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Garbage In, Wisdom Out
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I’ve posted before (I think) about Boston University’s Center for Computing and Data Science – affectionately known in the Boston area as the “Jenga Building”, due to its odd (but cool!) design. If I’ve missed doing that, or you have no idea why I am talking about a Jenga building, you may enjoy this video in which Boston University students react to the building. And, although this may make you dizzy, have a 5-minute, really cool drone tour of the building’s interior and the local campus which is my stomping grounds with this video: In any case, the building is known well on campus (and in the city of Boston, where it is strikingly visible from across the Charles River by folks at Harvard and MIT) because of its shape, and somewhat because of its LEED Platinum rating. No gas is plumbed into the building. There are 31 boreholes, each 1,500 feet deep, under the building. This is TWICE AS DEEP as Boston’s John Hancock Tower is tall. So if you know Boston, that’s 31 very, very deep wells, which provide the heating and cooling for the building. The system provides over 300 tons of heating/cooling capacity. Heat pumps use the temperature differential the earth provides (ground temperatures are constant at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit) to draw heat from the ground in the winter and to expel heat in the summer. But this post is not about those aspects of the building in particular. It is instead, focused on … garbage. We all know the old adage, Garbage In, Garbage Out – GIGO. It’s particularly apropos in today’s age of AI. Ask AI to schedule and budget your project, and have a decimal point missing or mistype a year’s last digit and AI will dutifully provide you with a beautifully-wrong calendar and aesthetically-pleasing pie and donut charts (now I am hungry!) that are way, way, off. At the BU Center for Computing and Data Science, the Garbage In is actual garbage. And the idea is to measure what sorts of garbage are going in using a uniform set of 234 bins for collection – and eliminating bins in each room of the building. The analytics from all of this garbage data provided information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom (The DIKUW Pyramid as promoted by the folks at AI Today!) about waste which can be used to make decisions on processing that waste, and even to provide a means to change the behavior of individuals to improve recycling. Much of this is covered in this tremendous article called “Waste Watchers” – summarized in this video:
Here’s an extract: “Everybody talks about the geothermal wells and the no fossil fuels, but we’re also striving to be a TRUE zero-waste–certified building,” says Sam Moller, BU Sustainability assistant director of communications. “That’s arguably harder than getting an LEED certification because zero waste is all about human behavior.” TRUE zero-waste designation requires a facility to divert a baseline 90 percent of its waste away from landfills and incinerators and ensure that “contamination”—aka incorrectly disposed-of items—is under 10 percent. The 90 percent number comes from the fact that in general, about 90 percent of the waste we generate could be “recycled, composted, reduced, or eliminated altogether,” Moller says. (The TRUE designation requires a year’s worth of data before a facility can be certified.) And that’s where the interns (the three ‘waste-watchers’ featured in the article) come in. Each bin has a sensor that tracks the weight of its contents. But as for what those contents include? Cue Shotland, Palmer, and Lagomarsino. They make the rounds every shift with their phones, photographing bins throughout the building’s 17 floors to see what’s being put where and to see who needs a little lesson in proper disposal. (The photos and weight data go to Spare-It, a Boston-based waste technology company partnering with BU Sustainability.) Spare-it is an interesting company and probably worth a blog post on its own. It’s the partner that is helping to process the garbage into good data, using their platform (see figure below). With the advent of AI, and improvements in data analytics, the garbage in is NOT garbage out. It’s more like our title – Garbage In, Good Data (and Information, Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom) Out.
