Megaengineering Projects Research Articles

Ancient Bogatyr to Electric River: The Modernized Mythology of the Yenisei

Abstract In propaganda related to the industrial hero-project of the Krasnoyarsk Dam (built 1956–1972), the Soviet press synthesized a narrative of modern conquest of nature by means of advanced hydrology and hydraulic technology with folklore-like myths that emphasized the often-mysterious greatness of the Yenisei River, the glory of the Soviet state, and the heroic feats of Soviet people. This mythology was a complex mixture of imagery that drew on the Indigenous groups of Central Siberia (the Evenks, Tuvans, and Buryats) that had been displaced and alienated by the Russian state and the historic Russian residents of Siberia. These were the very groups whose worlds and stories had been deemed culturally backward. The mythology also incorporated imperial legends of Siberian conquest and embellished stories of Lenin’s sojourn in pre-revolutionary Siberia. Soviet print literature imaginatively recreated the Yenisei River as Ionessi and Ulug-Khem – “big water” or “big river,” “brother of the ocean,” and a mighty bogatyr (or warrior-hero) cursed to be a river. Such seemingly archaic imagery may seem to contradict the narrative of socialist industrial progress in the Yenisei basin, but this article highlights how such myths were modernized and mobilized in support of late-Soviet mega-engineering projects. It argues that the modernized myths of the Yenisei’s transformation – magical and through time – aimed to show nature in flux. People constantly acted upon it, transformed it, and cooperated with it. Moreover, these myths reflected the popular fascination with the immense, often dangerous and always mysterious, features of the Siberian landscape. Thus, in contrast to Stalinist industrialization, Soviet propagandists of the Cold War era did not always demystify nature; they also built their rhetoric upon folkloric and Indigenous conceptualizations of human-nature interaction and environmental change and created a sense of belonging to the place for the people who voluntarily participated in Siberian development.

Loess erosion patterns on a cut-slope revealed by LiDAR scanning

Erosion is a major environmental issue on the Chinese Loess Plateau. Although the erosion intensity on the plateau has generally decreased in recent years, ongoing mega-engineering projects continuously produce large, bare, and steep loess cut-slopes that are prone to erosion. Therefore, investigating loess erosion on cut-slopes in this region has practical importance. Multi-temporal high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) analysis has been widely used to quantify surface erosion, but has not yet been applied to loess cut-slopes. This study aims to reveal the spatial and temporal patterns of loess erosion on an artificial cut-slope through the analysis of a time series of LiDAR scans. The results showed that the spatial distribution of loess erosion on the study cut-slope was constrained by three slope characteristics: slope material, slope structure, and slope hydrology. The highest erosion rates were observed in areas with paleosols, discontinuities, and water accumulation. In the temporal domain, the variation of the loess erosion rate with rainfall intensity could be described using a power function. Although this research only focused on one slope, findings suggest that it is possible to investigate the complex loess erosion on cut-slopes using state-of-the-art high-resolution remote sensing techniques such as LiDAR scanning. Our results provide useful information for soil conservation on similar engineering loess cut-slopes in the Loess Plateau.

The Effect of Stakeholder-Associated Risks in Mega-Engineering Projects: A Case Study of a PPP Airport Project

Mega-engineering projects in the construction industry are generally carried out by public-private partnership models with the participation of different stakeholders. This paper aims to identify the effect of stakeholder-associated risks on the success of mega-engineering projects. Therefore, the risks were determined and then validated by focus discussions. Afterwards, an illustrative case study was presented to better understand the effects. Finally, a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process method was used to prioritize the identified risks. The prominent risks were found to include “improper partner selection,” “inadequate relationships with employer,” and “incompetent contractor selection.” Engineering managers need to work in close coordination with all members of the project. To better manage projects, engineering managers are expected to be familiar with the concepts of project risk management, because effective project risk management has a direct and positive effect on project management performance. Professionals in the field of engineering management can benefit greatly from the findings of this study by using it as a baseline for coordinating the relationships in multistakeholder organizational structures and analyzing stakeholder-associated risks throughout their projects.

