Attendance Roster : see attached
The 2011 Annual Meeting of the Emerging and Innovative Technologies Committee
(EITC) was held during the ASCE-EWRI conference in Palm Springs, CA.
The EITC Chair, Laurel Saito, called the meeting to order and requested attendees to introduce themselves.
Approval of 2010 Meeting Minutes - The 2010 Annual Meeting Minutes (Providence,
RI) had been circulated to EITC members. Laurel requested comments on the meeting minutes, and, hearing no comments proposed a motion to approve the minutes as written. Motion seconded by David Hill. Motion passed unanimously.
Sustainability - Barbara Minsker reported on conversations that she has been having with the Sustainability Committee around the issue of measuring sustainability in infrastructure to demonstrate effectiveness using performance based metrics.
Emerging and innovative technologies may be the key for such demonstrations and
Barbara suggested a task committee jointly with the sustainability committee to work on these issues. With several volunteers from EITC, Barbara offered to hold an exploratory meeting the following evening.
A proposal was put on the table to hold next year’s EITC Annual Meeting on Sunday of the EWRI Conference. Since a significant number of EITC members are also active in other committees, this would reduce the number of potential meeting conflicts and allow broader participation by all members. This item will be further discussed during future conference calls.
Session Update for the Current EWRI Conference – Craig Patterson reported that there were 11 EITC sessions this conference with good attendance, in particular at the sessions focusing on CFD as well as Environmental Sensing and Cyberinfrastructure.
Craig reported hearing some comments about some presentations being off-topic from the session titles and speculated that this is perhaps the result of difficulty in pigeonholing many multi-use technologies to specific applications.
Craig went over the list of sessions at this conference. Most papers received had been accommodated in various sessions (including one abstract that was received late).
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Some sessions (e.g., the Margaret Peterson session) conflicted with other EITC sessions leading to a discussion on whether closely-affiliated sessions could be better separated in time to allow better attendance. Craig suggested that track chairs could potentially accomplish some separation.
Committee Handbook – The intent of the committee handbook was to prepare a document that would be helpful for new EITC officers.
Various sections of the Handbook were extensively discussed. These changes will be incorporated in the next draft of the Handbook and circulated amongst EITC members.
Salient discussion points included:
- Mission Statement and Vision Goals – this will go into the ASCE Handbook.
Laurel read out the Mission statement. Some minor modifications were made.
The reference to “Councils” appeared antiquated and was changed to
“Committee”.
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The statement regarding “actively recruit” to join EITC was felt to be unnecessary and changed t o “actively encourage”.
- “Solicit input” was changed to “welcomes” to make it a more passive activity.
- Actively seek publication in “Currents”. OK to leave in as a purpose for EITC.
- History
– OK as is. Important to remember the history of the formation of EITC.
- Process of Joining the Committee – currently requires circulation of the resume of the interested individual followed by a vote amongst EITC members (dissent only). Changed to eliminate the voting step since there no circumstance to deny membership could be easily identified.
- Officers – Rotates from Secretary to Vice-Chair, to Chair. Other positions are voluntary and do not rotate. Some discussions were held regarding the distribution of work between the three officers with the Vice-Chair having little to do. Duties will be redistributed in the next draft of the Handbook. The Vice-Chair will take on the responsibility of keeping the Handbook updated.
- Website
– Meeting minutes are posted on website, conference call minutes are not posted. Decided to post conference call minutes as well. Laurel hosts and maintains the website.
- Requests for Reimbursement – procedure was clarified.
Laurel requested a motion to approve the draft handbook. Elizabeth Coyle seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
Publications in Currents – Sean McKenna is currently the coordinator and he volunteered to continue in that role. David Hill volunteered to prepare an article on
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Sensing and Cyberinfrastructure while Lindell Ormsbee volunteered to author an article on stakeholder metrics.
International Perspective on Water Resources & the Environment (IPWE 2012) –
Bijay Panigrahi provided information on IPWE 2012 to be held in Marrakesh, Morocco from January 5 -7, 2012. This is a regional conference to foster and facilitate the exchange of technology from the Developed world to Developing countries.
ExCom Report
– Walter Grayman presented the ExCom report and presented some changes in structure.
Vision 2050 Book Publication
– Walter reported that the “Vision 2050” book had been completed on December 31 and submitted for approval. He has met with EWRI and
ASCE to discus publication options. UNESCO may also be interested in co-publishing the book.
As a hard-cover publication, the selling price of the book is likely to be $100 which may result in poor demand. Alternative possibilities include open-access publication through
ASCE as an e-Book.
The cost is significantly reduced ($100’s vs. $1000s).
Another possibility is that the ASCE governing body pays for the book to be hosted on the ASCE website (cost is estimated to be $6000) and then anyone can download the book.
