12 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
As sea levels rise due to global climate
change, finding methods to protect
coastal cities from tidal flooding will be-
come a top priority. One method being
tested in South Korea would create the
world’s first floating city.
The proposed project in Busan along
the coast of the Korea Strait would have
the capacity to hold 12,000 people. The
project’s developers with a design startup
called Oceanix said the city could with-
stand 100-year storms as its foundation
rises with sea levels.
The design plans were presented in
April at a U.N. roundtable.
The city would consist of three float-
ing platforms, one each for housing,
public spaces and research and develop-
ment. Each would be connected to the
others and to the mainland by bridges
and anchored to the ocean floor. The
floating platforms would be coated with
Biorack, a buoyant limestone material
harder than concrete. More platforms
could be added later if the concept is
successful.
“We imagine that it could be the seed
of a kind of floating new neighborhood
that over time could grow,” said Bjarke
Ingels, the project’s lead architect.
The buildings would be limited to
five stories in height and built with
lightweight sustainable materials such
as bamboo and timber. The footprint is
small enough to allow foot travel and no
need for vehicles.
Oceanix has sought some $627 mil-
lion in private investment to fund the
project, with construction expected to
take two years. If successful, similar de-
velopments could be built along coastal
cities around the world where rising sea
levels pose the greatest threat.
“The first prototype is always more
expensive because you don’t have scale
behind you,” said Gaetano Crupi, a
partner at Prime Movers Lab, an inves-
tor in the project. “In the long run, we
believe that these platforms can be scaled
to be very viable all over the world.”
The city would be designed to be sus-
tainable by growing its own food, pro-
ducing solar energy and collecting and
filtering water. The platforms would
include cages on their undersides to har-
vest food from the ocean.
“Meetings like this one are not empty
talk,” Maimunah Mohd Sharif, execu-
tive director of the U.N. Human Set-
tlements Program, said in a statement.
“Three years ago at our first roundtable,
everyone wondered when they might
visit a floating city or see its revolution-
ary architecture, experience its zero-
waste environment, sample its home-
grown produce and enjoy a new way of
living sustainably with nature. We now
have the answer. Plans are in place.”
News from the field
The front line
As the sea rises, this city rises with it
Proposed floating community in Korea offers sustainable model for coastal living
Images from a YouTube video by Oceanix show the conception of a floating city on
the coast of Busan, South Korea, that would hold 12,000 residents in a live/play/work
community built on platforms that can withstand rising sea levels.
July 2022 | ISE Magazine 13
The use of wearable health sensors has become as common as
putting on a wristwatch for many people. New research has
opened up a new possibility for measuring human biomarkers
by detecting gases released from a person’s skin.
The current generation of wearables measure the chemicals
excreted in sweat but often rely on a certain amount to get a
reading. The new advancement could monitor the same bodily
functions in a more efficient and unobtrusive way.
“It is completely noninvasive, and completely passive on the
behalf of the user,” said Anthony Annerino, a graduate student
in materials science and engineering at The Ohio State Univer-
sity and lead author of the study.
The technology could go beyond measuring pulse rates or
body temperatures and be able to sense biomarkers tied to met-
abolic disorders such as diabetes or heart disease.
“Discerning health issues through the skin is really the ulti-
mate frontier,” said study co-author Pelagia-Iren Gouma, pro-
fessor of materials science and engineering and leader of the
Smart Connected Health project. “The project still has a couple
of years to go, but in six months we should have proof of con-
cept, and in a year we’d like to have it tested in people.
“We are developing a new generation of skin sensors, and it
will really be the new norm.”
The team’s final goal is to develop a small device that could
be worn on locations that do not produce much sweat, such
as behind the ear or on the nails, to measure small amounts of
gaseous acetone released from the skin. Such acetone can tell
researchers a great deal about the inner workings of the human
body; its concentrations in breath can show blood sugar levels
and fat-burning rates.
“This is an area of research that hasn’t been nearly as well
developed yet, because we’re just now producing the technol-
ogy to measure lower concentrations of these gases with high
selectivity,” Annerino said.
The team tested the sensors’ ability to detect the chemicals
released by creating a film made of plant cellulose and electro-
active polymers that can bend when exposed to acetone. The
film was tested over solutions containing ethanol, acetone and
water to gauge its level of sensitivity. They found the films were
sensitive enough to track long-term changes to the body; track-
ing substances such as ethanol can indicate liver disease.
“Not every research study has an obvious impact on society
and people’s lives, but that’s something that this project in par-
ticular really has,” Annerino said.
