 back to Think Tech. It's the 9 a.m. block on a given Thursday. It's Community Matters, but the extended community I would say. And we're talking to Song Choi, the assistant dean of the School of Engineering in Holmes Hall at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. And we're talking about Ukraine, because that's what we think about all day. How do you build Ukraine back from the rubble? Welcome to the show, Song. It's always nice to have you on. It was good to see you. Yeah. So, you know, it must, we all see Ukraine through our own eyes, I must say. You know, it's just sort of your life experience, just the lens by which you see what is going on. And of course, there are common denominators, like I'm profoundly, profoundly affected by Ukraine, because I think it affects the whole world. And I hate to see the human race suffer this way, because it's not just the people in those bombed out buildings. It's all of us. And so that's why I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to talk to you about seeing it through your eyes as an engineer, seeing it through the eyes of someone who builds, who organizes, who creates structures in which we live, work, and play. And I want to know your thoughts about what they, and I mean the Ukrainians, I'm discounting the possibility that Russia will ever rebuild Ukraine. It will be the Ukrainians, not would. And so when they get to the point, hopefully soon, of rebuilding all the rubble that Russia has created around them, how do they do that? How do you see the task? Well, rebuilding is never easy, and it's going to be an extremely long process. I think besides the actual physical rebuilding, they're going to have to do a lot of assessments as to the number of lives lost, how they were lost, even maybe are some of the folks still alive under some of them. I think that needs to be the number one task. And luckily, a lot of our technologies, the non-invasive sensing systems can detect life in almost all types of situations, and building, collapsing. And we have a direct influence from a situation like that when we had the terror attacks in 2001. So we know what it's like. And it is never a short process. Putting back up something that's concrete, in a sense, is not difficult. You get rid of all this old stuff, and you design and put up new stuff. It's time consuming, it's resource consuming, but it can be done. And I think that is one good nature about us as a human race, and the way we look at our mother nature of earth, is that everything kind of recycles, and it replenishes, which is really thankful on our side that it does that. And you know that old saying, time heals all. And maybe with the rebuilding, a lot of the painful memories will get healed up again. If I look historically, if I look historically, I look at, and you know, you're now joking about the Numbers game about 52 years from 1970. That was pretty much World War One era, right? World War One, and then World War Two in the 40s, some of the other smaller incidents like the Korean War in the 50s, the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s. You look at Japan, you look at Korea, and now you look at someplace like Vietnam. We are coming back with the physical rebuild. And I think that's a fantastic thing. And I think it's going to take time and resources, but it's not something that's inconceivable and or impossible. Well, yeah, in a funny way, is that when you demolish something, as so many cities in Europe were demolished in World War Two, when you rebuild, you have a new creativity. I don't mean that war is good. I only mean that when you are forced to implement that creativity after the war is over. And the product could be instead of having a 16th century building, you have a 20th century building or a 21st century building. And some of the work that has happened in some of those cities in Europe has really been extraordinary and admirable in terms of architecture, engineering, and urban planning in general. But I want to unpack something you said. I'd like to go step by step. So here I arrive in the rubble of Ukraine. And I see around me these pretty big residential buildings and institutional buildings and government buildings and medical buildings. And they're half collapsed and they're burned out. And my first reaction as a civilian here, as a non-engineer, is this cannot be relied on. You can't just move back in because it will break under you and then you'll have a bad time and more rubble. So how do you safely demolish a building that is 10 or 12 or 15 stories high, residential building? And assume it's concrete and rebar, assume that. But how do you make that, how do you get it out of there? Well, you've seen some TV shows, especially in Las Vegas, where they are demolishing old hotels to put new, more fancier, taller hotels. And you are going to have to implode some of those remaining structures. Obviously, you can't just remove them the way they are. Like the screensaver that's on my back, homesong, that is a concrete behemoth. We use it as a safety bunker for the state. So if this was bombed, unless it's completely, totally demolished, we would have to demolish the areas that hasn't been demolished, so we can get the parts moved out on trucks or whatever. And then once we've cleared everything, it is probably safer to rebuild where we can make sure the ground structures are safe and then