Events Calendar

Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar

Speaker: Mr. Gerald Jerry Buckwalter, Chief Innovation Officer, American Society of Civil Engineers

Talk Title: Future World Vision: Engineering the Future Built Environment

Abstract: From climate change to autonomous vehicles, engineers are confronting a variety of environmental challenges, demographic shifts and technological changes that will require a drastic rethinking of how we build, operate, and maintain our infrastructure systems. Planning for the future is difficult for nearly every organization. ASCE decided to launch the Future World Vision project to help meet this challenge. We compiled and winnowed more than hundred global macrotrends to examine six important sociopolitical, economic, environmental, and technological trends as key drivers of change for future built infrastructure.

Our desire is that the Future World Vision project will establish ASCE and civil engineers as bold thought leaders, provide a platform to envision the future built environment and ultimately optimize future system performance and the benefit to society, and be a next generation tool that interacts and resonates with those who will create the future built environment the next generation of civil engineers. The Future World Vision platform is an immersive computer model, using gaming engines, that will create virtual future worlds with evocative visuals, multiple characters and rich narratives that explore holistic city, community and neighborhood systems, including the cultural, social, economic, political, ethical and environmental aspects at different scales. This platform will enable engineers to ask the right questions about a future built environment that does not exist yet, contemplate solutions, postulate the resulting benefit to society well in advance of starting to design those solutions. This will enable us to better prepare engineers today for possible future needs and challenges.


Biography: Gerald Jerry E. Buckwalter has more than 35 years of varied executive leadership in general management, business development, strategy and innovation, program operations and policy development. He has worked in infrastructure, electronics, information technology, commercial security, and technology services markets, spanning military, government, international and commercial domains.

Mr. Buckwalter is the Chief Innovation Officer of ASCE and was formerly the Chief Operating and Strategy Officer. In that role, Jerry directs a forward-leaning strategic assessment and visualization project called Future World Vision where ASCE is creating a virtual and interactive computer model to assess potential built environments 50 years into the future. He also has his own consulting firm, Strategy Essentials, where he specializes in business, market, and technology strategic planning.

Prior to joining ASCE, Mr. Buckwalter was a Northrop Grumman Corporate Director of Strategy. His responsibilities included reshaping the company business portfolio, mergers and acquisitions, long-term strategies, innovation initiatives and professional development. Jerry worked for many years coordinating company-wide homeland security business in border and transportation security, emergency preparedness and response, critical infrastructure protection and intelligence gathering.

Mr. Buckwalter earned a degree in Physics from Monmouth University and has extensive continuing education at George Washington University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


Host: Dr. Burcin Becerik

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Pass: 975701

Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Pass: 975701

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes