What is infrastructure?

Infrastructure is the backbone of our modern society, all the things you use every day without even thinking about them.  Our infrastructure includes roads, airports, railroads, buildings, bridges, water and wastewater treatment plants, sewers, drainage, flood control, water supply, landfills, and many other facilities.  Infrastructure is designed and built by civil engineers, construction engineers, and construction managers.

When you get up in the morning and take a shower and brush your teeth, the water comes from a water treatment plant through a network of pipes, designed by civil engineers.  When you go to school or work, the roads you drive on and bridges you cross were designed by civil engineers.  The structure or skeleton of the building you attend classes in or work in, as well as its foundation, was designed by civil engineers.  The list goes on and on.

What is sustainable infrastructure?

There have been many news stories in recent years about America’s crumbling infrastructure, about how our infrastructure is literally falling apart around us.  The I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the levee failures in New Orleans, and potholes on the roads in front of your house are all examples of problems with our infrastructure.

The UNM Civil Engineering department is focused on not only improving our infrastructure, but also making it sustainable.  Sustainable infrastructure is infrastructure that lasts longer, or repairs itself.  It is infrastructure that uses less energy, less water, less natural resources, produces less air and water pollution, and generates less solid or hazardous waste.  It is infrastructure that protects the health and well-being of future generations as well as the current generation.

How are we focusing on sustainable infrastructure?

In our classes:

  • CE 571 - Sustainable Design and Construction is teaching students about the principles of sustainable design and construction, including life-cycle cost analysis, evaluation of economic and environmental impacts, and LEED certification.
  • CE 598  - Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering is teaching students about industrial ecology, sustainable engineering, pollution prevention, environmental life cycle assessment, material and energy balances, ISO 14000 standards, environmental management systems, and water and energy conservation.
  • Students in CE 598 - Timber Design are developing a proposal to the EPA P3 program focused on the use of bamboo as a building material for heavy construction.

In our research:

  • Research by professor Kerry Howe is investigating ways of turning the waste products from desalination into resources.
  • Research by professor Rafi Tarefder is using nano- and molecular characterization techniques to investigate how moisture and other factors damage pavements.  The goal is to understand the link between asphalt structure and mechanical behavior at a molecular level, which will lead to the design of more durable, long-lasting pavement materials.
  • Research by professor Mahmoud Taha is investigating how sensors can be imbedded in a structure like a bridge that will provide real-time health monitoring and damage diagnosis of structures so that failures can be predicted and prevented before they occur.
  • Research by professor Mark Stone is investigating how wetlands can be used to treat contaminants from sewage, strormwater, agricultural runoff, landfill leachate, and runoff from roadways.

In seminars and workshops:

  • Professors Rafi Tarefder and Kerry Howe organized an international workshop on Energy and Environment in the Development of Sustainable Pavements that was held in Xian, China in June, 2010. The workshop was sponsored by National Science Foundation (USA) and National Natural Science Foundation (China).

In our extracurricular activities:

  • The UNM student chapter of Engineers Without Borders is working on a project to provide safe drinking water to two villages in Bolivia.