Department of Civil Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE)

Mason researcher measures troubles at the tap

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:13:48 +0000

Mason researcher measures troubles at the tap Nathan Kahl Mon, 04/29/2024 - 09:13

Kirin Emlet Furst, an assistant professor in ��AV's Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to investigate how Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are transformed and persist in drinking water distribution systems (DWDS) that bring water to our spigots.

Kirin Emlet Furst. Photo provided

CAREER award funding is reserved for the nation’s most talented up-and-coming researchers. From the NSF website: “The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.”

PFAS are sinisterly known as “forever chemicals” because once created they do not break down, existing in water and soil—and even human blood—indefinitely. They have been used in numerous applications, including firefighting foams, metal plating, and food packaging, and spread easily through water and air.

This means, whether we like it or not, many of us are gulping down PFAS with every drink of water. To address this, the EPA recently released rules establishing limits on six PFAS in drinking water, affecting approximately 66,000 water systems, serving 90 percent of the country.

“PFAS really like interfaces between water and air and water and surfaces, so they stick to all sorts of stuff,” said Furst. “In DWDS, they may stick to the surface inside pipes and tanks, especially if there is biofilm growth or flaking of the inside material, giving them more to hold on to.” Furst said well-maintained DWDS typically won’t have such issues but knew of one water storage tank that had not been cleaned in 20 years, resulting in three feet of sediment on its floor. Such sediment, along with other conditions, may create conditions for PFAS accumulation and transformation.

Furst will test tap water across Northern Virginia, including on Mason's Fairfax Campus.

The focus of regulators and utilities is removing PFAS at the treatment plant, but in communities where exposure to PFAS is prevalent—near chemical plants, for example—Furst suggests there’s a likelihood that PFAS has been building up downstream, so to speak, in the DWDS.

“In Fairfax County the amount of time water could spend in the distribution system is as long as a week,” Furst said. “In some systems it’s going through miles and miles of pipes, with a lot of places for PFAS to hang out.”

There are more than 12,000 types of PFAS, and in the presence of certain microbial processes, unregulated precursor compounds can be transformed to the more toxic, regulated species like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Furst worries the new EPA rule, relying on measurements at treatment plants, won’t reflect the levels in water at household taps.

Furst’s lab will get samples from distribution systems from Northern Virginia utilities and she hopes to have a larger DWDS pilot on the Mason Fairfax Campus as part of the “Mason as a Living Lab” program. She hopes her findings will aid in solutions to minimize and mitigate PFAS contamination.

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Big data may lead to safer roadways, lower emissions

Teresa Donnellan — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:26:19 +0000

Big data may lead to safer roadways, lower emissions Teresa Donnellan Mon, 10/23/2023 - 12:26

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Shanjiang Zhu

Anand Vidyashankar

Once, transportation officials made decisions based on household surveys performed roughly once per decade, which asked selected households to record their travel behavior on a given day. With the advent of smartphones, similar data became available roughly every few minutes. Now, with an increasing number of connected vehicles on the road, that data is available in nearly real time. CEIE professor Shanjiang Zhu is embracing this shift, exploring the capabilities of researchers with this massive amount of data.

With funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), Zhu and his research team, Anand N. Vidyashankar from the department of statistics and Chenfeng Xiong from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Villanova University, will reconcile the travel data from three different sources—surveys, smartphones, and connected vehicles—into invaluable travel information.

"In the past, we tried to understand travel behavior, which is critical for future investment decisions and also transportation policy, based on survey data,” Zhu explained. “Based on that, you understand, on average, where people have traveled, in what mode, with whom, and spent how much time there, uh what is the purpose for the trip, etc. Using that information, you can develop a model that basically can predict future scenario, like how congested the network could be in 2040; and that drives all the investment decisions and policy debates.” This method introduces problems of timeliness, as it can skip major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and human error, as people would not necessarily remember every detail of their travel on a given day.

The introduction of widespread smartphone use about ten years ago made the available data much denser, said Zhu, resulting in about one data point every three to five minutes. Each time a person’s smartphone app calls for location service, their location is automatically registered. Nevertheless, this method introduced a bias problem, as not everyone owns a smartphone and not everyone uses them often.

About a year ago, Zhu’s team won a competition hosted by VDOT to make the best possible use of connected vehicle data, basically newer vehicles like those with an “SOS” button installed. One drawback to the data currently is connected vehicles currently make up a relatively small share of vehicles on the road.

“But we have ways to make corrections from a statistical perspective, and then this gives you a much more accurate picture of traffic on the road,” said Zhu, adding “On average, it's one data point every three seconds. With such data, the accuracy and timeliness of travel demand models could be greatly improved.” Zhu noted his colleague Vidyashankar will be reviewing the data fusion to ensure a rigorous statistical approach.

The new data also opens the door for new safety studies, Zhu said, adding safety studies are currently based mainly on police reports after an accident has occurred. By using alternate data, such as how often a car’s brake deceleration rate exceeds a certain threshold or how hard a driver turns the steering wheel, dangerous locations might be addressed before an accident occurs. Zhu is interested in exploring the topic further using the dataset resulting from his current project.