New wearables could sniff out health issues
Sensors being developed to analyze gases released from skin
Quote, unquote
How IE supply chain principles apply in space
“There’s a tie-in on the industrial engineering side because one
of the things that we do in the model and analysis of space is
discrete time models. So in a lot of industrial engineers, they
work in software packages, they develop these models and do
optimization. We’ve developed a model that models our opera-
tions in an industrial engineering-type sense using a discrete
time model. We integrate the missions and the customers and
the manifests. We integrate a space segment that looks at all the
timelines within the space segment, and the timelines associ-
ated with the ground segment. Because there’s a huge portion
of this optimization and process optimization that we use to
predict the future state of our station, we have a good handle on
it from the ground transportation side … And then we estimate
what our market demand is in terms of the NASA side, on the commercial side, in terms of payloads of people and how do
we manifest those. How many vehicles do we need? How do we need to size our ground facilities so that we can do the
refurbishment of our vehicles? How long is the vehicle in space versus how long it’s on the ground? ... Your ground timelines
are a big, important piece of that and that’s something certainly (used) in industrial engineering.”
— John Koroshetz, vice president of advanced programs for Sierra Space, on processes used for the Sierra habitat prototype seen in an IISE
YouTube video and heard on Problem Solved: The IISE Podcast at podcast.iise.org.
John Koroshetz of Sierra Space stands outside of a hab
prototype in the Space Station Processing Facility’s high
bay at Kennedy Space Center.
Photo from video by David Brandt | IISE
14 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
the frontlinethe front line
Leaders agree: Return to office isn’t popular
Getting workers to return to the office after two years of remote or hybrid work is becoming a source of contention.
Though a poll for Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trends Index shows as many as 50% of leaders said their companies plan to
require full-time, in-person work within the next year, another poll of 30,000 workers by the ADP Research Institute
indicates 64% of workers say they will consider looking for a new job if required to be in the office full time. Business
Insider talked to executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, who realize the old model is no longer
an option.
“Requiring people to come to work is not going to work,” Jeff Maggioncalda, the CEO of Coursera. “You might be able
to get your medium-level talent to do that, but your best computer scientists and data scientists, they’re not gonna come.”
Most agree “The Great Resignation” is the result of changed attitudes on work-life balance due to the pandemic. “The
genie is out of the bottle. Anyone who tries to put it back in is maybe not being realistic about what’s actually happened,”
said Ravin Jesuthasan of Mercer.
“We will never go back to the old 80% to 90% of the people in the office,” Thomas Gottstien, Credit Suisse CEO, told
Bloomberg, calling it “unrealistic and is not what employees want.” Gottstien said about 37% of his company’s employees
have returned to the office.
Prime NumberS
The world’s largest retailer is taking to the air to
meet growing customer demands.
Walmart is expanding its drone delivery ser-
vice to six states in 2022, according to David
Guggina, senior VP of innovation and automa-
tion. He said the new sites give Walmart the
potential to reach 4 million U.S. households in
Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and
Virginia and deliver more than 1 million pack-
ages by drone each year. The service will in-
clude a total of 37 sites with the addition of three
existing locations in Arkansas.
The partnership between Walmart and
DroneUp, a last-mile delivery service, began
in September 2020 with the delivery of CO-
VID-19 at-home test kits.
“Walmart is well-positioned to be the drone delivery leader
as it already has significant infrastructure in place to serve the
public – more than 4,700 stores stocked with 120,000 of the
most purchased items, located within 10 miles of over 90% of
the U.S. population,” according to a statement from DroneUp.
The move gives Walmart an opportunity to expand the ef-
ficiency and convenience of drone delivery on a wider scale.
To date, cost issues and other challenges have limited the ser-
vice’s reach.
“Not only will the added revenue help offset the cost of de-
livery, but it also serves the entire drone industry by gathering
more flight data as we work together to expand drone opera-
tions in a safe and regulated way,” Guggina wrote.
To receive an order by drone, a customer can enter an order
on the DroneUp website with an address to verify their eli-
gibility. Operators pack the order and a flight engineer navi-
gates the aircraft to the customer’s home for drop-off. The
expanded delivery option will include a team of pilots used to
deliver orders to a customer’s property and lower the package
by a cable.
DroneUp also offers photography and other drone-related
services throughout the hub cities.
Walmart to expand drone delivery network
Retail giant to partner with DroneUp for 34 sites in six states
Walmart and DroneUp operate delivery service in three locations in Arkansas but
plan to expand to 34 more sites in six states in 2022.
Photo courtesy of Walmart
SAVE THE DATE
MAY
20 – 23, 2023
Hyatt Regency New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana
www.iise.org/Annual
#IISEAnnual2023
IISE’s Annual Conference & Expo descends on New Orleans next year!
The Crescent City, known as a blend of influences French, Spanish, Creole and American, is
the perfect place for 2023’s largest gathering of ISEs – the problem-solving profession that
has a hand in almost every engineering and business sector.
