Resilience Engineering: The New Normal
Posted on April 13th, 2020 by Mary Lord
As storms increase in frequency and fury and droughts drain groundwater and invite wildfires, communities nationwide are taking a hard look at whether their infrastructure, building codes, and businesses are up to the challenge. And they are turning to engineers for solutions that will increase resiliency and mitigate disaster.
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Tags: ASEE Prism magazine, civil and environmental engineering, Climate Change, flooding, infrastructure, resilience engineering, Weather
Students in grades 3 to 5 work in groups to design a structure that will withstand and protect people from tornadoes. Each group then creates a poster with the name of their engineering firm and a picture of their structure. Finally, each group presents their posters to the class.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, and other destructive events offer timely “teachable moments” about the role of engineers in improving weather forecasts and reducing the toll from natural disasters. eGFI Teachers’s collection of activities, feature articles, and other resources can help you integrate engineering into your classes – and inspire the next generation of “crisis” engineers.
Working in groups of 8, middle school students use their senses to describe and predict the weather, then act as state park engineers and design/build “backyard weather stations” to gather data to make actual weather forecasts.
Cloud classification, coastal environments, and sea turtles and their quest to nest are among the interactive online games highlighting environmental science and stewardship on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Planet Arcade portal.
To celebrate Earth Science Week, the American Geosciences Institute is hosting a photography contest for people of all ages, a visual arts contest for elementary students, and an essay contest for students in grades 6 to 9. Deadline for submission is Friday, October 16, 2015. 
From tidal curiosities and solar flares to bad weather jokes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s SciJinks website offers a wealth of resources for learning and teaching about Earth’s climate and geography. 
As one of the worst droughts in decades continues to shrivel reservoirs and sear fields, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated more than half of all counties – 1,584 in 32 states – primary disaster areas this growing season. While the dry, hot spell has decimated agriculture, it also has strained the steel, asphalt, and other engineered parts of the nation’s infrastructure.
A number of schools around the country are helping to provide local broadcasters with up-to-date weather reports in conjunction with WeatherBug, a weather information company. In the process, they’re finding a new way to teach science, technology, and math. 
