Two civil engineering students built a 3-D model of Berkeley’s campus to better understand what’s going on with one of California’s many aging dams.
Katherine Cheng and Tamika Bassman, third-year CEE undergraduates, joined CEE Visiting Professor Robert Kayen, in making sure his measuring tools for scanning California's Hume Lake Dam were properly calibrated.
The team used the university landscape to figure out the best and most accurate way to manage all of the data they collected at the Hume Lake site.
To get the scans they needed, Bassman and Cheng loaded a cart with roughly 100 pounds of laser equipment and made their way to the top of campus buildings (including from the Campanile) to capture the university’s views and angles.
“For me this has been a stepping stone into more research,” Bassman said. “We definitely got experience working in the field, collecting real data, and troubleshooting things on the spot."
Read and watch video of campus scans at: Dam scanning (Berkeley Engineering, 2/16/18)