Civil Engineering

An intensive intrusion of nitrate into many aquifers has occurred in the last 20 years. Measures are discussed to prevent high concentrations of this pollutant in pumping wells. In the long run a less intensive use of mineral fertilizers and a diminished disposal of livestock wastes in the catchment areas of pumping wells are the presuppositions for an acceptable concentration of nitrate in groundwater. Before these measures take effect, hydraulic measures are convenient to avoid the pollution of abstracted groundwater: pumping wells have to be placed at locations with low nitrate concentrations and pumping strategies must be applied to keep the nitrate concentration below the tolerable standard of 50 mg N0 3 l" 1 . In a case study groundwater modelling is applied to forecast the effects of different measures. Résumé L'intrusion massive de nitrates dans un bon nombre de nappes souterraines s'est produite au cours de la dernière période de 20 ans. On discute dans cette communication des mesures à prendre pour éviter de fortes concentrations de ces polluants dans les puits de pompage. Pour le long terme un usage moins intensif de ces fertilisants minéraux et une diminution de l'épandage de lisieurs de l'élevage dans les bassins d'alimentation des puits de pompage sont les hypothèses de base pour arriver à une concentration acceptable de nitrates dans les eaux souterraines. Avant que ces mesures fassent leur effet, des mesures d'ordre hydraulique seraient utiles pour éviter la pollution des eaux souterraines extraites du sol: les puits de pompage doivent être implantés à des endroits à faible concentration de nitrates et des stratégies de pompage doivent être appliquées pour maintenir la concentration de nitrate en dessous du standard tolerable de 50 mg N0 3 l" 1 . Dans une étude de cas des modèles d'eaux souterraines sont utilisés pour prévoir les effets de différentes mesures.

The Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) was conceived as a software-based tool for simulating the hydrologic cycle in the context of engineering problem solving. Water movements in the cycle relevant to common problems in water resources engineering were included: precipitation, infiltration, surface runoff, baseflow, and open channel flow. The first generation of the software focused on simulating individual storm events. The second generation of the software added new components for infiltration modeling to permit continuous simulation. Snowmelt and potential evapotranspiration components, along with an advanced reservoir component, were added for the third generation. The software is very adaptable because it includes a variety of model choices for each segment of the hydrologic cycle. It has been used in many studies for achieving goals in flood damage reduction, reservoir and system operation, floodplain regulation, environmental restoration, water supply planning, among other...

For the first time in Mexico, a comprehensive data gathering and analysis project on the seismic performance of school buildings in the aftermath of the 2017 earthquakes was developed. Aimed at supporting the planning and decision-making of the Mexican government's reconstruction program, school performance was observed and measured in the field. To further evaluate building performance, numerical modeling of archetypical buildings was carried out. Calculated performance was consistent with observed structural damage. Numerical analysis indicated that pre-1985 masonry and concrete buildings are more likely to exhibit damage that could compromise the structural stability. In contrast, recent structures are very likely to attain the immediate occupancy (IO) performance level that is implicitly assumed in school design. Studies indicated that rehabilitated school buildings through wall jacketing in masonry buildings and by adding new concrete shear walls and masonry infills to concrete structures are likely to comply with IO. From the lessons learned, policy, technical, implementation, and sustainability and outreach recommendations are proposed to implement a multiannual, systematic, incremental, and integral strategy for reducing earthquake risk of school buildings in Mexico.

For the first time in Mexico, a comprehensive data gathering and analysis project on the seismic performance of school buildings in the aftermath of the 2017 earthquakes was developed. Aimed at supporting the planning and decision-making of the Mexican government’s reconstruction program, school performance was observed and measured in the field. To further evaluate building performance, numerical modeling of archetypical buildings was carried out. Calculated performance was consistent with observed structural damage. Numerical analysis indicated that pre-1985 masonry and concrete buildings are more likely to exhibit damage that could compromise the structural stability. In contrast, recent structures are very likely to attain the immediate occupancy (IO) performance level that is implicitly assumed in school design. Studies indicated that rehabilitated school buildings through wall jacketing in masonry buildings and by adding new concrete shear walls and masonry infills to concrete...

