Disasters

Smart Cities: Innovative approaches combining engineering, technology and the social sciences are boosting the urban IQ

Smart Cities graphic with a rendering of the city of Atlanta.

Georgia Tech has been intensifying its smart cities initiative, including membership in the national MetroLab Network and the launch of a new faculty council with members from more than a dozen university units. Tech has long been working in the, but the now the Institute is organizing all the research that’s happening to have a bigger impact.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Researchers work to make robots the first-responders after nuclear power plant disasters

International Atomic Energy Agency fact-finding team leader Mike Weightman examines Reactor Unit 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on May 27, 2011. The team assessed damage from an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that caused three reactors at the plant to meltdown. (Photo: Gregg Webb / International Atomic Energy Agency)

Disasters at nuclear power plants present all kinds of problems for search and rescue teams, from lethal radiation exposure to danger from weakened structures. Associate Professor Yong Cho has begun work on a new project that could one day put robots on the ground in the immediate aftermath of a meltdown or other catastrophe, helping to rescue people trapped in the plant and contain dangerous nuclear material in situations where quick action is critical.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Change agent: Many resist change, but John Taylor has made a career studying it

John E. Taylor, the new Frederick L. Olmsted Profession in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. (Photo: Jess Hunt-Ralston)

John E. Taylor joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the summer of 2016 as the inaugural Frederick L. Olmsted Professor. Taylor studies the dynamics where human and engineered networks meet, making him an ideal fit for an endowed professorship named for the father of landscape architecture and a designer who believed engineered infrastructure should be both functional and aesthetically appealing, serving society’s needs while also creating more livable and healthy communities.

Monday, December 12, 2016

Two weeks in China and Japan teaches students about disaster engineering, Asian culture — and themselves

The International Disaster Reconnaissance Studies class on the Great Wall of China, one of their first stops during their two-week trip to China and Japan.

They climbed the Great Wall of China and explored the Forbidden City. They visited a town destroyed by an earthquake then preserved as a monument to the lives lost. They saw baby pandas and flood control systems, Japanese towns devastated by a tsunami and the Hiroshima memorial. But in the end, it was the relationships they built and an overnight summit of Mt. Fuji in Japan that etched this trip into the memories of four engineering students who traveled to China and Japan in early August.

Friday, August 26, 2016

10 years after Katrina, are American cities prepared for disasters?

Ahead of a Washington D.C. roundtable August 5 on disaster preparedness, Reginald DesRoches and Wayne Clough talked to the Georgia Tech News Center about the challenges for many of the country's communities. The conversation comes just a few weeks before the 10-year anniversary of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans and ravaged the Gulf Coast.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015
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School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278