Publication options will be determined by July and the book will hopefully be published this year.
Other Monographs and Publications – Many papers can be tailored toward journal topics, however, ASCE journals do not always categorize EITC topics well. In addition, the rapid pace of technology change makes any paper publication quickly obsolete.
The Sensing and Cyberinfrastructure TC has been looking into publishing some findings and one solution may be to publish monographs or electronic publications with periodic updates. This is also advantageous from a financial perspective since open access publishing costs thousands of dollars in fees as opposed to tens of thousands of dollars.
Rain Harvesting - Emmanuel Nzewi and Rob Montgomery reported on rain harvesting.
A number of groups are working on rain harvesting and this topic could be developed as a task committee. Sajjad Ahmad proposed adding in fog harvesting.
Interdisciplinary Program Initiative – Laurel Saito reported some progress in this topic but, with an upcoming sabbatical, she will shelve this item for a later date.
Prototype to Innovative Technology to Implementation – Elizabeth Coyle proposed an exploratory committee to see if sessions could be held focusing on avenues and barriers to bringing innovative technologies out of the laboratory into the marketplace.
Barb Minsker, Karl Lambert, Rajib Sinha, Laurel Saito, Rob Montgomery, and Bob
Andoh volunteered to help Elizabeth gauge interest.
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International Council proposal for Innovative Technologies – The International
Council (IC) had proposed a standing committee to investigate policy decisions affecting innovative technologies. After some discussion, it was decided that there should be little overlap with EITC activities and that EITC should express interest in this proposal to discover the proposed direction. IC should formally state their interest in collaborating with EITC in their formal application.
Laurel, Lily, Emmanuel, Sajjad, and Rajib volunteered to investigate further.
Tracks and Sessions for the 2012 Conference (Albuquerque, NM)
– Craig Patterson volunteered to continue as the track chair for the 2012 conference but requested assistance. Sajjad Ahmed volunteered to assist Craig this year and perhaps take over as track chair the following year. At this time, the following sessions were tentatively proposed:
Water & Wastewater – 2 sessions (Craig Patterson)
Cyberinfrastructure
– 2 sessions (Barbara Minsker; David Hill)
Rainwater Harvesting – 1 session (Emmanuel Nzewi)
Stakeholder – 1 session (Lindell Ormsbee)
CFD
– 2 sessions (Bob Andoh)
Sustainability – 2 sessions (Aditya Tyagi)
Vision 2050 – Tentative (Walter Grayman)
Prototype to Innovative Technology Implementation
– 1 session (Elizabeth Coyle)
Cloud Computing
– proposed by Tom Batroney
ISO 14000 EMS – Lily Baldwin
Total
– 13 sessions
Session proposals are due on June 27. Send the proposals to Craig; he will fill out the necessary forms.
Call for papers go out around the third week of August.
Abstracts are due on September 7.
Social Media and Networking – some discussion in “promoting” or “disseminating” information about EITC through social media such as Facebook. Lily Baldwin offered to explore setting up a Facebook site for EITC. Tom Batroney said that the Pittsburgh
EWRI chapter is also looking into Facebook and LinkedIn.
Webinars – EWRI is requesting committees to explore holding Webinars on various topics. This could potentially result in some revenue for EWRI.
Margaret Petersen Award
– This is a task committee under EITC. Applications from the previous year will carry over to this year. At this time there is sufficient funding to
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continue making the award. The award is given to a female involved in water resources. The award recipient needs to be a member of EWRI and ASCE. The deadline for nominations is October 1.
Nominations and Election of the Next EITC Secretary – Lindell nominated Karl
Lambert to be the next EITC Secretary. Lily seconded. Karl was elected unanimously by voice vote.
Next Conference Call – August 24 th , 2011 at 12:00 Noon.
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1. Laurel Saito
2. Lindell Ormsbee
3. Lily Baldwin
4. Andrea Zimmer
5. Elizabeth Coyle
6. David Hill
7. Craig Patterson
8. Yao Kouame
9. Emmanuel U. Nzewi
10. Bob Andoh
11. Stephanie Luster-Teasley
12. Sajjad Ahmad
13. Morris Maslia
14. Dominic Boccelli
15. Aditya Tyagi
16. M.L. Kansal
17. Walter Grayman
18. Sean McKenna
19. Rob Montgomery
20. Tom Batroney
21. Bijay Panigrahi
22. David Williams
23. Karl Lambert
24. Abraham Deng
25. Jeanne Van Briesen
26. Zoran Kapelan
27. Avi Ostfeld
28. Pete Loucks
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29. Chin Man (Bill) Mok
30. Barbara Minsker
31. Rajib Sinha
32. Nur Muhammad (by phone)
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