{"id":26828,"date":"2019-04-11T16:20:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T20:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/2019\/04\/11\/design-to-address-stormwater-infrastructure-issues\/"},"modified":"2023-02-15T17:25:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T22:25:46","slug":"design-to-address-stormwater-infrastructure-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/2019\/04\/11\/design-to-address-stormwater-infrastructure-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Design to Address Stormwater Infrastructure Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Juhann<\/a><\/p>\n

Doctor of Design (DDes)<\/a> student Juhann Waller wants to change the way the United States approaches natural disasters. \u201cThe current disaster system in the U.S. is more of a reactive instead of proactive system,\u201d Waller says. To solve this, Waller to designing a mathematical model that will give a resiliency index of the components of a town or municipality\u2019s stormwater infrastructure. The information gained from this could be used to plan repairs and replacements before major weather events, generate conversation about how funding is distributed, and ultimately, prevent flooding in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current disaster system in the U.S. is more of a reactive instead of proactive system\u201d \u2014Juhann Waller<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Waller is a licensed professional engineer with master\u2019s and bachelor\u2019s degrees in civil engineering.\u00a0 Today\u2019s engineering and design problems are becoming increasingly complex, Waller says, requiring civil engineers to specialize. Waller has been practicing for over 13 years, but he wanted to dive deep into academic research in order to analyze and solve these complex problems. \u201cSo here I am in a doctoral program to beef up my research skills,\u201d he says. Waller also wanted to return for his DDes degree for personal reasons. \u201cOne reason for doing the DDes program is personal aspirations.\u201d<\/p>\n

NC State\u2019s DDes program resonated with Waller, he says, because \u201cIt is online, and NC State is kind of local to Greensboro. Also, I like that it was in design because from a technical aspect civil engineering is numbers, numbers, numbers. But when you come out of school, you actually do a lot of design. And we\u2019re not necessarily trained in the aspect of true design thinking, the principles that are taught in the College of Design. So that\u2019s a value that I believe that this DDes program brings to my formalized training as a civil engineer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waller hopes that eventually his research will open up a discussion about social vulnerabilities and policy implications. \u201cMostly, social and economically disadvantaged populations stay in low lying areas. So when the flooding events occur, those are the people that are most impacted. And in addition to that, they also do not have the political clout or ability to force political change so that their situation can improve,\u201d Waller says. \u201cBut we could put measures in place so that people are not as vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disaster prevention and recovery cannot be a \u201cone-size-fits all approach,\u201d Waller says, but the algorithm he is creating could help individual municipalities throughout the country address their infrastructures. \u201cI think the algorithm will hold true [across the country], but the input would be region, town, or municipality specific.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waller is working on the component level to address the big problem of climate change. \u201cHopefully, this will start people thinking about flooding from a different perspective because it\u2019s something we are stuck with, with climate change, and there is no quick fix, no shot in the arm. We just need to learn to cope and be the best stewards of the resources that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

This post was originally published<\/a> in College of Design Blog.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false,"raw":"\"Juhann<\/a>\r\n\r\nDoctor of Design (DDes)<\/a> student Juhann Waller wants to change the way the United States approaches natural disasters. \u201cThe current disaster system in the U.S. is more of a reactive instead of proactive system,\u201d Waller says. To solve this, Waller to designing a mathematical model that will give a resiliency index of the components of a town or municipality\u2019s stormwater infrastructure. The information gained from this could be used to plan repairs and replacements before major weather events, generate conversation about how funding is distributed, and ultimately, prevent flooding in the first place.\r\n

\u201cThe current disaster system in the U.S. is more of a reactive instead of proactive system\u201d \u2014Juhann Waller<\/blockquote>\r\nWaller is a licensed professional engineer with master\u2019s and bachelor\u2019s degrees in civil engineering.\u00a0 Today\u2019s engineering and design problems are becoming increasingly complex, Waller says, requiring civil engineers to specialize. Waller has been practicing for over 13 years, but he wanted to dive deep into academic research in order to analyze and solve these complex problems. \u201cSo here I am in a doctoral program to beef up my research skills,\u201d he says. Waller also wanted to return for his DDes degree for personal reasons. \u201cOne reason for doing the DDes program is personal aspirations.\u201d\r\n\r\nNC State\u2019s DDes program resonated with Waller, he says, because \u201cIt is online, and NC State is kind of local to Greensboro. Also, I like that it was in design because from a technical aspect civil engineering is numbers, numbers, numbers. But when you come out of school, you actually do a lot of design. And we\u2019re not necessarily trained in the aspect of true design thinking, the principles that are taught in the College of Design. So that\u2019s a value that I believe that this DDes program brings to my formalized training as a civil engineer.\u201d\r\n\r\nWaller hopes that eventually his research will open up a discussion about social vulnerabilities and policy implications. \u201cMostly, social and economically disadvantaged populations stay in low lying areas. So when the flooding events occur, those are the people that are most impacted. And in addition to that, they also do not have the political clout or ability to force political change so that their situation can improve,\u201d Waller says. \u201cBut we could put measures in place so that people are not as vulnerable.\u201d\r\n\r\nDisaster prevention and recovery cannot be a \u201cone-size-fits all approach,\u201d Waller says, but the algorithm he is creating could help individual municipalities throughout the country address their infrastructures. \u201cI think the algorithm will hold true [across the country], but the input would be region, town, or municipality specific.\u201d\r\n\r\nWaller is working on the component level to address the big problem of climate change. \u201cHopefully, this will start people thinking about flooding from a different perspective because it\u2019s something we are stuck with, with climate change, and there is no quick fix, no shot in the arm. We just need to learn to cope and be the best stewards of the resources that we have.\u201d"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juhann Waller is pursuing his Doctor of Design degree with NC State in hopes of mitigating stormwater infrastructure issues that derail communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":26837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"ncstate_wire","ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"caption\":\"\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-26828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newswire","tag-_from-newswire-collection-406"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":{"ncst_posts_meta_modified_date":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26828"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32723,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26828\/revisions\/32723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}