A team from the University of Missouri-Rolla finished in first place at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Information Mining and Geotechnical Site Characterization Design competition held Feb. 26. The competition was held during ASCE Geo-Institute’s Geo-Congress 2006, a national conference that focused on “Geotechnical Engineering in the Information Technology Age.”

The competition was designed to promote the optimal use of information, databases, and both analytical and numerical processing tools that are available online. Eighteen teams worldwide had four hours to investigate the failure of the levees in New Orleans, describe the problem as geotechnical engineers and develop a new design for the levee system.

The UMR team won the $1,000 prize and each team member also received a memory stick.

“The bragging rights are what the students and faculty will enjoy the most,” says team coach Dr. Ronaldo Luna, associate professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at UMR. “The runner-ups were the teams from Auburn University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.”

UMR team members include:

• JW Copeland of St. James, Mo., a graduate student in civil engineering
• Ben Gallagher of Rolla, Mo., a graduate student in civil engineering
• Noah Parsons of New Haven, Mo., a senior in geological engineering
• Dave Weidinger of Vienna, Mo., a junior in civil engineering