Since the establishment of the first minimum retroreflectivity levels in 1993, agencies and researchers have focused on determining the service life of different sheeting type and color combinations. While deterioration curves and measured retroreflectivity are viable methods for maintaining retroreflectivity compliance, they do not ensure the ability of the traffic sign to convey its intended message. Retroreflectivity efficiency only ensures visibility but does not properly describe the legibility of the sign. Therefore, while agencies across the nation are developing and implementing traffic sign maintenance plans, the emphasis should not be solely placed on visibility. In order to evaluate the performance of UDOT's traffic signs, a sample sign population was collected across all four of UDOT's maintenance regions. Analysis on this sample set not only determined the current rate of compliance, but it also identified several issues seen throughout the population. Signs under UDOT's jurisdiction are four times more likely to have substantial damage to the sign face than to fail to meet the

This paper introduces the velocity-dependent friction with the Stribeck effect into the moving load model for the vibration of a car disc brake. By solving its corresponding eigenvalue problem, a bounded region of instability is obtained for the rotating speed of the disc versus the friction coefficient at the disc/pads interface, which is compatible with observed squeal phenomenon of a car disc brake.

Rotating cylinder (RC) technique is widely used for flow corrosion testing. However, this test configuration has limitations. Particularly, integrity of corrosion products films formed on the RC surface can be affected. The objective of this work is to show how intense the stresses in corrosion product films can be at high rotation speeds. In such cases, failure of the films is possible due to inertial forces rather than other factors, such as flow, leading to erroneous results. Consequently, theoretical calculation of stresses in films has been performed and a case of corrosion product film failure assessed using a fracture mechanics approach.

Rotating cylinder (RC) technique is widely used for flow corrosion testing. However, this test configuration has limitations. Particularly, integrity of corrosion products films formed on the RC surface can be affected. The objective of this work is to show how intense the stresses in corrosion product films can be at high rotation speeds. In such cases, failure of the films is possible due to inertial forces rather than other factors, such as flow, leading to erroneous results. Consequently, theoretical calculation of stresses in films has been performed and a case of corrosion product film failure assessed using a fracture mechanics approach.

In this paper the influence of a surface fatigue crack on vibration behaviour of tee-welded plates was studied and results compared to the influence of machined through-thickness cuts on the dynamic response of cantilever beams. Comparison of experimental data with two and three dimension finite element modelling results was also carried out and discussed. Detection threshold using natural frequencies shift was found and compared to literature. The influence of naturally grown fatigue cracks on the oscillation frequencies was analysed and compared to two and three-dimensional numerical modelling results. An experimental detection threshold was found using the variation of the first mode natural frequencies. The power density spectra of the acceleration signals were analysed. Crack shape was found important for the detection threshold of the method. It was found that small size semicircular fatigue cracks do not noticeably modify the beam natural frequency but generate integer harmonics of the vibration modes that provoked stresses at the samples surface affected by the crack. The harmonics found were found to be generated by the breathing behaviour of the fatigue crack. A detection threshold using this spectral analysis was found to be lower than those found by using frequency shifts. The results obtained showed the ability of the experimental technique to detect cracks from a size of 0.6% of the cross section area, at 55% of the fatigue lifespan, 35% earlier than the other method studied.

A 61-m (200-ft) high FGD waste landfill over an existing fly ash impoundment is currently under construction. A concern was whether typical waste filling rates would be sufficient for static liquefaction of the impounded fly ash to occur. In this paper, data from a large test fill is used to assess the potential for static liquefaction of the impounded fly ash. The test fill comprised a 9-m (30-ft) high preload fill which was constructed using much higher fill placement rates than for typical waste filling. Excess pore pressures in the impounded fly ash were measured. The time history of filling and measured excess pore pressures were used to back-calculate the average vertical coefficient of consolidation of the impounded fly ash, a parameter that is representative of the drainage characteristics of the fly ash. As measured excess pore pressures were primarily the result of volumetric loading, an analysis was conducted to estimate undrained shear-induced excess pore pressures for a...

In this study, two experimental techniques are compared, for the purpose of visualizing projectile penetration at speeds ranging between 60 and 150 m/s into granular media. The two techniques are half space penetration into a transparent synthetic soil surrogate and quarter space penetration of an opaque natural sand and transparent soil surrogate, against an observation window. In both techniques a pneumatic projectile accelerator was employed to launch the projectiles and high-speed imagery was employed to visualize the penetration events, un-intrusively. Transparency in transparent targets was achieved by saturating angular fused quartz with a refractive index matched pore fluid made of sucrose. Comparison of both techniques suggests that their results are complimentary. In particular, the terminal depth of penetration is not significantly inhibited by shooting in quarter space. Additionally, both techniques permitted visualizing distinct dilations zones ahead and around penetration. Each technique offers a number of distinct advantages. In particular, half space penetration reduces the possibility of projectile diversion and is much safer, while quarter space penetration allows for visualizing penetration into opaque targets at a finer scale than that achieved in half space penetration.

