Willet Science Center Parking Lot and the Importance of Smart Infrastructure

Willet Science Center Parking Lot and the Importance of Smart Infrastructure  

 For our first lab assignment, and to get accustomed to working with measurement, we tried to figure out how much rain would fall on a given parking lot in a rainstorm of a given height. The answer was around 70 thousand gallons. That answer not only tells us the need for effective runoff systems, it sparks in my mind the topic of smart infrastructure. If, for instance, seven swimming pools of water flooded a parking lot with insufficient runoff systems the cars, not to mention the environment, would be at serious hazard. This is demonstrative of the basic need for smart infrastructure.
                  There has been a lot of talk recently, about the decline of America's infrastructure. I think one of the reasons that it hasn't really caught on is that its hard to draw a connection. In america it seems like we have fine train systems and bus systems and buildings, and green space because our point of reference is the past. And for the last fifty years it seems we re at least equal to, if not marginally better than the past. However if you start to compare us to place like Japan, or Norway, or even Dubai, one starts to see how behind the times we are. The problem is that those costs get passed on, not to the people operating them, but to adjacent interests in subversive ways. Trains in america are high pollutants-- this effects the places they run through negatively and their slow speed, decreases their productivity that could increase the trans continental human capital exchange (that is to say, people with skills on one coast, are of no use to people on the other, or even half way through the country). The same reasons apply to efficiently draining waters, as those that respond to smart green spaces that would allow biological diversity to thrive without adversely effecting the day to day lives of humans. It's a question of ingenuity, which despite popular thought, is not dead in America. It's just not being used to it's best abilities