Zhu foresees data from connected vehicles becoming increasingly important as more and more people adopt the technology. He said, “Now we are investing in the methodology part and seeing how we can make this connection more productive, to improve the driving environment, to make our roads safer, to make the driving experience better, and also to reduce our energy consumption and emissions."

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Benjamin Atsem wins second prestigious fellowship award

Rena Malai — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 15:54:01 +0000

Benjamin Atsem wins second prestigious fellowship award Rena Malai Mon, 01/03/2022 - 10:54

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Mohan Venigalla

��AV PhD candidate Benjamin Atsem says it’s his passion to make an impact in the field of transportation engineering. His focus has led him to win the U.S. department of Transportation Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program award not once, but twice.

“When you have a passion to do something, you put in all your best to reflect in your work quality and commitment,” says Atsem, who won the fellowship award for the first time in 2018. “I feel humbled by the award, which challenges me to work harder than before." 

Through this 2021 fellowship award, Atsem will receive a grant of $35,500 towards completing his dissertation work. His research will focus on environmental justice and economic equity issues of emerging modes of transportation, such as micromobility. The micromobility area of transportation includes lightweight, smaller vehicles, like bicycles and scooters.

Atsem will work closely under professor Mohan Venigalla in Mason’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering.

“I feel proud working under professor Venigalla through my research to make sure bikeshare and scooter share systems have equal spread and access in all major urbanized communities, especially in underserved communities,” says Atsem. “Receiving this has given me the launch pad to succeed in my educational and professional career.”

The Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program awards students pursuing degrees in transportation-related disciplines. This program advances the transportation workforce by helping to attract the nation's brightest minds to the field of transportation, encouraging future transportation professionals to seek advanced degrees, and helping to retain top talent in the U.S. transportation industry. 

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Sam Salem wins Educator of the Year Award

Martha Bushong — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 19:25:45 +0000

Sam Salem wins Educator of the Year Award Martha Bushong Wed, 09/15/2021 - 15:25

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Sam Salem

Sam Salem, chair of the Sid and Reva Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, received the National 2021 Educator of the Year Award from the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA). This award is one of several awards the association announced earlier this week.

CMAA’s Award Program recognizes excellence in construction management practice and honors companies and individuals each year based on merit. A panel of judges reviews each nomination carefully and chooses the best candidate in each category.

The Educator of the Year Award emphasizes excellence in teaching and recognizes a full-time educator for outstanding professional accomplishments and a commitment to construction management education. Professor Salem will be honored with his colleagues during the association’s in-person conference September 12-14, 2021, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

About CMAA

CMAA is dedicated to improving our nation’s infrastructure by advancing professional construction and program management worldwide. Its membership is made up of public and private organizations, owners, and practitioners. CMAA provides professional development, certification, advocacy, and business opportunities to its members and the construction management industry. The association’s headquarters is in Vienna, Virginia.

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Mason leads the way in a NOAA effort to protect the Maryland coast

Martha Bushong — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 17:22:59 +0000

Mason leads the way in a NOAA effort to protect the Maryland coast Martha Bushong Thu, 02/27/2020 - 12:22

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View of Belmont Bay from the Flood Hazards Research Lab at Mason's Potomac Science Center. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services.

��AV is taking the lead in a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) designed to assess the threat of rising sea levels and flooding to Maryland’s coastal communities.

Mason’s Celso Ferreira, an associate professor of water resources engineering within Mason’s Volgenau School of Engineering, is the lead principal investigator on a team that also includes the Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources and The Nature Conservancy. The aim of the three-year project is to better inform decision-makers on the best ways to manage and preserve the state’s more than 7,000 miles of shoreline.

“Sea levels have risen one foot in Maryland over the last 100 years,” Ferreira said. “And those sea levels are continuing to go up, so the state is concerned about coastal conditions in the future. Our job is to provide the best scientific knowledge and engineering strategies available to state policy makers.”

The research will focus on coastal risk reduction benefits provided by natural and natural-based features (NNBF) in Maryland’s Chesapeake and Coastal Bays under current conditions and with projected sea-level rise in the wake of ongoing global climate change. Rising sea levels can change how ecosystems work when combined with inundation from tides and storms, meaning that enhancing coastal resiliency is imperative. Experts anticipate more extreme coastal storms and up to two additional feet of sea-level rise over the next 30 years, with flooding from storm surge and erosion expected to become increasingly more problematic to communities and residents less equipped or prepared for them.

Help could come in the form of marshes and submerged aquatic vegetation that could serve as a buffer that would mitigate the effects of rising sea levels, said Ferreira, whose research team will include a Mason doctoral student and a group of undergraduates.

“Marshes are natural protection against extreme events,” Ferreira said.

Using computer models to extrapolate data, he and his team plan to work with local communities to identify existing sites, quantify how much they aid in the fight against flooding and erosion and best educate state decision-makers as they anticipate coastal management for the future.

“We need to come up with measures that will best protect the coast,” Ferreira said.

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Mason researcher measures troubles at the tap

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