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Risk Response to Greening
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In this post, I discuss two very different risk responses to a devastating threat that has an oh-so-friendly name. The threat is “Greening”, and if you have anything to do with the farming of citrus, you are very familiar with this threat. From this US Department of Agriculture site: “ Citrus greening, also called Huanglongbing (HLB), is a bacterial infection of citrus plants, caused by the bacterial pathogen, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas). It is one of the most serious citrus diseases in the world. Once infected, most trees die within a few years. There is no cure.” The effects of this threat are stunning. Since 2005, HLB, first detected in the USA in Florida, has spread throughout that state, killing countless trees and devastating orchards, reducing citrus production by 75%, and more than doubling production costs. Unfortunately, it was not contained, and the disease has now progressed westward to Louisiana, Texas, and even California. Here’s a video describing the insect vector for the bacterial infection (the Asian citrus psyllid): One risk response: Avoid The Avoid threat response means NOT doing whatever it was that admitted the threat into the picture. So in this case, that means not planting citrus. Instead, farmers have used their fields to plant the Pongamia tree, an ancient Indian tree (Hindi name ???? karanj). This is a fascinating tree with uses as far-flung as using its twigs as a toothbrush to curing scorpion bites. But in this case, the tree provides a boost to the farmers affected by Greening by giving them a profitable crop that is healthy, durable and – ironically helps with the other sort of “greening” – because its pressed berries/seeds produce an oil that can be used (for example) as jet fuel, with the remaining product can be used as flour and other plant-based proteins. Vendors also sell the oil as cures for… well, you name it. Below are images of the tree, its flowers, berries, and examples of products made from it:
This video from the Associated Press sums up the Avoid response:
The other risk response: Mitigate Remember (my students will tell you that this is a grade-crushing pet peeve of mine) that Mitigate is not a synonym for Response. Many textbooks and papers on project management talk about risk response as mitigation. Sure, mitigation is a common response – it involves reducing the likelihood and/or probability of a threat; but it is NOT by any means the only way to respond to risk. You just saw, above how Avoid is another risk response strategy, as is Transfer, and Escalate, for example. So, in this case the mitigation is to reduce the probability of the infection and the impact if infected. To that end, (from this USDA site) “researchers at the ARS Crop Improvement and Genetics Research (CIGR) unit in Albany, CA, have discovered a way to augment the tree’s natural immune response to pathogens so that it recognizes HLB. According to James Thomson, a geneticist at CIGR, transgenic plants that produce receptor proteins that can recognize pathogens are able to activate a plant’s own immune response when exposed to Clas. Previously, the best ways to deal with HLB were to remove affected trees from orchards and kill the ACPs that were spreading HLB. Those efforts ranged from spraying pesticides to cloaking trees in tents. Transgenic trees with a boosted immune system that responds to Clas could potentially help citrus growers fight citrus greening.” Takeaways for project managers:
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Concrete Tinker
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That’s not a typo. The word play is on the phrase concrete thinker – but this is about tinkering with concrete to make it do more than…sit there. I’d like to transition from the DunEcology series to regular (if you can call my posts “regular”!) posts. This one still involves sand, so there is still a connection to Dune. However, this sand is in the mix of a material we all know: concrete. What we may NOT know is that concrete may be a source of power. A recent feature story from BBC’s “Future” series (recommended!) is titled, “How The Concrete In Your House Could Be Turned Into A Battery”. Previously I have blogged about the idea of using roads (well, the pavement on roads) to power vehicles. It was a two-part series, recalling the fantastical "flux capacitor", called "Doc Brown Would Be Proud". Side note: could THAT be a real thing? See this video.
Now back from Hollywood, California to Cambridge, Massachusetts... This is about the use of concrete as a potential power source. It’s about supercapacitors, a much, much larger version of the little disc-like or cylindrical components (you know them if you are a ham radio enthusiast, electronics engineer or general-purpose tinkerer) that force us to unplug our routers for 20 seconds because there is a stored charge. Quoting the article’s interview with MIT researcher Damian Stefaniuk: carbon-cement supercapacitors could make an important contribution to efforts to decarbonize the global economy. "If it can be scaled up, the technology can help solve an important issue – the storing of renewable energy," he says. Don’t get your expectations too high now, though. The concrete supercapacitor can store around 0.3 KwH per cubic yard – enough to power a 10-watt LED lightbulb for 30 hours. You won’t be running your AC system on that. However, there is plenty of promise with the technology. According to the article, a foundation with 1,060-1,410 cubic feet of concrete could be sufficient to meet the daily energy needs of a residential house", says Stefaniuk. "Given the widespread use of concrete globally, this material has the potential to be highly competitive and useful in energy storage." And that’s with the current materials. Developments in material science and a focus on the Built Environment may yield leaps and bounds in the storage capacity of concrete and other building materials. To be fair, I’d like to present two views of this idea, one from the MIT researcher Damian Stefaniuk, and one from the (amazingly named Thinker and Tinker) video channel Robert Murray-Smith, who sees this only as a headline-grabber. Being the arbitrator that I am, I appreciate both views and imagine that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Here is the optimistic view by the researchers: And here is the ‘debunk’, by Robert Murray-Smith: I invite you to decide. Either way, there is a lot to learn and anticipate in terms of energy storage, the role of research, and the contributions to energy storage from the Built Environment. |
DunEcology: Sand Worming Its Way Back To Sand