Mapping land subsidence over the eastern Beijing city using satellite radar interferometry

ABSTRACTBeijing City has suffered from groundwater-induced subsidence since the late 1930s and the over-exploration of groundwater could lead to subsidence as much as −12.0 cm yr−1. Previous studies on the ground deformation at Beijing City mainly focused on the period before the year of 2014 when a mega-engineering project was launched to reduce water shortage in Beijing. To study the most recent ground deformation, 19 L-band ALOS-1 PALSAR images (June 2007–January 2011), 24 C-band Sentinel-1 SAR images (June 2015–November 2016) together with 9 ALOS-2 PALSAR acquisitions (September 2014–February 2017) were analysed in this work. Levelling measurements were exploited to verify the ALOS-1-based time series InSAR (TS-InSAR) result while Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2 result were cross-verified with each other. Furthermore, the whole study area was divided into four sub-zones, and the result indicated that the subsidence rates over five townships, Cuigezhuan, Jinzhan, Liyuan, Songzhuang and Yanjiao were accelerating and more attentions should be paid. On the contrary, the town centre of Douge Zhuang township experienced a decreasing trend between these two temporal-periods. Additionally, the time series measurements with respect to five selected measurement points and the profile line along the subsidence hot spots were analysed.

Crisis and opportunity in China

The recently released “The Simpsons” movie begins with a horrifyingly comic premise. Springfield Lake is so polluted that just one more drop of muck will send it over the brink of disaster, with thousand-eyed mutant creatures rising fiercely from its depths. Homer Simpson, typically, invites that tipping point, in a convoluted narrative involving a pig in a bonnet. Watching it all, I couldn't help but think of China. China has lately gone over a brink of its own: the Worldwatch Institute reports that 300 million of its citizens now lack access to sources of safe drinking water. The problem isn't new, just increasingly harder to handle. Rivers are shrinking, water tables are falling, and drinking and irrigation supplies are growing ever more scarce. And when water is available, it's often polluted. Last May, five million residents of the city of Wuxi, in Jiangsu Province, temporarily lost their drinking water due to an algal bloom in Taihu Lake. (The emergency continued until provincial leaders diverted more water from the Yangtze River.) Ominously, this year, scientists reported that the glaciers high on the Tibetan Plateau – which for millennia have fed the Yangtze and Yellow rivers and quenched the thirst of hundreds of millions of local residents – are melting at an annual rate of 7%. That gives them another 20 years or fewer under business-as-usual. China's scientists and political leaders are making heroic efforts to cope with the crises, against mounting odds. Most dramatic is the US$60 billion plan to build dams and canals to divert water from China's wet south to the more populous, drier north. This could take decades. In southwestern China, meanwhile, authorities are building an underground dam, on a high limestone plateau where rainwater seeps to feed a river that eventually re-emerges in a waterfall. The goal is to block off the river, bringing the water closer to the surface, thereby supplying 30 000 local residents who now walk up to a mile a day to collect water for their homes. In keeping with tradition, Chinese leaders are trusting in mega-engineering projects. What's new, say foreign environmental groups, is blunt talk and an increasing willingness to accept help from outsiders. “China's environmental challenge isn't just to provide our children with future happiness”, deputy environmental minister Pan Yue told PBS this year, with refreshing candor. “The real question is whether our generation can survive intact.” This new, public sense of a real-time crisis has made official China more inviting to American and other foreign scientists who'd like to help. “The Chinese have the funds, but not the methodology”, admits University of New Hampshire researcher Chengsheng Li, a former Chinese environment ministry official. One effort to meet this need comes from the Natural Capital Project, for which I work as a consultant. This partnership between Stanford University, the World Wildlife Fund, and The Nature Conservancy has established a demonstration site in China, and is helping China's government to understand the trade-offs between development and life-support services from nature. Other American experts have flocked to China in recent years to work on the global-warming dilemma, and have helped the Chinese government enact energy-efficiency laws far more stringent than we have on the books at home. They report a hopeful development: lately, Chinese leaders have seemed more willing to seriously address climate change, a problem they long dismissed as an issue for rich countries alone. China is now the world's top greenhouse-gas emitter, having surpassed the US this year. The problem, of course, is that China depends on coal, one of the most destructive fuels, for 69% of its energy. A new coal plant goes up every 7 to 10 days, without any technology to capture its greenhouse-gas emissions. It's clear we need to ramp up international cooperation. The US government, conspicuously absent on this front in recent years, must start fast-tracking development and transfer of new technologies – specifically, equipment to sequester the coal-fired emissions – because all those coal plants aren't going away any time soon. As climate change worsens, China's thirsty present will become our future. Already, in my home state of California, scientists predict we'll lose one-third of our key water sources in this century due to melting snowpack. Earlier this year, long-time China scholar Orville Schell, director of the Center on US–China Relations at the Asia Society, called on America's scientists and business leaders to push for an emergency summit with counterparts in China, where efforts would be combined to find ways out of the coal–climate change crisis. It's an idea whose time has come and nearly gone.