Urban growth (Figure 1) creates a diverse range of environmental engineering problems. Among other things, growing populations require increased supplies of good quality water, transportation infrastructure must be expanded and strategies for minimizing increases in air pollution must be implemented. Each of these issues, however, cannot be considered in isolation. Thus, it is important to develop an integrated perspective of the relationships and feedbacks between different technical problems, political realities, economics and patterns human behavior.

The urban heat island contributes to the formation of ozone. Ozone is a major urban air pollutant that has serious human health consequence. NASA and the U.S. EPA are analyzing the relationship between land use patterns, urban heat island development and air quality along the Wasatch Front (Figure 2). For additional information, review NASA's heat island web page.

U of Utah Researcher: Beth Dudley-Murphy, Energy & Geoscience Institute

Rapidly increasing demand for culinary water in arid regions requires an analysis of the tradeoffs between different resource management strategies. System models (Figure 3) integrate principles of engineering hydrology with the effects of longterm weather variability, patterns of human behavior, population growth (Figure 1) and the economics of water resources infrastructure.

U of Utah Researcher: Craig Forster, Geology & Geophysics