This is a doppler device, based on heterodyning with a laser source. Its features include a very large DoF and dynamic range. • Spherical projectiles, 14 mm. • Projectiles could be observed through cavity • From V(t) integrate to get V(x) or differentiate to get dV/dt.

Distracted driving, and especially cell phone use, is a prevalent contributor to crashes. Older drivers have an increased risk of committing safety errors while driving, especially with distraction. The objective of this study was to characterize phone-related distractions in older drivers (age > 65) and identify intervention strategies likely to reduce cell distraction. A 64-question survey was offered online and on paper. A distracted driving scale (DDS) was created by summing responses on 11 distracted driving questions related to phone use (possible score range 0 to 44). Linear regression was performed to identify variables associated with a higher DDS score. A total of 363 older drivers completed the survey; the mean age was 73 and 56% were female. 60% of older adults reported using their cell phone while driving at least some of the time. Participants perceived their own ability as capable or very capable when driving and using: handheld phone (40%); hands-free phone (78%);...

The usability of waste marble dust as an additive material in industrial brick were investigated. Marble wastes were collected from marble deposits which are located at Southwest of Turkey and industrial brick mortar was obtained from a brick company in Istanbul. Waste marble dust and brick mortar were prepared for various processes of industrial brick investigation. Waste material in different proportions was mixed with industrial brick mortar starting amount of 0 wt.% up to 80 wt.%. in 41 Â 8 Â 8 mm rectangular prisms for testing of physico-mechanical properties of the samples having different marble dust composition. These prepared prisms were pressed and sintered at three different temperatures 900, 1000 and 1100 °C. Flexural strengths of the test samples were given at three different temperature values of 900, 1000 and 1100 °C. Archimedes water displacement test was conducted with different water absorption percentage values at 900, 1000 and 1100 °C temperatures. XRD analyses have been carried out for the additives which contain mainly calcite and small amount of dolomite minerals. It was found that the amount of marble dust additive had positive effect on the physical, chemical and mechanical strength of the produced industrial brick. With increasing demands of the construction industry, bricks quality and cost become more important day by day in Turkey. In addition, the usage of marble wastes for the production of industrial bricks has significant important role on the recycling waste marble powder in the brick production along with a great contributions to economy and ecology of the country.

A-Wall systems are a combination of deep foundations and, in some cases, tiebacks used to provide lateral support to an unstable ground mass. Determination of the lateral and vertical forces acting on an A-Wall system can be a complex endeavor. As the unstable soil mass tends to move past and through the A-Wall system, forces are generated between the A-Wall elements and the soil. These forces provide support to the ground mass. If the A-Wall is correctly designed, the forces will increase as the soil moves until a maximum is attained at which ground movement ceases and the system reaches equilibrium. Design of an A-Wall thus requires Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) analyses that provide a solution that meets force and moment equilibrium as well as compatibility of displacements. The individual elements of the A-Wall are designed based on a structural analysis utilizing the estimated forces. This paper describes the philosophy of design of A-Walls. It also contains a detailed description of design steps based on the use of a commercially available computer program that allows determination of soil forces against a deep foundation element installed through a mass of moving soil. An iterative method is presented to find a solution to the A-Wall problem that meets equilibrium and compatibility and considers material nonlinearity of soils and A-Wall components, as well as geometric nonlinearity of the deep foundation elements. Two case histories are presented.

During November and December 2010, the Exploratory Advanced Research (EAR) Program supported a team that consisted of transportation professionals, academic faculty, and business entrepreneurs who visited informal carpool lines (also called slug lines or casual carpool lines) in Washington, DC; Houston, TX; and San Francisco, CA, to observe "slugs" and to compare practices among locations. The team also met with private ride-match providers, regional planners, carpool participants, and transportation planners and engineers with the overall goal of studying these ridesharing systems. The foundational knowledge gained on this scan will serve as a jumping-off point for future projects, collaborations, and system expansion. Appendix B to this report is published as FHWA-HRT-13-023, Appendix B to the Casual Carpooling Report.