from there, come up with all this new rebar and structure to put up new buildings. You know, I would love to salvage old buildings. I mean, we see some of that at our Ford Island because of World War II incidents. And being able to salvage old buildings, especially the exterior, and then refurbishing the interior to be more modern would be the fantastic way to go because you are remembering and incorporating historical aspects with the conveniences and the necessities of the modern aspect. But sometimes that may not be possible. I mean, one of the best things about what Europe has done is how they maintain and secure the beauty of some of the older structures in the regions. And I wish there was a way they could do that. Obviously, what we see in Ukraine, it really is a travesty, like I told you before. And they're not only demolishing the human nature aspect. They are really demolishing the historical aspect of everything that was built up. And that is really a sad incident of what human greed, I guess, brings about. But no, I think we have the technologies. We have the know-how. And to rebuild will probably be a lot quicker than many people can think back historically as to what happened, like I said, World War I, World War II, and some of the other smaller incidents throughout the world. I think it'll be a lot quicker. But I think a lot of it's also going to depend on what are the safety nets that, when it does get rebuilt, there won't be additional incidents like this. What about that technology song? Can you unpack that technology? What kind of technology do we have now that didn't exist, say, 50 or 100 years ago in order to build quickly and build in a sustainable manner and build with a minimum of risk? Sure. Besides the fact that material science for buildings have developed so much in the last 50 years, we always thought that a tall building had to have a huge base and a very small top, very similar to pyramids, right? You need that structure to withhold and hold up that structure all the way to the top. You look at many of the tall buildings now, they don't have that intuitive thinking that we thought was forever, right? You come up with better materials, you see that little sailboat-like hotel or residence in the Middle East, and you sit there and you go, how can a hotel this big reside on a foundation structure that's only about a tenth of that size? But that's all coming from the type of materials that's creating those structures. And the other thing that people forget is, besides buildings, we have these exceptionally large cruise ships, exceptionally large airplanes, exceptionally large satellites, which are all structures. And the satellite structures are now pretty much being built by robots in space. So all the automated robotic technology, all the different materials that have come to play, are going to make it easier to rebuild in whichever fantasy design we decide. The point of architecture, the aesthetic design part, and the physical, the civil engineering part, are now coming together closer and closer that whatever you dream about couldn't become reality. And that was never the case even 10, 15 years ago, right? And then there's another technology I'd like to show you up, share with you. And it's something that somebody from here actually really started. There was a guy named Alfred E, you might remember his name as well. I do. He had this thing called precast concrete, where you could literally make a two bedroom apartment square and kind of stack it up. And we actually have an example of that out at Salt Lake, where they stacked up the building. And it's like, I think I forget, maybe 15 story building. And then you look at all the Hawaii railroad things that's going up, all those support beams and the structures are pretty much pre-made and they're just being put into place. And they're just moving along, moving along, moving along. So I really think once this tragedy ends, and I hope it's really soon, and they can figure out what piece is going to be. And maybe we'll have to come up with new technologies involving force field or something, so you can't just invade. You'll be able to put up the new norm, okay? Relatively quickly. And maybe the new norm is going to be better than the old norm. I just hope the people that are involved in this travesty is going to be able to heal on an emotional and a psychological basis. Part of that is to build the country. Build the country back. But I really, it is a visionary thing to talk about modular precast sections for a building. And I suppose what you could and should do is establish on a regional basis a precast concrete factory where you make this stuff in various forms. It doesn't all have to be uniform either. Just has to fit together. You can make this stuff and you truck it down the road to this location and that location. And now it's economies of scale. It's very efficient, very fast. And so you can truck a lot of these sections down the road. And as you say, with a crane, a single crane, you could build a tall building out of these sections in no time. And the factory itself would be much quicker than pouring them on location. Am I right? Yeah, much, much quicker. You would have a dedicated location that can be making these, like you said, the pre-designed parts, right? And if you're concerned, oh, but what about the immediate needs? Well, the immediate needs are also kind of covered too. We now have a technology called 3D printing. And it's not limited to a home printer system. It can be very large as well. And a lot of the temporary housing, even be 3D printed and put together. So during the time when they are reestablishing this infrastructure for a city or the country, they can have temporary housing as well. And they are not only relatively cheap, they are very inexpensive. I think the thing was that they could get a 3D printed house for like $20,000. And it's like two bedroom, whatever, whatever. So if your immediate needs are just covering and protection from the natural causes, hey, why not? And then from there, you can move on. Like you said, hey, make different parts that can fit together. Maybe we do live in a Lego society now where things can be put up a lot quicker than what has always been thought of. Well, the whole thing about building houses printing basis is extraordinary. I've seen footage, and actually what's interesting and ironic is that the footage was of a technology that was developed in Russia, believe it or not, where you have a kind of a device in the middle of the house, and it feeds concrete or some kind of concrete mixture out into various places. And it telescopes out further away, closer and so forth. And it knows exactly what to do right down to where the electrical outlets are and the wiring races and channels are so that when it's finished, and in the case that I observed, it was finished in less than 24 hours, a single family house, it would be complete. And all you'd have to do if you chose to paint it, you could paint it, the wiring could go in immediately. It was really almost ready for occupancy. And if this could be done on a grand scale with these devices that shoot the concrete out to specified computer-designed locations, you could build whole tracts of homes. Gee, in a matter of days. But you alluded to the possibility that this was temporary. It wouldn't necessarily be temporary. It could be permanent with a useful life for many decades. And it could be really solid like a rock, too. Yeah. I mean, the solutions that we come by now are pretty much what I like to use always. It's whenever we decide to date. And whatever we can date you about, we can pretty much technologically make them come true. So very, very interesting about the times that we live in. Well, you know, the other thing about these printed houses is that with the right kind of telescoping device, you know, to lay the concrete in a specified location, it wouldn't necessarily be limited. Correct me if I'm wrong to a single family house. What I mean is you could have a telescoping device that telescopes a long way and can build a gymnasium or a school or a hospital or some sort of institute, even a government building. And you could have ionic columns in the front. You could build any kind of architecture you want. After all, it's 3D printing. And furthermore, you could have more than one of these telescoping devices. So if you wanted to build this relatively large building overnight, you just put two or three of them in there and you program them. The whole thing is in the software. So I suspect a lot of the larger buildings that need to be built wouldn't necessarily be by, you know, precast and shipping and assembly. But by, as you say, 3D printing, to me that would be possibly a technology that is used most for the largest structures now. Yeah. I mean, as I've talked to you over several decades on-show, off-show, the development of technology is not long periods of time. It's really snap of fingers. So what we dream about today really will be true tomorrow. So, you know, I've always said that if you can't predict the future, come and engineer and create one. And if you can create it, you are in actuality predicting what's going to happen. That's a way to go. That's a wonderful way to look at the world. So let me change to what do you want to call it, infrastructure things like gas to heat and electrical power and broadband. So when I blow up the old building and I cart it away, somewhere down there at the first six feet or maybe 10 or 12 feet, there's going to be a whole lot of these cables and wires and gas conduits and God knows what's down there. Some of it will be old. Some of it may be live. From an engineering point of view, how do you replace that or use it or reuse it? How do you change that out as necessary to build a new city? So I think whenever you have devastating incidents like what's going on in Ukraine, some of this stuff may not be useful. And luckily, like the gas line, electric lines and all that. Don't forget the water and sewerage and all that. Good thing is at a central point that can all be turned off. And that would be the first thing you would have to do. The other thing is what we are looking at with a lot of the renewable, especially the solar houses. Maybe some of these things have to become self-dependent in a way until new infrastructure like gas lines, electric lines and water lines can be re-put down. Unfortunately, that probably will take and may take even longer time than some of the rebuilding. So for me to rebuild a house or an apartment by itself may be a lot shorter than trying to get some of those infrastructure things connected up. Sewage is going to be sewage no matter what. Unless we go back to things like septic tanks that can be emptied