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I thought I would bring us back to our world from Arrakis in this final posting of my series on Dune, by taking us very intentionally to New Orleans, Louisiana. That’s actually perfect, because if you know that city, you know it’s (justifiably) recognized for its food, including the beignets at Café du Monde. And what does Café du Monde mean? Café of the World. Our world - Earth. On Arrakis, most of the planet’s surface is sand. The ecology is based on sand, the very lack of water, and the giant sandworms that cruise through (and under) the sand. Here on Earth, sand is the basic ingredient of glass. Glass is the basic ingredient of wine and beer bottles, and wine and beer (and whisky, and bourbon...) are basic ingredients of New Orleans. After all, one famous expression from the city is "Laissez les bons temps rouler" - let the good times roll! What happens to all of those bottles when there is no recycling program in the state of Louisiana? And that brings us to Glass Half Full Louisiana. From their “About” page, here’s what this organization is about: As seniors at Tulane University in 2020, we were disappointed and frustrated with the lack of glass recycling in New Orleans. One night, over a bottle of wine that we knew would end up at the landfill unless we did something about it, we hatched a plan to combat this problem. Specifically, we wanted a system that was transparent, accessible, and most importantly, actually recycled glass into something functional. Instead of trying to take on the task of reforming the current system, we decided to look at the ‘glass half full’ by implementing our own grassroots glass recycling program. So they started their own grassroots recycling program, offering multiple free drop-off hubs across the city, where they collect glass “waste” from residents throughout Louisiana. This was all destined for landfill. Instead, they (see photos below)
This provides them with the ability to make gravel or (you guessed it!) sand. What happens to the sand? Ironically, one of the issues faced by Louisiana is erosion, caused, at least in part, by rising water levels and a greater quantity of and more intense hurricanes. In fact, the forecast for the 2024 season is very foreboding. In a press release from just a couple of days ago, the US National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is forecasting 17 to 25 total named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher). Of those, 8 to 13 are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 4 to 7 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; with winds of 111 mph or higher). Forecasters have a 70% confidence in these ranges. The other causes of beach erosion serve as a good example of secondary project risk. Flood control structure projects have a good rationale but have caused significant problems in the long term. Project managers should be thinking not only of the short-term outputs and outcomes of their initiatives but also of what happens in the years or decades that follow. From the Glass Half Full website: Louisiana has lost a quarter of its wetlands since the 1930s as a result of flood control structures designed to protect communities and businesses from flooding. While well-intentioned, such structures have prevented the deposition of sediment into barrier islands and wetland areas by the Mississippi River’s spring floods, a natural process critical to the preservation of coastal areas. Consequently, land is disappearing much faster than it can regenerate. So the sand can be use for re-establishing beaches as well as many other purposes. From the Glass Half Full website: New Orleans wastes millions of tax dollars per year dumping recyclables in landfills (we pay per pound that's discarded) and on importing millions of pounds of sand. Turning glass back into sand saves money on both ends (less dumping, less importing of sand). I find this inspiring and a project (turned operation) worth our attention, and a solid example of how we can be more sustainability-oriented project leaders. For those of you who are more visual, here’s a video that describes this initiative: |
DunEcology: Just fill out this terraform...
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In Frank Herbert’s novels, the Fremen of Dune (formal name: Arrakis) are at work on a multi-generational project (or rather portfolio of projects) to transform Arrakis into a more habitable, temperate - even forested - planet. This was being done under the guidance of a planetologist (Liet-Kynes), who aimed to transform Arrakis into a livable world. NOTE TO READER: There's a great glossary of terms here if you're getting distracted by (or are curious about) the 'lingo' here. The process of making a world (or moon) habitable for humans is called terraforming. You can read more about it here: https://www.earth.com/earthpedia-articles/terraforming/ The idea of doing this very same thing to Mars – or Venus – or moons of the larger planets, for human habitation, is covered in this fascinating article which relates back to Dune’s ecology: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/dune-could-we-terraform-mars
Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society has proposed (and continues to propose) terraforming Mars with a mission called Mars Direct. Check it out here: https://www.marssociety.org/concepts/mars-direct/, and in his paper here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4702054_Mars_Direct_A_Simple_Robust_and_Cost_Effective_Architecture_for_the_Space_Exploration_Initiative In fact, this started me down a ‘rabbit hole’ of research on terraforming and it’s not just science fiction – there are serious projects (programs – or portfolios, really) that have been proposed: Research on terraforming https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234376372_Possibilities_of_Terraforming_Mars Back to Arrakis Doing this terraforming on Dune, however, dooms the sandworm. Water is poisonous to the this huge creature. Yet, the sandworm provides the basis (through its production of Spice) of the planet’s economic well-being, as well as a being worshiped by the Fremen. In this ironic twist, ecology defeats economy. On earth, a focus on a carbon-based economy – at least some say - could defeat the ecology. For the Fremen, they have to think about a long-term view (many generations terraforming their planet to be more habitable) and a hugely long-term view (they may destroy a creature they worship, which provides the planet with its main source of income, and which enables space travel). And now, back to Earth How about Earth? If you believe in the Anthropocene (see the link for details), we humans are doing the opposite of terraforming (anyone have a suggestion for a name? Terradissolution?). I think that anything we’re doing (starting with being conscious of our impact on the planet) to reduce the effects that humans have on the planet is important to avoid terradissolutioning the earth. I find the project/program/portfolio aspects of these initiatives fascinating in and of themselves, because they are such sweeping, huge, literally interplanetary efforts involving disciplines as far-flung as chemistry, aerospace, urban planning, and ethics. Maybe one day you will find yourself (if not on Mars) part of a terraforming portfolio! |