Civil Engineering Magazine

Innovative structural engineering often goes hand in hand with cutting-edge architecture, but reviving traditional architectural forms can be equally challenging. St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, in Houston, is a classic Gothic church in appearance, but beneath the brick and cast stone of its exterior is a modern steel structure.

State Highway 130 is the largest highway project the Texas Department of Transportation has ever undertaken. By combining its first design/build contract with innovative financing techniques, the department compressed the project’s time frame from 25 years into less than 5.

The catastrophic tsunami that struck southern Asia on December 26, 2004, underscored the extraordinary social and economic havoc that such an event can wreak. Could it happen here in the United States—in particular, off the coast of Southern California? The disturbing answer is that, yes, it could. Although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service has 13 continuously operating tide stations in the state of California that are capable of producing real-time data for tsunami warnings, there is no way to prevent a strike. Recent developments in the modeling of tsunami waves and the analysis of their economic consequences, combined with data from recent offshore mappings of the Santa Barbara Channel and other locations, suggest the mechanism and economic effect of an undersea landslide in the vicinity of Los Angeles that would spawn a tsunami.

The roadway system for the new terminal at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport includes 10 bridges, three levels, and complex horizontal and vertical geometry.