million, $1.5 billion and $600 million, respectively. These large districts have a greater number of older buildings that require upgrades in electrical and structural systems to support new air conditioning systems.

For all schools – even ones that don’t require system upgrades – the additional costs of operating air conditioning systems to meet the new demands will exceed $1.4 billion per year.
An equity issue

Since school districts are dependent on local taxes or bond measures to finance the school system, districts in affluent areas have a greater opportunity to obtain funds through tax increases or voter-approved bond measures.

In contrast, districts located in less affluent counties – including Bell County, Kentucky; Scott County, Tennessee; and DeKalb County, Alabama – face the challenge of creating safe learning environments without a financial safety net. With household incomes for the entire district in the bottom 20% of national averages, or less than $43,000 per year, these districts are unable to absorb significant tax increases.

In this regard, classroom environments become an equity issue. While the increase in temperature may affect all children, the relative impact of the increase and the ability to adapt is not equal.
Four people hold signs protesting high temperatures in school classrooms
Protesters in 2019 demand equity for Denver students who go to school in old buildings without air conditioning. Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post
Unsustainable solutions

Increasingly, school districts are turning to individual window units to address classroom overheating. However, window units do not cool interior offices, cannot circulate and exchange air within the classrooms, and will not meet expected lifespans due to extensive use. Furthermore, they create uneven cooling patterns and classroom disturbance due to noise. While these solutions are popular from an initial budget perspective, they ultimately fail to solve the hot classroom crisis.

Where mechanical systems are not an option due to budgetary constraints, school districts are looking at altering the school year to start later or end earlier. However, there are limits to this approach because there are minimum requirements for the number of days that are in the school year. Some schools are even experimenting with remote learning as a response when extreme temperatures are an issue.

The bottom line for schools and their surrounding communities is that rising temperatures from climate change are a growing threat to school infrastructure. Schools will need additional funding to install or upgrade air conditioning systems, pay for increased energy usage or redesign school buildings to enhance natural cooling. Various cities and states argue that fossil fuel companies have a duty to pay these infrastructure costs associated with climate change.

The only other choice is for America’s students to continue to endure classrooms where it’s simply too hot to learn.

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How fire today will impact water tomorrow

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 21:00:37 +0000

How fire today will impact water tomorrow Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/29/2021 - 15:00

In 2020, Colorado battled the four largest wildfires in its history, leaving residents anxious for another intense wildfire season this year.

But last week, fires weren’t the issue—it was their aftermath. When heavy rains fell over the burn scar from the 2020 Cameron Peak fire, they triggered flash flooding and mudslides northwest of Fort Collins which destroyed homes, killed at least three people and damaged major roads. Flooding along the 2020 Grizzly Creek and East Troublesome burn scars also unleashed mudslides across Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon and in Grand County just west of Rocky Mountain National Park.

These tragic events make it clear that the effects of wildfire don’t end when the flames go out. There can be environmental consequences for years to come—and keeping an eye on water is key.

CU Boulder Today spoke with Professor Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, an environmental chemistry expert who studies how wildfires impact water quality; and Assistant Professor and CIRES Fellow Ben Livneh, a hydrologist who studies how climate change affects water supplies and how fires and rain influence landslide risk, about how fire may shape the future of water in the West.

Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, is an expert in environmental chemistry who has been studying the natural processes that impact water quality since his arrival at CU Boulder in 2008, and how wildfires impact water quality since the High Park fire in Fort Collins in 2012. (Credit: CU Boulder)

What happens to water in lakes, rivers and streams after a nearby wildfire?

Rosario-Ortiz: When you have open flames, a lot of gaseous reactions and solid phase reactions, it results in the transformation of chemicals and alterations to the soil, and we observe the effects once we look at the water quality. For example, we observe the enhancement in the concentration of nutrients in water, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can cause subsequent issues in the reservoirs like algae blooms. There can also be a mobilization of metals and enhanced concentration and activity of what we call organic carbon as well as turbidity, which can then impact water treatment production and formation of disinfection byproducts.

How do city water suppliers and treatment plants deal with these impacts?

Rosario-Ortiz: Ideally, you want to have a secondary water source. In Fort Collins, back in 2012 after the High Park fire, the river was impacted but the reservoir was not impacted. So they could draw from the reservoir and wait for the worst to pass.

If you don't have that option, some of the challenges after wildfire and rain events include increased sediment mobilization, which is very challenging for water treatment operations. Those are short-term effects that might give you a headache, but they can also become long-term challenges. Never mind the fact that you may have issues with infrastructure.

Ben Livneh, assistant professor in civil, environmental and architectural engineering and a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), is a physical hydrologist who researches how climate change and landscape changes can affect where and how much water is available in an area—and when. His work also examines how fires and rain can influence landslide risk. (Credit: CU Boulder)

How can wildfire affect water quantity and timing in a landscape?

Livneh: In the western U.S. we really rely on water that flows in rivers and streams, and that fills the reservoirs for our supply. So when we think about even small changes to the amount of water that comes off of the hill slope, or across the landscape, that can have a big impact on the total availability of water.

One of the most notable things that happens in a fire is that the texture of the soil changes. Initially, less rain will soak into the soil, and more rain will become surface runoff. There's a lot of reason to think that you will get more total water—but it'll be much more “flashy” when it comes.

On one hand, that can be good if you have a reservoir to collect it. But we've heard of water utilities actually turning off their intakes after a fire if the quality of the water is too low. And that's tricky, because often drought is involved in some fashion. So there's often this competing need for more water, and yet the quality is low.

What are the factors that affect the likelihood of floods or mudslides after wildfire?

Livneh: When water carries enough stuff with it, we call it a debris flow, which is a type of landslide. The bigger and bigger it gets, the more impactful it is. We have research funded by NASA where we looked at 5,000 landslide sites around the world. We found that sites that had a fire in the past three years required less precipitation to cause a landslide.

But there's also a lot of local variability that really matters. Moderately steep, heavily vegetated areas, types of soils—especially sandier soils—increase risk. Also we now have a lot of people who have built structures on steep slopes in these areas, so there's a human element there, too. And the time of the year that it happens can matter. A fire right before your rainy season is an important factor.

What does this all mean for the future of Colorado and the western U.S.?

Rosario-Ortiz: When homes burn, you’re not just combusting houses, you're combusting everything inside those homes. You might now be combusting electric vehicles, for example, with a large battery.

Then what are some of the other potential concerns with exposure to air? Water? That's going to be something that we will need to explore further over the next few years.

Livneh: Some estimates say the amount of forest area being burned each year in the western U.S. has doubled in the last 25 years. And it really poses risks to communities, especially in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Managing it is largely a kind of a policy problem, but in the next 10 years or so we're going to continue to have these big fires.

First and foremost, people need to be paying attention to these flood watches and to local guidance on evacuation. The most important thing is saving lives.

What can we do to prepare for the future?

Rosario-Ortiz: Utilities might have to be thinking about potential upgrades in facilities. That means we may have to also consider financing of these projects and how to improve overall resiliency.

Livneh: One of the most robust features of climate change is warming, right? As rain becomes more prevalent, we're just going to have to continue expanding our portfolio of things we do to keep up. The more open-minded we can be about managing for these things is important. I'm kind of an optimist. As humans, we've overcome so many technical challenges; it's not going to be something we can't solve our way out of.

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