Syracuse as a National Leader in Stormwater Management
Thursday, April 18th, 2024 3:30pm to 5:00pm
: Syracuse Center of Excellence, 727 East Washington St. Syracuse, NY 13210-1544
Register on Eventbrite
Lawsuits by the Atlantic States Legal Foundation and the US EPA against Onondaga County forced the County to seek solutions to industrial contamination and combined sewer overflow into Onondaga Lake, NY in the 1980s and 1990s. Solutions included building regional treatment facilities and large storage tanks in disadvantaged Syracuse neighborhoods, causing environmental justice issues. In 2010, the County initiated development of green infrastructure to reduce combined sewer overflow pollution, known as the Save the Rain program. The County now boasts more than 220 green infrastructure projects and has satisfied the terms of the latest Amended Consent Judgment.
This changing landscape has offered many opportunities for research on stormwater management locally. In this R&T Forum, Professors Liz Carter, Cliff Davidson and Svetoslava Todorova, three faculty in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, will discuss their research programs related to stormwater in Syracuse. They will highlight the long-term hydrological and water quality function of SyracuseCoE’s Green Roof, one of the first in CNY. They’ll also present results of research currently underway on the Convention Center Green Roof, and discuss emerging trends in urban flood detection from sensor networks and satellite imagery.
SPEAKERS:
- Svetoslava Todorova, Professor of Practice, Environmental Engineering Program Director, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS). Dr. Svetoslava Todorova is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University. She is a Board-Certified Environmental Engineering Member under the American Academy of Environmental Engineering and Scientists and Envision Sustainability Professional. Todorova’s area of expertise is in metal biogeochemistry, sustainable infrastructure, and low-cost sensors for environmental monitoring. Todorova is a member of the Open-ended Scientific Group under the UNEP Minamata Convention on Mercury and a member of the UNEP Science-policy Panel for Sound Management of Waste under the Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm, and Minamata Conventions.
- Cliff Davidson, Research Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS). Dr. Cliff Davidson is the recently retired Thomas C. and Colleen L. Wilmot Professor of Engineering in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems at Syracuse University. He is continuing his research in several areas, including monitoring of air pollutants in Syracuse and performance of green infrastructure for stormwater management. He is Chair of ASCE’s Sustainable Infrastructure Education Committee, and was one of the Principal Investigators of the EPA Supersites Program which monitored atmospheric pollutants over many years in Pittsburgh, PA. He served as the AEESP Distinguished Lecturer in 2022-2023.
- Liz Carter, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS). Dr. Liz Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on the development of computational tools that allow global earth observations, like satellite imagery and output from environmental sensor networks, to inform water resources management and response to natural disasters. Prior to SU, she served as the inaugural joint USGS-NASA postdoctoral research fellow, developing robust AI to detect flooding in diverse North American contexts from multiple types of satellite imagery. Current active projects involve automatic rapid evaluation of the stability of coastal engineering interventions using satellite imagery (US ERDC Coastal and Hydraulics Lab), development of low-power camera-based sensor network to automate flood mapping in urban regions (NY DEC, USGS), and evaluation of how historical flood control infrastructure has redistributed flood risk along socioeconomic gradients in the United States (USGS and NSF).