The emergence of cell phones with embedded Global Positioning System (GPS) chips provides opportunities to push personalized real-time travel information subject to an individual's current location. One such application, a travel assistant device, notifies cognitively disabled public transportation users when it is time to request a stop and exit the vehicle. GPS-enabled cell phones must provide highly accurate real-time location data for this type of service. The components used in the data-collection process are identified, and a quantitative analysis of real-time GPS data obtained with a cell phone while walking, driving a vehicle, and riding public transportation is provided. The expectation was that position accuracy would suffer when the GPS signal was obstructed by a vehicle or the user's clothing. The obtained data demonstrate the results of location fix attempts over different transportation modes in an urban environment. The highest percentage of GPS fixes (79.0%) ...

Artificial neural network (ANN) models are described, and efforts to build a model to predict changes in average vehicle ridership using about 7,000 employer trip reduction plans from three cities are highlighted. The development of the application is summarized; the neural network model performance is compared with other analytical approaches; and the results of the field test are summarized. Researchers at the Center for Urban Transportation Research combined the three data sets, identified model inputs and outputs from the data, and built the neural network model. This step also included building alternative models using regression and discriminant analysis to measure relative ANN performance. These models were compared with the FHWA’s transportation demand management model. The ANN model built only with data from Los Angeles was validated using a separate data set and evaluated according to the model’s ability to classify the change in average vehicle ridership (AVR) within an a...

Next-generation transportation surveys will utilize Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to collect trip data. Due to their ubiquity, GPS-enabled mobile devices are becoming promising for use as survey tools. TRAC-IT is a mobile phone application that records travel behavior by collecting real-time GPS data and requiring minimal input from the user for data such as trip purpose, mode of transportation, and vehicle occupancy. To ease survey burden on participants, new techniques must be explored to derive more information directly from GPS data. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of using neural networks and assisted GPS data collected from GPS-enabled mobile phones to automatically detect the mode of transportation. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that this technique can be optimized using a critical point algorithm to reduce the size of required GPS datasets obtained from GPS-enabled mobile phones, thus reducing data collection costs while saving mobile phone resources such as battery life.

Emerging countries have to develop their own specialised institutional frameworks in order to diffuse and foster innovation in their construction industries. In establishing new institutions, developing countries can take the industrialized countries as a model. However, the differences should be analysed in detail, and the model developed should be adapted to the environment in which the new institution will work. Examining the UK construction industry within this perspective, in this study, universities are taken into consideration as one of the major elements of innovation diffusion and two of the enterprise centres of University of Salford, CCI and SCRI are analysed with the case study method in order to reveal its success factors with an institution building conceptual model. As a result, the important role of these centres in fostering innovation in the construction industry is explored and lessons are driven for emerging countries on how to develop appropriate institutional f...

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of aerospace structures has received significant interest as a core component of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). This paper examines the possibility of using an ultrasonic guided wave system for damage detection in thin metallic plates. Acousto-Ultrasonic methods based on high frequency structural vibrations using piezoelectric transducers (PZT) have been developed to perform damage detection on thin metallic structures.The fundamentalLamb wave modes (AO&SO) travel into the structure and are reflected by the structural boundaries, discontinuities, and damage.Thus the presence of defect in the structure can be determined by studying their propagation and reflection. Laboratory level experiments have been carried out on thin Aluminum plates with angular, horizontal and vertical defect. This study provides significant insight into the problem of identifying localized damages in the structure using PZT and dispersion of signal after they interact wi...