July 2022 | ISE Magazine 15
SAVE THE DATE
MAY
20 – 23, 2023
Hyatt Regency New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana
www.iise.org/Annual
#IISEAnnual2023
IISE’s Annual Conference & Expo descends on New Orleans next year!
The Crescent City, known as a blend of influences French, Spanish, Creole and American, is
the perfect place for 2023’s largest gathering of ISEs – the problem-solving profession that
has a hand in almost every engineering and business sector.
16 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
the frontlinethe front line
Some news organizations have used ar-
tificial intelligence “bots” to create basic
stories for routine topics such as sports
summaries and financial reports by ap-
plying key information into a template.
Now an AI system is being developed
that seeks to mimic a more human voice
in providing reviews for food and wine.
A study from Dartmouth College’s Tuck
School of Business and Indiana Universi-
ty show how AI systems can be trained to
write such product reviews for consum-
ers, marketers and professional reviewers.
Their research, published in the Interna-
tional Journal of Research in Marketing, also
identifies ethical challenges raised by the
use of such content.
“Review writing is challenging for
humans and computers, in part, because
of the overwhelming number of distinct
products,” said Keith Carlson, a doctoral
research fellow at the Tuck School. “We
wanted to see how artificial intelligence
can be used to help people that produce
and use these reviews.”
The team’s first challenge was to see
if a computer could be taught to craft
in-depth reviews from a small amount
of product features. In their testing, re-
searchers used beer and wine reviews
based on the extensive amount of ma-
terial available to train the algorithms.
They used some 180,000 wine reviews
to provide the vocabulary needed and
different criteria to be cited, such as
product origin, type of grapes, rating
and price.
Their test reviews compared against
human-written versions showed consis-
tent agreement, even when the amount
of input data was changed to challenge
the algorithm. The test content was as-
sessed by nonexpert study participants
who could not distinguish between the
computer and human versions with any
statistical significance.
“Using artificial intelligence to write
and synthesize reviews can create ef-
ficiencies on both sides of the market-
place,” said Prasad Vana, an assistant pro-
fessor of business administration at Tuck
School. “The hope is that AI can benefit
reviewers facing larger writing workloads
and consumers that have to sort through
so much content about products.”
The team then sought to see if ma-
chine learning algorithms could write
syntheses of existing product reviews. It
used 143,000 existing reviews of more
than 14,000 beers paired with the same
metadata as in the wine study. Partici-
pants again judged whether the machine-
written summaries effectively captured
the gist of the reviews in a human’s style.
“It’s interesting to imagine how this
could benefit restaurants that cannot af-
ford sommeliers or independent sellers
on online platforms who may sell hun-
dreds of products,” Vana said.
The researchers say the systems are not
designed to replace human writers but
assist them by providing early drafts they
could then revise. The syntheses reviews
could be expanded to assist consumers by
summarizing reviews.
“As with other technology, we have
to be cautious about how this advance-
ment is used,” said Carlson. “If used re-
sponsibly, AI-generated reviews can be
both a productivity tool and can support
the availability of useful consumer in-
formation.”
That ‘heady bouquet’ might be written by AI
Researchers develop machine learning program for product reviews
© 2021 Scott Adams, Inc. Used by permission of Andrews McMeel Syndication. All rights reserved.
Dilbert
July 2022 | ISE Magazine 17
The industry models in place for years have been flipped on their side by disruptive events and
sudden market changes. As a result, many companies find themselves falling behind as they use a
playbook designed for a game that has passed them by. To address this, author Roger L. Martin
asks in his new book, A New Way To Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness: Do
you own your models, or do your models own you? Martin applies knowledge gained from
his 40-year career in business to question the dominant frameworks that often fail to solve the
problems they were designed to resolve. He counsels leaders to toss out the old ways of think-
ing and develop new models in every domain of management – from competition and cus-
tomers to strategy, data, culture, talent, mergers and acquisitions and everything in-between.
He addresses “The Great Resignation” and the struggle to recruit and retain top-end talent
by noting that most of today’s knowledge workers are motivated by the company’s culture and the satisfaction
gained from the work itself, not merely compensation. But using his own example from Canada’s top business school, he
writes how culture change cannot be instilled by mandate but only by changing how individuals interact and collaborate.
He urges a customer-first approach beyond the last mile and the front line by having every level in the corporate hierarchy
serve customer needs to the level below it. And he challenges the idea that all decisions must be data-based, observing that
great imagination is often a better tool. “If you feel comfortable with your strategic plan, there’s a strong chance it isn’t very
good,” he writes. “The best way for leaders to grow is to cultivate a new way to think.”
A New Way To Think: Your Guide To Superior Management Effectiveness is published Harvard Business Review Press. $30
Better results require different thinking
Author challenges leaders to ditch old business models for a new age
Book of the Month
The autonomous navigation of a large ship across the ocean
could open up the possibilities of carrying maritime freight
without human operators.
