COMMENT Editor: David Chadwick (cad.user@btc.co.uk) News Editor: Mark Lyward (mark.lyward@btc.co.uk) Advertising Sales: Josh Boulton (josh.boulton@btc.co.uk) Production Manager: Abby Penn (abby.penn@btc.co.uk) Design/Layout: Ian Collis ian.collis@btc.co.uk Circulation/Subscriptions: Christina Willis (christina.willis@btc.co.uk) Publisher: John Jageurs john.jageurs@btc.co.uk Published by Barrow & Thompkins Connexion Ltd. 35 Station Square, Petts Wood, Kent BR5 1LZ Tel: +44 (0) 1689 616 000 Fax: +44 (0) 1689 82 66 22 SUBSCRIPTIONS: UK £35/year, £60/two years, £80/three years; Europe: £48/year, £85 two years, £127/three years; R.O.W. £62/year £115/two years, £168/three years. Single copies can be bought for £8.50 (includes postage & packaging). Published 6 times a year. © 2022 Barrow & Thompkins Connexion Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of the magazine may be reproduced, without prior consent in writing, from the publisher For more magazines from BTC, please visit: www.btc.co.uk Articles published reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the publisher or his employees. While every reasonable effort is made to ensure that the contents of editorial and advertising are accurate, no responsibility can be accepted by the publisher for errors, misrepresentations or any resulting effects Comment Earth, fire and water by David Chadwick Forgive me for getting a bit biblical, but how many omens do you want? From earthquakes in Morocco, to record heat levels being recorded on a global basis followed by terrifying forest fires, alternating with devastating rains and catastrophic floods, and culminating in the terrible tragedy in Libya, when local dams burst, sweeping thousands of inhabitants of Derna out to sea, we appear to be in an upward spiral of climactic climate events. The consequences of climate change are not always so dramatic. Lengthy heatwaves cause prolonged droughts, crops struggle to survive and when the rains eventually arrive they are too powerful and sweep the arid regions clean. Global warming strips the polar regions of millennia of accumulated ice, and water levels rise slowly but inexorably and once fertile coastal regions are subsumed by the sea. The problem is we are both the culprits and the assuagers. I hesitate to use the word solution, as there are none, and we can merely attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change. Our growing dependence on IT to drive efficiencies in the construction industry and our attempts to introduce sustainable power generation are countered by the massive and increasing demand for processing capability to drive data centres running AI, bitcoin mining and cloud computing services. Many of the data centres using scarce water resources to cool the vast arrays of processors are based in hot urban environments, like California and the Southern regions of China and India, and alternative air conditioning systems consume massive amounts of electricity. The processing power of the data centres is required to handle the complex simulations that are quite clever at showing us where we are inexorably headed, but can also be used to fine-tune the construction of the environment we hope to live in. Trying to balance the books, then, so that we can continue to maintain the lifestyles we have grown accustomed to - and to support burgeoning population growth and urbanisation in the under-resourced Third World - the industry is using its technology to both educate people and to fight back against an inevitable fate. In this issue we are taking a closer look at water security. It's a vicious circle. The rising global temperatures are melting polar regions and altering oceanic currents, changing water temperatures and generating more extreme weather events. We cannot reverse the trend until we get things like carbon emissions under control. In the meantime we must ensure that the world's growing population have enough water to sustain them and grow their crops, and that we can handle an increasingly violent events that nature throws at us. To this end we have Bentley's Sandra DiMatteo explaining how the company's digital twin technology is being used to help municipal organisations in Brazil, China, America and the Netherlands to improve the efficiency of their water supply and management, suggesting a number of ways in which in which this can be achieved, One of the solutions is particularly poignant in the aftermath of the Libyan disaster, as it focuses on dam management. This is complemented by an article from Bluesky on the use of Lidar technology to measure rising sea levels. The company commissioned Sairo Studios, a creative agency specialising in content for AR, VR and Metaverse to create a 360-degree video educational film for students, 'Rising Tides: Climate Change in Morecambe Bay', which vividly brings the real impact of global warming to life. 4 <strong>Sep</strong>tember/<strong>Oct</strong>ober <strong>2023</strong>
FASTER WORKFLOWS FROM START TO FINISH. Carry your projects through from start to finish with the speed and reliability you require. With the latest in Vectorworks, you’ll find faster workflows at every stage of design, minimising interruptions and maximising productivity. Start your free trial at VECTORWORKS.NET/2024 OYAKI FARM BY IROHADO | COURTESY OF TONO MIRAI ARCHITECTS