My mentor, Professor H. David Stensel, Ph.D., P.E., DEE (University of Washington, Seattle) says, "Good Science is crucial to what we do. Research helps us advance the profession. But we are engineers, after all. It's engineering design that carries the fruits of basic research into real-world applications. Research is critical to understanding and optimizing promising new technologies. Engineering is the key to making them work." Unlike some who leave one task behind when moving to another, Dave weaves each new project into the growing composite that is the body of his work. His research efforts have built on one another, leading ultimately to the design of useful applications. This is the outlook that I bring to my classroom and research laboratory.
Recent research indicates the combination of environmental studies and GIS among the "best job tracks for the future." And so the race is on. We must be prepared to expand beyond our traditional curriculum to meet the upcoming GIS education needs of our students and faculty. No one said environmental management would be easy, but the explosion of data generated by its ever-changing technical and regulatory complexities has been mind boggling. More than 80 percent of all the information used by water and wastewater system managers is geographically referenced, that is, a key element of the information is its location relative to geographic features, other objects, established boundaries, etc. A Geographic Information System (GIS) can be used as an effective tool to manage environmental, climatic, and hydrologic data to support decision making and meet regulatory requirements. Once the province of cartographers and CAD technicians, desktop mapping and GIS are ready to infiltrate almost all areas of water, wastewater, and stormwater system management. The recent availability of desktop GISs (e.g. ArcView, etc.) have opened a new window of opportunity for accessing, manipulating, and storing spatial and temporal data. Imagine simply pointing and clicking to retrieve design storms from a State map; display flow and quality data of a river from a watershed map, or input field data or graph the historical data of a sampling site from an industrial site map. By using geographic information from mapping, modeling, facilities management, and work order management, a drinking water distribution system manager can develop a detailed capital improvement program or operations and maintenance plan. Linkage of GIS to computer models is particularly prevalent for surface and subsurface hydrologic applications. Thus, it seems likely that GIS use will continue to proliferate in the areas of water, wastewater and stormwater management. The GIS applications that are of particular importance to water, wastewater, and stormwater system managers are: Mapping, Monitoring, Modeling, and Maintenance. These four Ms define the four most important activities in effectively managing water, wastewater, and stormwater systems. The time has come for all the Civil Engineers involved in the planning, design, construction, and operation of water, wastewater, and stormwater systems to enter one of the most promising and exciting technology of the decade in their profession - the use of GIS.
Computer models play a critical role in studying the environment and designing pollution prevention controls. Traditionally, computer programs have relied on tabular input and output which hardly make any sense to non-modelers. Computer graphics offer an effective means of bridging the gap between the information and its recipients, especially when presenting the model results to a less specialized or non-technical audience, such as, politicians, managers, or general public. A graph is worth a thousand numbers. At present, even the most popular public domain software (SWMM, MODFLOW, WASP, HEC series, etc.) is text oriented, has an obsolete data structure, and contains old and inefficient solution algorithms. There is also a great need to upgrade these models to answer the new environmental concerns and issues. Imagine displaying a storm surge passing through an underground sewer as a 100 year storm hits the city, or tracking a toxic release plume to a nearby water supply aquifer and developing real time control strategies, or monitoring dispersion of bacterial contamination on public beaches as combined sewers begin to overflow for deciding beach closures and reopenings. Such applications can be realized by recoding the existing programs using the latest computer techniques, e.g., object oriented programming, expert systems, neural networks, and decision support systems.
Scientists, engineers, planners, environmentalists, and regulators have embraced watershed management as a more cost-effective approach for achieving clean water goals. During the past two decades, water quality professionals mostly used controls on wastewater treatment plant and industrial discharges to meet the Clean Water Act goal of fishable and swimmable waters. While wastewater treatment and surface water quality have improved, further gains are required beyond controls on discharges and, at times, even beyond nonpoint sources. These gains require a watershed-wide understanding not just of contaminants, but of habitat characteristics, hydraulic conditions, temperature, and biological factors. At present, watershed management is in evolving stages and there is a substantial need for further research and development.