The Prism Courage, a 180,000 square-meter liquid natural
gas (LNG) carrier, completed a 33-day voyage from Freeport,
Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal and
docking June 2 in South Chungcheong Province in South Ko-
rea. About half of the 12,000-mile trek was sailed using an Hi-
NAS 2.0 Level 2 autonomous navigation system developed by
Avikus, a subsidiary of HD Hyundai.
The HiNAS 2.0 creates optimal routes and speeds by moni-
toring weather, wave heights, ship traffic and other environ-
mental data to control the vessel’s steering. It recognized the
locations of nearby ships to steer clear of potential collisions in
about 100 instances. The use of artificial intelligence navigation
increased fuel efficiency by about 7% while reducing green-
house gas emissions by about 5%.
The voyage was monitored in real time by the American
Bureau of Shipping and the Korea Register of Shipping to
verify the performance and stability of the technology. After
receiving certification from the ABS, Avikus plans to offer the
system for commercial use.
“Avikus’ autonomous navigation technology was greatly
helpful in this ocean-crossing test especially for maintaining
navigating routes, autonomously changing directions, and
avoiding nearby ships, which were all increasing ship crews’
work conveniences,” Captain Young-hoon Koh said in a news
release.
The autonomous navigation could help maritime transpor-
tation companies overcome workforce shortages, reduce pollu-
tion and improve safety by overcoming potential human errors.
“It is meaningful to we successfully tested the Level 2 sys-
tem,” said Avikus CEO Do-hyeong Lim. “We will lead inno-
vation by upgrading autonomous navigation solutions not only
for large merchant ships but also for small leisure boats.”
Cargo ship navigates ocean autonomously
Prism Courage freighter sails from Gulf of Mexico to Korea mostly via AI system
The captain and navigators of the carrier Prism Courage examine
Avikus’ HiNAS 2.0 system during its mostly autonomous journey.
Photos by PRNewsfoto/Hyundai Heavy Industries Group
18 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
When astronauts return to the moon in
the Artemis program to establish a lu-
nar base, they will need ample power to
maintain their systems and technology.
To develop the needed infrastructure,
Sandia National Laboratories is working
with NASA to create microgrids to sup-
ply power for lunar exploration.
The Artemis missions aim to estab-
lish a base on the moon to serve as a test
platform for eventual treks to Mars. The
camp will consist of a habitation mod-
ule with space for up to four astronauts
along with mining and fuel processing
facilities to take advantage of the moon’s
natural resources. The early missions
will involve short stays, then build up to
missions up to two months in duration.
The power microgrids would be built
on two separate systems: one for the
mining and processing center designed
by Sandia, the other for the astronauts’
habitat designed by NASA and similar
to the current system used on the Inter-
national Space Station. The two would
then be able to connect to share power.
The project is funded by the Depart-
ment of Energy’s Office of Electricity as
part of a partnership with NASA.
Sandia has experience in this area; its
radioisotope thermoelectric generators
helped power lunar experiments on the
Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s.
“There are some very important dif-
ferences between something like an
ISS-type microgrid to something that
has the extent of a moon base,” said
Jack Flicker, an electrical engineer with
Sandia. “One of those differences is the
geographic size, which can be problem-
atic, especially when running at low DC
voltages. Another is that when you start
to extend these systems, there will be a
lot more power electronics as well as a
lot more distributed energy resources
that will exist throughout the base”
Distributed energy includes smaller
sources such as solar panels and wind
turbines, while power electronics are
devices such as converters that keep
electrical systems operating.
The mining and processing platforms
could produce rocket fuel, water, oxy-
gen and other resources “in-situ” from
minerals found in the lunar soil, limiting
the amount of material brought from
earth. The facility is planned to be locat-
ed away from the base camp and habitat
with a link to share power if needed in
an emergency.
Sandia engineers are designing soft-
ware to regulate the amount of power
used in the mining and processing cen-
ter to maintain an even voltage level.
The team will fine-tune its power grid
at its Secure Scalable Microgrid Testbed
research facility and later test it using an
existing microgrid at Kirtland Air Force
Base.
“Even though this work is for a mi-
crogrid on the moon, the research is also
relevant to creating resiliency for com-
munities on Earth,” engineer Rachid
Darbali-Zamora said. “I’m originally
from a small town in Puerto Rico. I
hope that some of the lessons that come
out of this project in terms of resilience,
are lessons I can implement back home.”
Agencies team up to power moon missions
NASA, Sandia creating linkable twin powergrids for lunar base
NASA’s Artemis program is scheduled to return astronauts to the moon by mid-decade and eventually establish a lunar base camp for
ongoing missions.
Photo from video by David Brandt | IISE
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