Pennsylvania Environmental and Ethics 24 PDH Discount Package 3

This online engineering PDH course provides information on the development of Area Contingency Plans (ACPs) for environmental emergencies, and explains the formation of area committees, essential plan elements and the establishment of the ACP scope and content.

An ACP is a reference document prepared for the use of all agencies engaged in responding to environmental emergencies in a defined geographic area. An ACP is not a rigid, prescriptive plan with step-by-step instructions for responses. Rather it serves as a mechanism to ensure responders have access to essential area-specific information, as well as to promote interagency coordination as a means of improving the effectiveness of responses.

Responding to the immediate circumstances of an environmental emergency can be a challenging task. Thus, the ACP provides a mechanism for planning for these potential complications prior to an incident. Moreover, it is a useful tool for responders, providing practical and accessible information about what they need to know for an effective response. Currently, the ACP concept has grown beyond oil spill legislations to encompass the prospect of responses to environmental emergencies in general, including hazardous substance releases, natural disasters and acts of terrorism.

This online engineering PDH course provides tools and strategies that can be implemented during the brownfield cleanup and redevelopment process. This includes consideration of projected climate change and potential impact on vulnerable populations when performing brownfield site assessments, evaluating cleanup alternatives, and planning for redevelopment.

Many members of vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly, low-income communities and tribal communities, live close to brownfields and other blighted properties. Brownfield redevelopment presents opportunities to reduce blight and improve the quality of life for vulnerable populations while mitigating the impacts of climate change.

To build resilience to climate change, members of the community (including local government, businesses, academic institutions, banks, community leaders, and residents) must pursue climate change adaptation as well as mitigation.

This online engineering PDH course provides guidance on the design of site specific remedial technologies at uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. These remedial technologies typically include containment, treatment, disposal systems.

Control and containment technologies are those remedial systems that are used primarily for management of contaminants onsite to prevent excursions to the air or ground water. Control and containment remedial techniques are usually undertaken where the volume of waste or hazard associated with the waste makes it impractical or impossible to dispose of the contamination offsite or to treat the waste or contaminated material onsite. Site control and containment remedial techniques are often implemented along with treatment systems to minimize the volume of material requiring treatment.

This 10 PDH online course is applicable to civil, environmental and geotechnical engineers, as well as design and construction personnel involved with hazardous and toxic waste remedial activities.

This online engineering PDH course provides basic information on environmental quality and protection in the context of existing and proposed border security infrastructure and measures.

Border security is an important national priority, and environmental protection in the border region is of critical importance, given the rich natural resource endowments of the region. The shape and form of security infrastructure installed along the border is a critical factor affecting these areas of special concern. Additional installation of security infrastructure along the border will have a large impact on the region, presenting both challenges and opportunities to enhance security while preserving or even improving environmental sustainability.

There are mainly five key overlapping challenges in which environmental protection intersects with border security. These include, tourism and recreation economy; habitat integrity and wildlife corridors; water management; flooding, trash and sediment control; Hazmat and emergency response; and air quality.

This engineering online PDH course will establish conditions under which, when an engineering failure has occurred, it can be attributed to negligence.    

Five causes of failure are proposed: negligence, rare failure mode, overlooked failure mode, new (previously unrecognized) failure mode, and incorrect assessment of a known risk. Negligence is the only cause that involves failing in an ethical duty.  These concepts are illustrated with five case studies of failures ranging from gross negligence to absolutely unforeseeable events: 1) the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, for which a new possible cause was identified 95 years later (2014); 2) a building collapse in Bangladesh in which over 1,000 people died—one of the worst structural engineering disasters in history; 3) a meteorite strike of a private residence; 4) the crash of the British-French Concorde supersonic airliner, caused by an unlikely tire blow-out; and 5) radiation overdoses received by patients treated by the Thorac-25 medical linear accelerator, caused by errors in the software controlling the machine.