Civil engineer services will be involved in many aspects of the recovery of Hurricane Harvey, just as these services were also used in the preparations for Hurricane Irma which is making landfall this weekend. In fact, there are few aspects of our lives that are not impacted by the knowledge and skill of top engineering consulting companies. From cities planning to rebuild after a major storm to new communities that are being planned, it is essential that resources like lidar technology and photogrammetry are being used to survey current areas and make plans for future building.
Transportation planning firms in Florida, for instance, have been using their surveillance and planning methods to plan for the largest evacuation America has ever seen as state officials prepared for this hurricane to hit land. Both the preparations and the repairs, in fact, rely on the engineering efforts of many resources. We often think of civil engineer services in how they are used in the planning of new buildings and new roads, but the fact of the matter is, these services are actually involved in many more aspects of our lives.
Consider how the current condition of roads, highways, buildings, and bridges in our nation are dependent upon the skills of civil engineering services:
- More than 50% of of America?s interstate miles are at 70% of their traffic capacity. In addition, 25% of the miles of America’s interstate miles are strained at more than 95% capacity.
- Every major U.S. container port is projected to be handling at least double the volume it was originally designed for by the year 2020. These ports will need to be expanded with the help of transportation planning engineer firms.
- 33% of all dam failures, or near-failures, since the year 1874 have happened in the last decade.
- 25% of bridges in the U.S. are handling more traffic than they were designed to carry, and are in need of significant repairs.
- More than 4,095 dams in America were deemed ?unsafe? by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
- Drinking water utilities will have to invest $334.8 billion over the next 20 years to address their deteriorating infrastructure needs, according to estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
As the nation waits and watches this Sunday morning to see where Hurricane Irma does the most destruction, the one thing that is certain is that it will take the work of civil engineers to help repair and rebuild the areas hardest hit.
