Media Watch
Where’s the sand? Coastal cities hope delivery to local beaches will come
Orange County Register -
“We need our rivers to deliver sediment to the coast. If we don’t have that, we have to truck it to fill in the beaches,” said Brett Sanders, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine. Coasts aren’t just facing sea-level rise, they are facing it with shrinking beaches, he said. “It’s a double-whammy.” … Sanders enlisted a team of students to help create modeling that shows the rate of erosion along various areas of OC’s coast, with drone footage that shows how drastic the coastline is changing. Just last week, Sanders hosted a virtual talk about the changing coast. [Subscription required, campus-wide access provided by UCI Libraries. Sign-up here: https://guides.lib.uci.edu/news/ocregister] Read More
California hits near-record temperatures, sparking early fears for wildfire season
Yahoo News (Independent) -
“CALFIRE data show that each new year of the 21st century has been a record breaker in terms of wildfire damage in California,” study co-author Tirtha Banerjee, UCI assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, wrote. “We also have seen that about 80 percent of the total number of the state’s wildfires over the past few decades have been small, measuring less that 500 acres. But when fires get large, their deadliness greatly increases.” Read More
AI Weekly: How the power grid can benefit from intelligent software
VentureBeat -
Neil Sahota, chief innovation officer at [Global AI Initiatives and a lecturer in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering], University of California, Irvine, says intelligent software opens the door to the deployment of AI designed for power grid use cases. Utilities are already employing AI to address the windfalls and fluctuations in energy usage. Precise load forecasting ensures operations aren’t interrupted, thereby preventing blackouts and brownouts. And it can bolster the efficiency of utilities’ internal processes, leading to reduced prices and improved service. Read More
How Broadcom’s Henry Samueli Is Giving Away Billions
IEEE Spectrum -
[Henry] Samueli doesn’t give anonymously. He and his wife believe it is important to have their philanthropy be visible because, he says, “We want to set an example and motivate others to get involved in philanthropy and be proud to show it.” Another university that has benefited from his generosity is the University of California, Irvine. In 2017 the Samueli Foundation donated $200 million, the largest gift in the university’s history. The gift was used for the construction and endowment of the Susan and Henry Samueli college of health sciences, which is focused on interdisciplinary integrative health. UCI also reported that the Samuelis provided $30 million in funding toward the construction of an interdisciplinary science and engineering building, which opened in February. Read More
After revival, Iran’s great salt lake faces new peril
Science -
The shallow lake was at its most expansive in recent decades in the late 1990s …. But a 5-year dry spell that began in 1998 was coupled with increasing water diversion for irrigation. “We call it anthropogenic drought,” says Amir AghaKouchak, [professor of civil & environmental engineering], a hydrologist at the University of California (UC), Irvine, who first visited Urmia as a student in 1998. … In the past few years, such worries receded as ample precipitation helped boost lake levels by about 1.5 meters. “Nature has been kind,” says Soroosh Sorooshian, [Distinguished Professor, civil & environmental engineering], a water expert at UC Irvine. Read More
Most Of LA, Ventura, San Bernardino Counties Are Now In ‘Severe Drought’: Report
KCBS -
A new report by U.S. Drought Monitor says that most of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, as well as half of Riverside County, are now in ‘severe drought.’ … “When you have this perfect combination you have dead trees, you have dry fuels, you have a very dry atmosphere—this is the perfect recipe for massive wildfires,” added Tirtha Banerjee, assistant professor at UC Irvine. Read More
ZEI’s hydrogen-powered craft project gets $2 million grant
Marine Log -
The California Energy Commission has awarded Zero Emissions Industries (ZEI) a $2 million grant to design, build and test a first-of-its-kind hydrogen fuel cell powered small, fast harbor craft. … ZEI partners in the project include Watershed Innovation …. Another project partner, the Advanced Power and Energy Program at the University of California, Irvine will collect and process project, vessel and system data to provide clear, unbiased conclusions regarding the performance and usage of the hydrogen systems. Read More
UC Irvine Study Shows State’s Wildfire Season Expanding, Peaking Earlier
Irvine Weekly -
Tirtha Banerjee, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine, and co-author of the study, explained this study was accomplished by comparing data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection between 1920-1999 to current wildfire data between 2000-2019. “CALFIRE data show that each new year of the 21st century has been a record-breaker in terms of wildfire damage in California,” Banerjee said. Read More
Disability Awareness Conversations: Amy Huynh on Allyship
NASA -
Where are you from? “I am from Irvine, California and my parents immigrated to the United States from Vietnam.” What are you studying?“I am an undergraduate senior at University of California, Irvine double majoring in mechanical and aerospace engineering.” What motivated you to apply to a NASA internship? “NASA has been a dream of mine since high school, but it never seemed like it could be a reality for me. In middle school, I was one of only three girls in my woodshop class where I had the opportunity to build and launch my own model rocket.” Read More
How to decarbonize California transportation by 2045
Phys.org -
A team of transportation and policy experts from the University of California released a report today to the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) outlining policy options to significantly reduce transportation-related fossil fuel demand and emissions. Those policy options, when combined, could lead to a zero-carbon transportation system by 2045, while also improving equity, health and the economy. … The University of California demand study was conducted by researchers from the UC Institute of Transportation Studies, a network with branches at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and UCLA. Read More