COLLABORATIVE PROJECT INVESTIGATES PUBLICPRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
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hen the President recently proposed a trilliondollar plan to repair the nation’s failing infrastructure, he signaled that a significant portion of that plan will rely on public-private partnerships.
Last year, Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and Whitman School of Management assembled a team of student and faculty researchers to investigate public-private partnerships in the United States with a goal of informing government representatives of the benefits, pitfalls, and opportunities. To do so, the team of undergraduates and Ph.D. candidates led by O. Sam Salem, chair and Yabroudi Endowed Professor, and Terry Brown, the executive director of the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship, identified the perceived benefits and weaknesses of the partnerships, researched specific projects to determine if those notions rang true,
and compiled a quantitative and qualitative comparison of public-private partnerships projects versus traditional design-bid-build projects. As detailed in their comprehensive report, they found that public-private partnership infrastructure projects in the United States have a significantly greater likelihood of meeting schedule and cost requirements when compared to conventional approaches. However, the success of such projects is highly dependent on key factors, including political commitment, favorable and complete value-for-cost analysis, supportive local and state legislation, the accurate assumption of interest rates, and other key financial parameters. “These partnerships are not ideal for all projects, but they are a good option for big projects. We found that they are particularly well-suited for transportation, hospitals, schools, and water systems,” says Salem.
UNCOVERING CONNECTIONS IN THE WATER CYCLE
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lants move more water into the atmosphere than streams or rivers move across the landscape. Observing, measuring, and simulating this process called transpiration is challenging, yet vital for understanding the water cycle and our water supply.
By including groundwater flow in their model, the amount of water moved through transpiration increased. This suggests that groundwater flow, which is generally simplified or excluded from other continental scale simulations, plays a larger role than previously understood.
In “Connections between groundwater flow and transpiration partitioning,” Assistant Professor Laura Condon and Professor Reed Maxwell of the Colorado School of Mines use highperformance computing to factor in the impact of groundwater flowing beneath vegetation at the continental scale to understand just how important plants’ use of water is to the water cycle. With this knowledge, scientists will be able to better predict how much freshwater will be available under changing climate conditions.
“If groundwater is impacting the behavior of transpiration as our model shows, then it needs to be taken into consideration if we want to better understand what large-scale water availability will look like over the next 100 years,” Condon explains.
Condon and Maxwell’s research studied transpiration’s part in moving water from the surface of the land to the atmosphere.
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Gifts to our College allow us to further prepare our students in ways that will differentiate them in the competitive marketplace and magnify the value of a Syracuse University engineering and computer science degree. Gifts will also support specific initiatives aimed at positioning our College as a leading model for contemporary engineering and computer science education, as presented in our Transforming Our Future plan at eng-cs.syr.edu/transformation. With your help, there is no limit to what we can achieve. Please consider making your gift today at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
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CERTIFICATE OF ADVANCED STUDY IN PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP VISIT US ON FACEBOOK
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The College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs are now partnering to co-administer a Certificate of Advanced Study in Public Infrastructure Management and Leadership (CAS-PIML).
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The CAS-PIML is a 15-credit concurrent degree for public administration or engineering graduate students. Courses
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We share these accomplishments with you because you are a part of us. As an alumnus or a friend of this Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, you have contributed to our shared success by your very association. A great many of you have also generously helped fund the endeavors highlighted within this newsletter.
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O. Sam Salem Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering omsalem@syr.edu
The complete research appeared in the July 22, 2016 issue of Science Magazine. The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research and Office of Advanced Scientific Computing through the IDEAS project.
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will cover the planning, design, and policy considerations of public infrastructure along with environmental and social sustainability issues. The program is geared toward mid-career professionals who are interested in infrastructure planning, engineering, management, and administration.
he politically embattled Clean Power Plan set out to regulate carbon dioxide emissions to protect public health and welfare. Given that other pollutants are emitted from power plants—along with carbon dioxide—research has shown that carbon emission standards for the power sector benefit human health. New research shows that they would also benefit crops and trees.
The study is authored by researchers from Drexel University, Syracuse University, Boston University, and Harvard University, convened by the Science Policy Exchange. It is the first study to model the ecosystem impact of contrasting policies, one of which was similar to the Clean Power Plan.
“These benefits to people and ecosystems are nearly immediate and occur in urban and rural communities across the U.S. We know from this and other studies that the economic value of the added benefits from power plant carbon standards are large and exceed the estimated cost of implementation.”
LEADING ON INFRASTRUCTURE
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ore than 300 million Americans rely on roads, bridges, public water mains, and utilities every day, but in much of the United States those basic infrastructure systems are aging faster than repairs can be made. Trillions of dollars of investment will be needed in the coming years.
According to the study, the corresponding reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions from coal power plants would also mean a decrease in ground-level ozone—a known inhibitor of plant growth. By using modeling predictions of the year 2020, the researchers found that proper implementation of the Clean Power Plan would provide a significant boost to the productivity of key indicator crops, such as corn, cotton, soybean, and potato, as well as several tree species.
O. Sam Salem, chair and Yabroudi Endowed Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is leading a partnership between the College of Engineering and Computer Science and three other colleges at Syracuse University to study and assist public agencies across the country with solutions to their infrastructure needs. The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, the Whitman School of Management, and the College of Law each bring their expertise in public-private partnerships, public policy, and budgeting to the Public Civil Infrastructure Program (PCI).
“Our work shows the importance of considering the co-benefits of our nation’s energy policies going forward,” said Syracuse University Professor Charles T. Driscoll, co-author of the study.
Salem says the PCI’s mission includes “strategies and methods to minimize project costs and durations, improve project delivery systems, provide better publicity for public agencies and more
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justifiable budget requests, and raise the skill sets of the current and future workforce.” The PCI will also look at standards for public-private partnerships that have been successful in Europe and are now seeing greater attention in the United States. “Breaking from the traditional, yet inefficient, publicly funded model requires considerable education of public officials and administrators, including changes to federal, state, and municipal laws, as well as the private sector,” said Salem. The PCI will also make its research and reports publicly available to planners, designers, contractors, managers, investors, law and policy makers, public agencies, and private sectors nationwide. In addition, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Engineering and Computer Science are co-administering courses on infrastructure and public policy. The two schools also offer a Certificate of Advanced Study in Public Infrastructure Management and Leadership to graduate students.