http://www.columbia.edu/cu/earth

The Earth Engineering Center is the engineering component of Columbia University's Earth Institute. Its mission is to develop and promote engineering methodologies that provide essential materials to humanity in ways that take into consideration the need to maintain the overall balance of the system: the constant increasing demand for materials; dwindling global natural resources; and the need for clean water, soil, and air. The Center is dedicated to the advancement of industrial ecology, which is broadly defined as the reconfiguring of industrial activities in response to knowledge of the environmental consequences. Research will be conducted in resource assesment and extraction, waste reduction and site remediation, recycling of used materials, and development of sustainable technologies in general. The Center draws on the expertise of the faculty from the Henry Krumb School of Mines in the area of bulk materials extraction and recycling, faculty from Chemical Engineering in processing, faculty from the Department of Civil Engineering in infrastructure, and faculty from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

One of the projects of the Center is the New York Virtual Harbor, a GIS based model that will encompass mutiple sets of data. Click here or above for a list and links to organizartions and agencies concerned with the NY/NJ Harbor, compiled by Prof. Roelof Versteeg.