Water Infrastructure in Rural Alaska

Water utilities in rural Alaska communities operate under unique conditions with extreme weather, precarious supply chains, and limited economies. In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska, where my work is centered, many communities do not use pipes to deliver potable water. Rather, residents receive their water via hauled delivery, haul their own water from a central location, or collect untreated water from the natural environment. In my work, I have found that water sector workers are a significant stakeholder group in water provision. Further, those workers who are responsible for treating and delivering potable water are overworked and burnt out. Workers encounter extreme weather, dangerous working conditions, and long hours due to a limited workforce. Attrition and absenteeism exacerbate these challenges. To combat such challenges, training and certification programs should be more localized to the unique operating conditions of each community.

Related Publications:

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.3c00612
https://doi.org/10.1061/JWRMD5.WRENG-6373
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.4c00582
https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm22/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1185420

Cost of Controversy on Energy Projects

Planning, building, and operating energy projects can be a long and challenging process. Obstacles often arise throughout the project which delay the schedule and increase costs. Such obstacles may include external opposition, including protests, lawsuits, and social media campaigns invested in stopping a project from being developed. Project owners can better prepare for such costs and delays if they can anticipate potential opposition, and even plan ahead to mitigate it. In this work, we have found that controversy typically occurs in the proposal phase of a project, which is also when delays have the least financial impact. Project owners who manage to mitigate opposition in the proposal phase may experience less impact on the overall project schedule and costs. Further, we found that the most active stakeholders involved in project controversy are community members. Project owners may focus their mitigation efforts in community engagement to ensure the project’s impact on community members is minimal, and in turn minimize the impact on the project.

Engineering Ethics Education

Engineering ethics is an included topic in many standards and codes including ABET, ASCE Code of Ethics, NSPE Code of Ethics, and others. As such, ethics is included in some lessons throughout an undergraduate engineering degree. However, such lessons are limited. Students, as well as engineering professionals, are taught about conflicts of interest and range of expertise, sometimes referred to as “microethics”. Alternatively, I posit that students would benefit from more lessons in “macroethics”, which emphasizes the impact of engineering work on communities. In this work, I found that civil engineering students integrated macroethics into their understanding of engineering challenges more often than students with other types of engineering majors. Macroethics could be integrated into more engineering courses to improve students’ understanding of their potential impact on society.

Related Publications:
https://doi.org/10.1061/JCEECD.EIENG-1909
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-022-00156-4
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-022-00150-w
https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2020.06.10
https://peer.asee.org/41540
https://strategy.asee.org/38048
https://peer.asee.org/37099
https://peer.asee.org/37396
https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36860
https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10288283
https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10288216