FIU students earned first place out of 50 teams in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s eighth annual Campus RainWorks Challenge. The competition encourages students from across the country to submit green infrastructure designs and solutions to help address stormwater pollution.
The FIU multi-disciplinary team from the College of Engineering & Computing, the College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts and the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs developed a proposal for FIU’s Biscayne Bay Campus (BBC) titled Coastal Eco-Waters: Adapting for a Resilient Campus. The proposal incorporates green infrastructure practices – meant to mimic the natural water cycle – to increase the resiliency of an area that experiences extreme weather events.
“This challenge provided us with a unique opportunity to investigate future environmental problems and brainstorm innovative and sustainable solutions,” said Vivek Verma, the student team lead. “We hope that the solutions we developed as a team will have a positive impact on the Biscayne Bay Campus and our region.”
Civil engineering students identified the stormwater challenges and performed numerical simulations of seepage, flooding and water quality for all evaluated scenarios. Environmental engineering students identified the types and sources of pollutants and devised strategies to mitigate them.
Landscape architecture students analyzed existing land cover, circulation, and open space organization to develop a plan for mitigating climate change, flooding and sea-level rise through the use of green infrastructure solutions. Their work also focused on providing outdoor spaces for social interaction, education and environmental restoration. The public policy and administration student managed the planning and drafting of the project.
Read more at FIU News.