Networking People with the Environment

Garrick Louis, an associate professor of systems engineering, has devoted his career to working with communities to build sustainable infrastructure. This path has given him ample opportunity to assess the impact—sometimes unexpected—of public policy on development. Louis has now received a prestigious Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which will allow him to work at the National Center for Environmental Research at the Environmental Protection Agency. His responsibilities will include drawing together initiatives from across the agency in such areas as smart growth and natural resource conservation into a single grant program.

“I chose to work at the EPA because it will give me a firsthand opportunity to view technology policy from the institutional side and to understand the factors that shape its ultimate formulation,” he says. “It will help me develop a much broader appreciation for the policies I encountered in the field.” For a systems engineer like Louis, understanding the big picture is a prerequisite for his work. As a researcher, his projects entail helping people in local communities put that picture together for themselves.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Louis has been analyzing the critical infrastructure services in the City of Charlottesville to determine if they will remain viable in the face of a variety of hazards, ranging from storms to terrorist attacks. “A lot of people are looking at individual parts of the infrastructure,” he notes, “but unless you see how they are interconnected, your assessment will be flawed. For instance, water treatment produces solid waste—but if your transportation or waste disposal systems are compromised, your water system—no matter how effectively it is hardened—will be compromised as well.”

Louis is also interested in interrelatedness on a global scale, a phenomenon known as urban metabolism. A shift in consumer choices in urban areas of industrialized countries can have a profound environmental impact in developing countries. Louis provides a number of examples. If urban consumers show a preference for beverages in aluminum cans rather than bottles, countries like Guyana and Jamaica must bear the consequences of additional bauxite mining. If urban consumers choose to commute by car rather than by subway, people in island countries must devote funds to mitigate rising sea levels due to global warming, rather than invest in local infrastructure or schools.

As an educator, Louis is determined to convey this sense of global connectedness to his students. He has founded the Village Project, a long-term effort designed to reach out to students and people around the world and to share the knowledge and expertise that U.Va. has to offer. The Village Project combines student initiatives such as Engineering Students Without Borders and web-based homework support for high school students with courses taught by U.Va. faculty and delivered over the Internet to students at overseas institutions.  “In essence, I want students to understand that people can make choices that have a positive effect elsewhere in the world,” he says.