Introduction

It wasn’t that long ago that water and foodborne illnesses (the leading causes of death) kept the average life expectancy to under fifty years. In fact, for the vast majority of human history, pestilence  caused by poor sanitary practices was the leading cause of death across the globe. Massive outbreaks of influenza, pneumonia, smallpox, and malaria were so influential that they sparked their own cultural movements. The effects of the bubonic plague of the 1300s, for example, could be seen in the dark and often grotesque artwork of the time.

Some of the most important steps towards conquering these illnesses took place in the the 1800s, with the recognition of how diseases spread, and how public space can be altered to reduce mortality rates. In this blog post I will go over both topics:

John Snow and the London Cholera Outbreak

In August of 1854, a London neighborhood was hit especially hard by a cholera outbreak. Dr. John Snow, who had been studying how diseases propagate, refused to believe in the leading theories that malicious spirits and “foul air” were the root cause. To prove himself, he painstakingly documented all the cases of cholera in the neighborhood and plotted them on the map shown below:

What the map demonstrated was that everyone who contracted the illness came into contact with the Broad Street water pump in some way, giving him reason to believe that cholera spread through contaminated water. Although initially rejected, Snow’s theory was proven true when further interviews revealed that a lady washing her sick newborn’s diapers in the water pump coincided perfectly with the beginning of the outbreak.

In the coming years, as the scientific community accepted Snow’s hypothesis, the city of London hired civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette (shown below)  to work on a unified sewage system that diverted contaminated water and redirected it to a treatment facility, instead of allowing it to mingle with the clean water supply. 

Chicago: Raising an Entire City

The same time London hired Bazalgette, Chicago also embarked on their sanitation journey. After losing about five percent of their population in 1854, the city decided to modernize their sewage system as well. But unlike London, Chicago was built on marsh-like land right next to Lake Michigan, meaning that they could not just dig deeper into the ground to expand their plumbing.

As a result, city planners and engineers embarked on the ambitious goal of raising the entire city fourteen feet off the ground to make room for pipes and canals. Over the course of twenty years, the city used hydraulic devices, jackscrews, and elbow grease to lift all the buildings off the ground or move them to the outskirts of town.

At the end of it all, Chicago had one of the best designed and clean cities not just in America, but the world.

Introduction

Each year, around 80,000 acres of wetlands along the coast are lost in United States, which equates to 168 football fields a day. Although hard to visualize,  the impacts of this phenomenon are severe, both physically and economically: between 1998 and 2009, an area the size of Rhode Island was lost to erosion, resulting in an average of $500 million a year in property loss and an additional $150 million a year in governmental mitigation programs. As climate change continues to contribute to rising sea levels across the globe, this problem will only worsen.

Mitigation Strategies

Shoreline “Hardening”

Traditional ways of mitigating shoreline erosion typically added structures such as levees, seawalls, ripraps, and groins. However, recent studies show that adding these artificial structures may cause as many problems as they solve. For example, a study published in the BioScience Journal shows that seawalls had 23% lower biodiversity than natural coastlines, and 45% fewer organisms in total, demonstrating how flood mitigation measures often disrupt local ecosystems.

In addition, hard structures disrupt the natural flow of water, which can lead to erosion in parts of a beach where it never occurred before. For example, as the diagram below shows, although the seawall protects the sand directly behind it, it actually pushes water down and erodes the sand underneath. Over time, the areas adjacent to the sea wall become weaker and weaker, leading to the gradual degradation of the beach.

“Soft” Beach Nourishment

Another highly popular solution to erosion is simply to dump more sand on the depleted areas. However, this is not a long-term solution and it must be done periodically without fail until money/resources run out or the neighboring beach community decides to forfeit its ocean-front properties.

There are several downsides to this strategy. For one, it is extremely expensive: to nourish a single mile of beach, it costs an average of $1 million; in Miami, that cost escalates to $17.9 million. Additionally, artificially placed sand erodes 2-3 times as fast as natural sand, creating a never-ending loop of depletion and addition. In the words of Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association, “You basically kill a beach when you dump a bunch of sand on top of it. Microscopic animals that live in between sand, that create a kind of ecosystem there, are killed, and it creates all kinds of turbidity in the water, damaging the coral reefs.” Finally, beach nourishment ensures that for at least a few months a year, a coastal town turns into a construction zone, as shown in the image below.

Coastal Restoration

Although it seems counterintuitive, the best long-term solution for maintaining shorelines is often just to remove any man-made structures and allow them to return to their natural states. By isolating the communities from human interference, native organisms start returning and thriving in their habitats. The proliferation of plants, in particular helps in preventing further erosion by stabilizing the land and creating a barrier for excess water.

Conclusion

Although there is no simple solution for coastal erosion and climate change, it is important to carefully assess what works and what doesn’t. In many cases, buildings should have never been constructed as close to the beach as they are, and in many others, land loss was an inevitability. The best thing we can do is assess our current impact on the environment, and try to minimize it.

Introduction

Perhaps the single most influential technological phenomenon over the past few decades has been the widespread adoption of the internet. Loosely defined as a network which connects almost all computers in the world, the internet has accelerated the rate of globalization and become engrained into the day-to-day lives of people across the world.

Providing a gateway to entertainment, social networking, marketplaces, and business activities, the internet is filled with opportunity. But instead of being the democratizing force it was originally meant to, disparity in access threatens to make the technology one of the largest factors in driving inequality today.

Fundamental Internet Infrastructure

Although there a whole array of devices, such as modems, routers, and receivers which are necessary for full internet access, for now, I will just list the most common ways internet service providers (ISPs) connect their customers:

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)

Transmits data over existing copper telephone lines. Uses a broadband connection.

Cable Modem

Uses the same cables that deliver audio and video to TV to provide broadband connection.

Fiber 

Uses bundles of extremely thin glass fibers to provide very fast internet.

Wireless

Typically provided by cellphone carriers, establishes a connection between the user’s device and cell towers to transmit data.

Satellite

Uses satellites orbiting the Earth to transmit data to users. Has a broad range, but impacted by weather and delivers slower speeds.

With such a wide variety of sources available, universal internet access seems like an easily achievable reality. However, as the data show, significant hurdles must be overcome first.

Internet Access Statistics

According to the IMF, “The digital divide is more like a chasm, both within and between countries.” As the chart below shoes, only about forty-seven percent of people on Earth have access to internet.

With over twenty percent of retail sales occurring online, and only expected to grow over the next decade, those lacking internet access lose out on both critical resources and business opportunities, placing them in a destructive cycle of social and economic isolation.

As this study from the National Center for Educational Statistics shows, Americans living in poverty were thirty-three percent less likely than the richest economic bracket to have internet access, demonstrating a strong relationship between the two metrics.

Finally, the greater need for reliable internet connection due to the pandemic has further exposed divisions amongst Americans. With rural areas already lacking infrastructure due to the low financial incentive for private companies to install it, and high cost of use in urban areas preventing low-income household from subscribing, these two groups have been largely left behind during the virtual boom of the past year and a half.

To ensure all citizens are truly apart of the twenty-first century, it is critical to bridge the gap in internet access across regions and economic strata.

 

 

 

Introduction

Electricity is a critical part of everyday life in the modern world. Whether it’s keeping the food on our tables fresh, or powering the lightbulbs that allow us to work at night, life in the 21st century simply wouldn’t be possible without a constant and safe supply. Consequently, maintaining the electrical grid is a critical part of infrastructure development. However, a variety of external factors, such as population density, available resources, and most recently, climate change, complicate things. In this blog, I’ll discuss how different countries/regions have been dealing with these issues:

United States

The world’s first electrical grid designed by Thomas Edison lit up Lower Manhattan on September 4, 1882. As shown by this example, the United States has a long and impressive history of supplying electricity to its citizens. Currently, the grid can be split up into three major regions that serve hundreds of millions of people combined: Eastern, Western, and Texas.

However, as this past year has shown, the grid is aging and in need of major overhaul. For example, the unusually harsh winter in Texas led to catastrophe as the inclement weather reduced the power grid’s ability to supply electricity while the cold led to a hike in user demand. Combined, these factors caused a days-long blackout all across the state.

Another issue the grid faces is its inflexibility as renewable energy sources gain traction. With more and more residences switch to independent solar power, revenues decrease, causing suppliers to raise prices. However, the rise in prices just pushes more people to switch to renewable, causing a “death spiral” for the grid. Over twenty percent of electricity in America is already renewable, and it will only increase from here. Therefore, the grid must use technology to become smarter and adapt to the needs of a changing market.

Norway

Blessed with ample rainfall, fast-moving rivers, and valleys, over 97% of the electricity in Norway comes from renewable sources (with hydropower leading the charge). However, they are also working hard to bridge that final 3% gap. Both the government and private companies are now providing incentives for individuals to get solar energy in order to future-proof energy. In addition, start-ups like Ocean Sun, which places large solar grids on the ocean, are working on making solar energy more accessible and cheaper.