Articles

Technical Sessions - March 2017

MORNING SESSION @ 11:00 AM 

Topic: The Public Outreach Effort for the TxDot CityMAP Project

Speaker: James Frye, ASLA Vice President HNTB CORPORATION 

James is a registered Landscape Architect with a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Louisiana State University. For more than twenty years, James has primarily focused on public sector projects as planner, urban designer, landscape architect and visionary at the national, state, and municipal levels. James enjoys the challenge of balancing varying stakeholder desires with complex design and infrastructure challenges to create memorable places and functional designs for people. James understands the tremendous range of economic and quality of life opportunities associated with these projects and the enduring benefits they can have on communities, cities and regions. In this spirit, James is currently leading the Dallas CityMAP process for Texas Transportation Commissioner Victor Vandergriff and the Texas Department of Transportation identifying neighborhood redevelopment, preservation and transportation scenarios for a comprehensive mobility, livability, and economic development vision for Dallas’ urban core. More of his projects include concepts for the deck parks spanning I-30 near Fair Park, the KATY Trail Bridge over Mockingbird Lane, Sylvan Avenue Bridge over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas and the recently completed Northwest Highway at White Rock Lake Park Bridges and Trail. His past experience also includes CSS efforts for I-405 in Seattle, Washington and I-465 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Both projects now serve as successful national case studies for the Federal Highway Administration’s CSS process. James lives in Dallas with his wife Laura and their children Jack, Sam, Ben, Susannah and Caroline.

AFTERNOON TECHNICAL SESSION @ 1:10 PM

Topic: A Radar-based Flood Warning System for Urban Floods                                               

Speaker:  Nick Z. Fang, Ph.D., P.E., Assistant Professor Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Fang is an assistant professor in civil engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University in 2008. His current research interests include seeking water infrastructure solutions, assessing spatial-temporal impact for urban hydrology, applying radar technologies in urban hydrology, enhancing predictive hydrologic models, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications, and applying them into water resources development and disaster (hurricanes, flood, and drought) mitigation. He and his research team recently received a $1,196,295 research grant (#1442735) from NSF’s CyberSEEs to conduct research in Integrative Sensing and Prediction of Urban Water for Sustainable Cities. He works closely with federal agencies like the National Weather Service (NWS) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and municipal water utilities (Tarrant Regional Water District, etc.) to address water related issues for the DFW area. He is a Texas licensed Professional Engineer and used to work as project manager and assistant to the director in the SSPEED center at Rice University.