Soil aquifer treatment (SAT) is an effective and sustainable technology for wastewater or stormwater treatment, storage and reuse. During SAT, the vadose zone acts as a pseudo reactor in which physical and biochemical processes are utilized to improve the infiltrated water quality. Dissolved oxygen (DO) is necessary for aerobic microbial oxidation of carbon and nitrogen species in the effluent. Therefore, to enhance aeration, SAT is generally operated in flooding and drying cycles. While long drying periods (DPs) lead to better oxidizing conditions and improve water quality, they reduce recharge volumes. As the population grows, the quantity of effluent directed to SAT sites increases and increasing recharge volumes become a concern and often a limiting factor for SAT usage. In this study, direct subsurface air injection SAT (Air-SAT) was tested as an alternative to long DPs operation. Six long column experiments were conducted, aiming to examine the effect of air injection on the soil's water content, oxidationreduction potential (ORP), DO concentrations, infiltrated amounts and ultimate outflow quality. In addition to basic parameters such as dissolved organic-C (DOC) and N species, the effluent quality analysis also included an examination of three emerging water contaminants -Ibuprofen, Carbamazepine and 1H-benzotriazole. Pulsed air injection experiments were conducted during continuous flooding at different operation modes (i.e., air pulse durations, frequencies and airflow rates). Our results show that the Air-SAT operation doubled the infiltration time (i.e., the infiltration was continuous with no offtime) and allowed up to 46% higher infiltration rate in some cases. As a result, the infiltrated volumes in the Air-SAT modes were 47-203% higher than the conventional flooding-drying operation (FDO). Longer air pulse duration (60 vs. 8 min) and higher airflow rate (~2 vs. ~1 SLPM) led to a higher infiltration rate, while a high pulse frequency (4.5 -1 h -1 ) led to a lower infiltration rate compared to low-frequency operation (24 -1 h -1 ). The air injection also allowed good recovery of the ORP and DO levels in the soil, especially in the high-frequency Air-SAT experiments, where steady aerobic conditions were maintained during most of the flooding. Consequently, the mean DOC,

A common practice in pre-processing step of hydrological modeling is to ignore observations with any missing variable values at any given time step even if it is only one of the independent variable that is missing. These rows of data are labeled incomplete and would not be used in either model building or subsequent testing and verification steps. This is not necessarily the best way of doing it as information is lost when incomplete rows of data are thrown out. Learning algorithms are affected by such problems more than physically-based models as they rely heavily on the data to learn the underlying input/output relationships. In this study, the extent of damage to the performance of the learning algorithm due to missing data is explored in a field-scale application. We have tested and compared the performance of two well- known learning algorithms, namely Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) for short-term prediction of groundwater levels in a well...

The effect of temperature and gas composition on the corrosion rate and corrosion byproduct of copper foil was studied by exposing it to sulphur (S 2 ), S 2 + hydrochloric acid (HCl) and hydrogen sulphide. The temperature was varied from 80 to 140 °C. Copper foil reacted with S 2 to form CuS, Cu 9 S 8 and Cu 1.8 S. Corrosion rates ranged from 9.6 µm/h at 110 °C to 0.5 µm/h at 140 °C. The presence of HCl caused pitting and enhanced the corrosion rate above 112 °C. Cu 2 S formed when copper was exposed to hydrogen sulphide gas. Sulphide scale that formed was friable and nonadherent.

Agriculture especially in India need to concentrate in some aspects such as how to increase the productivity and profit, how to reduce the cost and how to solve the problem comes from workers. Currently in India former used conventional method for the crop cutting i.e. The conventional method for crop cutting is as manually cutting using labor but this method is lengthy and time consuming. It well know that crop like jawar, tuar, bajra maize required more force as compare to easily cutting crop like wheat rice etc. This paper presents the concept for design and analysis of crop cutter. The crop cutting is important stage in agriculture field Crop cutting machine is mechanical device. It can be use for cutting the dry cut stalks of grain break or covering of trunk of tree. This mechanism is used for harvesting the moderate crop. single machine can be perform the work of seven to eight labour which is ultimately help to increase the economy of formers. The only drawback of machine is ...

Most available climate/weather stations (e.g., COOP stations) are located in valleys. The few high elevation stations we have (RAWS, SNOTEL) and are relatively sparse, so do not adequately capture temperature variation in steep complex topography. There is growing awareness of just how much information current air temperature models are missing in complex mountainous terrain. For example, cold air drainage and lapse rates vary from night to night. Many terrestrial management decisions (tree planting, growth and yield, species occurrence, etc.) are made at the stand or aspect scale, due to variation in solar insolation, and temperature predictions must match that scale in order to be useful for site-level predictions. For aquatics applications, one of the most important questions is understanding the mechanisms associated with how streams warm up & whether that information can be used to predict which types of streams will be more/less sensitive to future changes. As a result, there is growing interest in using inexpensive sensors to develop massive air temperature monitoring arrays in mountains. We are now beginning to make progress in using sensor networks to empirically downscale temperatures in complex topography (see Holden et al. (2011); Holden et al. (in press); and attachments). However, there are some real challenges to accurately measuring air temperature in forested environments. I'm now in my 3 rd year of deploying air sensor arrays across the northern Rockies, I've learned a lot mainly from mistakes that I've made and will try to share some of that information here (see attachment on tradeoffs). In short, it's a significant challenge to measure air temperature accurately but it's also a very important to try and minimize bias associated with solar radiation. Note that we are inherently dealing with a highly modified radiation environment, because of the presence of trees and vegetation, which all absorb and re-emit radiation. In the end, as a user community, ecologists and climatologists should work toward standardizing our methods for monitoring air temperatures in forested environments. I don't claim to have all the answers, but if interested in discussing further or if you'd like more information on our radiation shield design, you can contact me at:

