Faculty researchers in USA’s new Coastal Transportation Engineering Research and Education Center recently addressed transportation hydraulic engineers from around the nation at the 2004 National Hydraulic Engineering Conference hosted by the Federal Highway Administration in Asheville, N.C.

The center’s three principal investigators--civil engineering faculty Drs. Kevin D. White, Q. “Jim” Chen, and Scott L. Douglass--spoke at the meeting, which attracted several hundred engineers from state transportation departments around the country.

Douglass and Chen presented a half-day mini-course, “Coastal Engineering Overview: Design Aspects and Coastal Engineering Solutions,” on methods for modeling waves, tides, storm surges, and designing beach nourishments and coastal structures. White spoke on “Design of Stormwater Treatment Wetlands: Treatment Volume, Allocation of Treatment Volume, and Other Key Criteria.”

USA’s Coastal Transportation Engineering Research and Education Center, funded by the Federal Highway Administration, focuses on the design and planning of roadways that are exposed to the wave, tide, current, and sand transport environment that is unique to the coast. There are over 60,000 U.S. roadway miles that are occasionally exposed to coastal storm surge or wave attack.