out periodically, you are going to need those infrastructures to be set up. And it's not only near or around the building. It is going to be throughout the whole city. And if you look at what's been happening with Ukraine and the bombings that have taken place, it's not a localized problem. It is a whole national problem. So that is going to take a longer period of time. And that is probably going to be something that has to be done simultaneously while some of the buildings are being brought back up for occupancy. Yeah, I don't think it'll be a short process, but it'll be a quicker process than the past. And if we look at the fact that cities like Tokyo, Seoul and Ho Chi Minh and all these other places that have been suffering from wars in the past and have rebuilt to where they are now, I don't see why any other city or country cannot. But it does require, I think, a lot of support not only from the country that's rebuilding, but probably an international thing where they're going to need support from everyone, technologies even. Maybe we just have to ship in technologies for that country to rise up again and be where they are. I was going to ask you about technology, just as there are new technologies for constructing the structures. Presumably, they also be, some of these buildings are pretty old, the ones that were destroyed, and some of the connecting infrastructure are pretty old also. So if you pull it all out and turn it all off, and you're going to put it in new, there must be some technologies that would be available now that were not available then to make it easier or reliable or long lasting and so forth. Possibly modular, possibly bundled infrastructure so you could put it down in one pipe instead of having multiple pipes as before. Remember, Japan was tinkering with a lot of the family-based like LNG things where they can have personalized fuel cell type things as well. And all this personalized solar thing, everything could become very modular, as you said. And of course, all the older machines that were in there, maybe some of the generators or water pumps and all that, now they can be replaced by something that's a lot more efficient. I mean, you look at the refrigerators we had 20 years ago and the refrigerators that are coming out now, I think they used about maybe one quarter or one fifth of the electricity that was used. I mean, so everything's becoming more efficient. We obviously are intelligent creatures and we're always coming up with something better. And to implement it is what we're going to have to do. And I mean, I don't want to say war is a good thing, but maybe this is an opportunity for Ukraine to bring some of these things back up to a higher technology level. I'm just hopeful that they can save some of all that historical buildings and, you know, art that's there. Building is art. So, you know, hopefully they can do that. Yeah, that leads us to a question about that. Suppose I have a building that is a national treasure. I'm sure there are many buildings like that in Europe in general and in Ukraine specifically. I mean, we can see that from some of those early television feeds, you know, before the Russians began blowing everything to smithereens, we can see how beautiful the buildings were. So, from an engineering point of view, looking at it from your lens, it's a greater challenge is it not to take a building that's damaged, but worth keeping from a cultural, architectural, you know, community point of view. And you make a decision that you want to keep that. You want it to be in your world, in your society. That's harder. But what are the challenges? You know, one of the advantages besides the challenges is that we have all this computer graphics and computer data. And we can constantly re-project those images. So, if we have the old images, then we can definitely rebuild to at least look like. So, you look at some of our buildings here in Hawaii, many of them are historically preserved buildings. You can do pretty much whatever you want, interior-wise, but they want to make sure exterior-wise you do not put anything on, right? So, if we can do that because you have existing images and you can do 3D projections in terms of like a hologram or something like that, it'll be a lot easier to rebuild something. You know, unfortunately, it won't be the original, but at least the images and the historical value of what was done in the past can be kept alive. Yeah, that'd be wonderful to be able to do that. What a gift that would be. It takes me to one thing I wanted to ask about and that is, you know, back in the day when there were engineers and planners and architects in Hawaii that traveled to Asia, this would be in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, and they built Asia. They built all kinds of projects there. I'm thinking of belt Collins, for example, but there were a lot of guys and I'm sure you knew a lot of those guys who were on the plane all day, every day, flying to various projects in Asia and lending our professional support, our engineering support, our architectural support to these projects, designing them and building them. And I have a vision, but I wonder what your vision would be of Hawaii doing that again, doing that again in Ukraine. I'm saying settle down, it's time to rebuild. The world is going to try to beat a path to the door. I mean, people who make refrigerators, for