Concrete structures are subject to aging depending on a number of factors particular local environmental issues. The current non-destructive testing practice only provides limited localized samples of concrete strength and can not give values for the entire structure and its performance. Ambient vibration monitoring technologies have developed rapidly and are now able to quantify the performance not only for static load cases but also for dynamic actions like earthquakes. Experience has shown that in average concrete structures show higher capacities than anticipated through conventional assessment methods. Nevertheless one of the major targets of a detailed monitoring campaign is to find out deficiencies and particular weak structures, which might collapse in an earthquake event. The combination of multiple non-linearities enables profound assessment of the earthquake resistance. The methodology has started to enter the practice of earthquake assessment and the improvement of mitigation strategies.

The reassessment of the seismic risk in countries north of the Alps has brought considerable changes in civil engineering. Until 1998 wind loads guided the design regarding horizontal resistance. International standards and national regulations have made the seismic load case guiding the process now. A strict application of the code means that the vast number of structures in the Vienna basin does not conform to the design guidelines. The proposed methodology consists of two different tools which are used to reach a realistic assessment of seismic loads on existing structures. First of all the proposed and well-known microzonation study of urban areas leads to adapted soil amplification factors which have been given very generally by the code up to now. In a second step the actual resistance of a building is verified, which in most of the cases is considerably higher than the design resistance. These two methodologies were combined for residential buildings and are currently applied in a major national project. A microzonation study is done using a grid of 200 by 200 m over the whole city of Vienna to make the existing risk map more precise. In addition a methodology for vibration measurement of existing buildings has been developed, which allows the calibration of numerical models and is able to verify structural changes due to aging of buildings.

All Parking Violations Double Parking Violations Total number of tickets in 2015 10,905,102 695,369 %Commercial vehicle tickets 19.4% 45.2% %Passenger cars tickets 72.5% 47.3% %Tickets issued in Manhattan 34.0% 58.8% %Tickets issued in Brooklyn 20.7% 17.5% %Tickets issued in Queens 18.3% 7.8% %Tickets issued in Bronx 10.1% 14.2% %Tickets issued in Staten Island 0.9% 0.2% %Tickets issued during Weekday 85.7% 89.9% %Tickets issued during Weekend 14.3% 11.1%

Emergency events affect human security and safety as well as the integrity of the local infrastructure. Emergency response officials are required to make decisions using limited information and time. During emergency events, people post updates to social media networks, such as tweets, containing information about their status, help requests, incident reports, and other useful information. In this research project, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model is used to automatically classify incident-related tweets and incident types using Twitter data. Unlike the previous social media information models proposed in the related literature, the LDA is an unsupervised learning model which can be utilized directly without prior knowledge and preparation for data in order to save time during emergencies. Twitter data including messages and geolocation information during two recent events in New York City, the Chelsea explosion and Hurricane Sandy, are used as two case studies to test the accuracy of the LDA model for extracting incident-related tweets and labeling them by incident type. Results showed that the model could extract emergency events and classify them for both small and large-scale events, and the model's hyper-parameters can be shared in a similar language environment to save model training time. Furthermore, the list of keywords generated by the model can be used as prior knowledge for emergency event classification and training of supervised classification models such as support vector machine and recurrent neural network. Emergency events such as hurricanes, floods, releases of hazardous or nuclear materials, building fires, and explosions dramatically affect the local infrastructure. In particular, decision makers are required to make immediate decisions based on the limited information available in sudden-onset crisis situations. Ozbay and Kachroo (1) was among the first studies to describe innovative approaches to predict incident management-related information such as online incident durations and delays using real-time data from sensors and incident response crews. More recently, Ozbay and Noyan (2) and Demiroluk and Ozbay (3) proposed novel methods for incident duration prediction using the traditional sensor data as well other data directly generated and made available by response personnel. However, systems and protocols similar to the ones cited above that are used for emergency/incident response today still lack accurate and abundant spatial and temporal resolution data, which are required to address emergency recovery needs promptly. On the other hand, open source social media data have the potential to be used as a source of valuable real-time information to supplement existing traditional data-collection systems. Social media data have proven to be useful in emergency response (4). During emergency events, people post social media updates containing information about their statuses, help requests, incident reports, and other useful information. These data can be examined later to understand the spatial-temporal distribution of incidents. Researchers in social media analytics have built tools to extract information from users' updates. Natural language processing and real-time big data analysis are the new challenges in making that information available in a useful format to officials. If critical information shared on social media networks is immediately available to