example, take Samsung, for example, I want to buy the stock because I know they're going to need a lot of refrigerators and various other, you know, appliances. So the question is, can Hawaii participate in the effort to rebuild? Can it participate in the management, in the design, in the engineering? And how can that do? How can that happen? Do you have a thought about how the professional community here could make that happen? Professional community here as well as any community anywhere in the world. Remember, one of the greatest resources that can be given to a country that's restarting is money, right? And with money or even services or even products, I mean, let's say Samsung decides, oh yeah, we're going to donate half a million refrigerators to Ukraine. You know, that's an incredible start and I'm sure a lot of other industries will follow suit. For us, we can definitely donate not only monetarily, but even our physical services, our rebuilding capabilities. Maybe some of our very special rebuilding capabilities because of the land that we live on, which is very different than many of the other places. All these things and knowledge coming together will be a benefit for the country of Ukraine to rebuild and, you know, what better way to do that? And that's why I was saying at the beginning that it is going to have to be an international effort to rebuild. Obviously, the Ukrainians have to want it and they have to have the drive to do it. And I don't see why that wouldn't exist from what's happening right now. I believe a lot of people miscalculated who Ukraine was. And with that type of tenacity, why would you not be able to rebuild, especially when the international community is willing to support you in whichever way they need? So, you know, the last time we had this show, or at least a couple of times ago, on my birthday in 2015, I asked you about a case study. And I asked you what you would say to your students at the School of Engineering. So, I'd like to follow up on that now. Here we are at a time when there is obviously a huge need. There will be a huge need to rebuild the whole country of 44 million people, the second largest country in all of Europe, which has been, you know, essentially demolished already. So, here I am, either I'm applying to the School of Engineering, or I am in the School of Engineering, or I'm a graduate student in the School of Engineering. And I come to you, Song Choi, and I say, you know, I've heard this a need for me in Ukraine, in Europe. And although I can't give them a lot of money, I don't intend to go over there and get shot at. But I want to make a contribution to the country, to what I believe is a noble effort at democracy. What is your advice to me as a young engineer? You know, that is an extremely tough, difficult, complex question. Because it's not simply, do I continue this path, or is there a simple path of solution, or pretty much what can I do? And that's a big question mark. I think number one, as an engineer, the type of skills that you are going to learn, whether it be after the whole incident is over, is something that is going to be valued all the way through. As you know, and I know, engineering has become a part of everyday life. Whether you go on the road, and you try to figure out why a road was built using asphalt, or why it was built using cement like they do in California, you have to figure out the advantages and disadvantages of both. And just that knowledge, and being able to and being willing to give that. And I think that's the most important part. If you are willing to give that, I think there is always going to be a way to give that. And yes, it is tough. Engineering is pretty hands-on. So some of the engineering may not be possible, because you would have to be in the country of Ukraine to give that, whether it is rebuilding afterwards, or during the fact, because I have some intriguing new sensor that can help them detect the opposition, or something that can all encompass everything. They are going to need, like you said, the infrastructure. And infrastructure is not only water, heat, and electricity. It is now things like internet, because I don't know if many people even know how to communicate without the internet anymore. So there are some things that have become basic necessities. And all these basic necessities are very engineering based. Yes, it's science and mathematics, but it is the engineering part that is implementing these science and mathematics. And we're hoping to make it much more efficient and more accessible to everyone. I mean, even here in our state, there are some remote areas that have a very hard time getting high-band Wi-Fi. And hopefully, we can get a wide-band internet out to everybody, so they can enjoy doing this. What we're doing right now, having a conversation over the internet using Zoom, where everybody else can watch and chime in if they want. Well, I'll tell you, if I were a younger man, Sung Choi, I would consider contacting you about this and getting into engineering so I could go and do my life work building a country. What a fabulous opportunity for anyone. And it seems so clear that an engineer could participate in that effort. What a wonderful opportunity. Well, thank you so much, Sung Choi, to come on the show again. I hope we can do this much sooner. Okay, we'll talk to you more. Let me know again. Aloha.