This paper, following up the white paper released on April 3, 2020, continues to highlight trends in mobility and sociability in New York City (NYC), and supplements them with similar data from Seattle, WA, two of the cities most affected by COVID-19 in the U.S. Seattle may be further along in its recovery from the pandemic and ensuing lockdown than NYC, and may offer some insights into how travel patterns change. Finally, some preliminary findings from cities in China are discussed, two months following the lifting of their lockdowns, to offer a glimpse further into the future of recovery. • NYC continues to see a consistent low volume in transit ridership and motor vehicle trips. Subway ridership remains down 91% and vehicular traffic via MTA bridges and tunnels was down 68% in April 2020 vs. 2019. • An increase in traffic speed was observed with some city streets operating at or near free-flow speed. A 108% average increase in speeds on Midtown Avenues between 8AM-6PM was observed in April as compared with February. Concurrently, a 72% average daily increase in the number of school zone speeding tickets was observed during before and after stay-at-home orders. • Crashes remain low as a result of the low vehicular volumes, but the severity of crashes measured by fatalities is up. This may possibly be due to higher vehicular speeds, but more data is needed. • Weigh-in-motion (WIM) from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) showed reduced volumes and higher speeds as well as that the number of very heavy trucks (GVW > 100 kips) was reduced 30% for Queens bound and 44% for Staten Island bound traffic. • Bikeshare ridership remains down with the exception of the first 12 days of March. Ridership patterns did change, with 15% fewer Friday and Saturday trips. Average trip duration in March 2020 also increased to 13.9 minutes, a 20% increase compared to the same month last year. • An increase in social distancing complaints has made the Non-emergency police matter category the 2 nd most common complaint among NYC311 reports.

The exclusive bus lane (XBL) is one of the most popular bus transit systems in US. The Lincoln Tunnel utilizes an XBL through the tunnel in the AM peak period. This paper proposes a novel data-driven cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) algorithm for connected and autonomous buses. Different from existing model-based CACC algorithms, the proposed approach employs the idea of adaptive dynamic programming (ADP), which does not rely on the accurate knowledge of bus dynamics. A distributed cruise controller is learned by online headway, velocity, acceleration data collected from system trajectories. The convergence of the proposed algorithm and the stability of the closed-loop system are rigorously analyzed. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is also demonstrated by Paramics microscopic traffic simulations. Simulation results show that the travel times in the autonomous exclusive bus lanes are close to the present day travel times even when the traffic demand is increased by 30%. 1) We propose a novel data-driven CACC method for connected and autonomous buses. This is different from existing model-based CACC methods in that the former essentially relies on the collected online headway, velocity, and acceleration data, instead of the knowledge of vehicle dynamics. 2) This paper distinguishes itself from our previous work through combining the ideas of ADP and distributed control. It should be noticed that, compared with centralized control, distributed control strategies no longer relies on the assumption that each vehicle can communicate with a central location and share information by a fully connected network, which is able to effectively reduce communication cost. Moreover, the latter is robust to communicative malfunctions.

Many researchers worldwide have extensively used fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) strengthening materials and near-surface mounted (NSM) to enhance the shear and flexural strengths of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. However, studies on torsional strengthening are limited. Although a few studies have focused on torsional strengthening, none of them simultaneously investigated torsion with shear and/or bending moment. This study aims at demonstrating the behaviour of RC beams strengthened with FRP sheets (strips) with different configurations and NSM steel bars with different spacing that was subjected to combined actions of torsion and bending moment and making a comparison between them. Seven beams with a dimension of 15 × 25 × 200 cm were casted. One of the beams was not strengthened; three of them were strengthened with carbon FRP, and the others were strengthened with NSM steel bar. The angle of twist at torque intervals, first cracking torque, ultimate torque, and ultimate twist a...

This paper reviews the current status of permeable pavement research and limitations of its applicability. This discusses the influence of design factors such as permeable pavement type, mix design of porous concrete/asphalt, aggregate materials, particle size and distribution, sub-base depth, and layer setting on hydraulic, structural, and environmental performances of the pavement. Findings of this review demonstrate that the uptake of permeable pavement systems as a stormwater best management practice is relatively limited and slow due to lack of in-depth scientific understanding and economic uncertainties. It confirms the necessity of undertaking further research to fill the knowledge gap by providing practical solutions supported by new knowledge and innovations on permeable pavemen systerms. Followings have been identified as challengers and needs for future research on permeable pavement systems: (a) unavailability of cost data and difficulties of estimation of intangible benefits; (b) co-optimising environmental, hydraulic, and structural performances by modifying design; (c) difficulties of simulating actual field condition to investigate the clogging phenomena via laboratory experiments; (d) modelling the relationship of design variations with structural, hydraulic, and environmental performance; (e) developing a standard maintenance procedure to restore infiltration capacity; and (f) improving the bearing capacity of the structure to withstand higher vehicular loads and speeds.

An experimental study on the application of air multiplier popularly known as bladeless fan in the automobile field and in the process comparing it with the conventional bladed fan that is used on a large scale in the industry are investigated. It consists of a brushless electric motor along with asymmetricallyaligned blades attached to a rotor. The frame is sloped at such an angle that by this pressure is increased. The surrounding air is rapidly sucked or 'entrained' inside resulting in a stronger air flow. By this process the air multiplier, multiplies the flow of air. This is how the air multiplier increases the flow of air by 15% compared to a conventional fan. The results of the comparison between the mainstream bladed fan and the bladeless fan are shown with the important factors such as efficiency, quietness, speed of the air flow and nature of the air flow are shown. These findings are then incorporated to apply the air multiplier in use in automobile industry to eliminate the use of bladed fans in the applications of HVAC fans, radiator fans, headlight cooling fans. The theoretical assumption is that the air multiplier will have a higher air flow output with a lower energy consumption. It will also have a continuous air flow and the issue of buffeting that is evident in the case of bladed fans will be nominated.

Plasticrete is a proposed building material designed to address two major global issues: plastic waste pollution and the demand for affordable, sustainable construction materials. It is a composite made primarily from recycled plastics and is engineered to be durable, weather-resistant, and structurally sound for a wide range of applications including housing, infrastructure, and emergency shelters. ### Branding **Coherent Resonance (TM)** Plasticrete is a project under the Coherent Resonance initiative, dedicated to materials that align with regenerative systems, waste inversion, and harmonic structural integrity.

Construction workers are backbone of this industry since construction industry is less mechanized and more labor intensive. So the major consideration is ensuring workers safety during construction in Bangladesh. As current practice of Bangladesh checks the construction safety manually, this checking process always leads to error-prone, inconsistency in assessments and delays the construction process as a whole. The aim of this study is to develop an automated fall safety checking system using BIM to solve this problem in the Bangladeshi context. A framework is developed and safety rule checking approach is illustrated during conceptual and legal stage and how these process works in two situations is proposed to identify fall hazard at planning phase. A case study is performed to illustrate its practical implementation on a building project in Bangladesh. Results show that the developed system demonstrates the feasibility of integrating safety into BIM for detecting and eliminating fall-related hazards. This study will contribute the construction professionals by introducing and informing automated safety checking platform to find the reports, why, where, when, and what safety measures are needed for preventing fall-related accidents at pre-construction phase. The significance of this study is to lead to safer designs early in a project.

Labour skill has a significant impact on time, cost, and quality of a construction project. The competitive construction industry forces companies to increase their labour skill to remain their positions in the industry. It is universally agreed that the skilled worker is one of the main fuels to run construction industry. A skilled worker must have a professional training, minimum 2 years working experience, and have the knowledge of construction materials, equipment and safety and physically fit. To check the status of the worker against nine main parameters of skilfulness of the worker is the key to the study. A questionnaire was designed with very deep literature research and expert opinion. The data were collected through questionnaire survey amongst the construction workers in Bangladesh. The percentages of workers found in this study having full knowledge and practicing regulation of construction safety, materials, equipment's and tools, labour codes and building code are 19.35%, 6.45%, 9.68%, 4.87% and 2.30%, respectively. The workers in the study area having the professional training, minimum education and minimum working experience are 6.45%, 46.06% and 62.50%, respectively. A total of 62.25% workers are found physically sound. Building code practices and awareness building is the driving key to enhance skills of worker.