Recommender Thermometer for Measuring the Preparedness for Flood Resilience Management

A range of various thermometers and similar scales are employed in different human and resilience management activities: Distress Thermometer, Panic Thermometer, Fear Thermometer, fire danger rating, hurricane scales, earthquake scales (Richter Magnitude Scale, Mercalli Scale), Anxiety Thermometer, Help Thermometer, Problem Thermometer, Emotion Thermometer, Depression Thermometer, the Torino scale (assessing asteroid/comet impact prediction), Excessive Heat Watch, etc. Extensive financing of the preparedness for flood resilience management with overheated full-scale resilience management might be compared to someone ill running a fever of 41°C. As the financial crisis hits and resilience management financing cools down it reminds a sick person whose body temperature is too low. The degree indicated by the Recommender Thermometer for Measuring the Preparedness for Flood Resilience Management with a scale between Tmin=34,0° and Tmax=42,0° shows either cool or overheated preparedness for flood resilience management. The formalized presentation of this research shows how changes in the micro, meso and macro environment of resilience management and the extent to which the goals pursued by various interested parties are met cause corresponding changes in the “temperature” of the preparedness for resilience management. Global innovative aspects of the Recommender Thermometer developed by the authors of this paper are, primarily, its capacity to measure the “temperature” of the preparedness for flood resilience management automatically, to compile multiple alternative recommendations (preparedness for floods, including preparing your home for floods, taking precautions against a threat of floods, retrofitting for flood-prone areas, checking your house insurance; preparedness for bushfires, preparedness for cyclones, preparedness for severe storms, preparedness for heat waves, etc.) customised for a specific user, to perform multiple criteria analysis of the recommendations, and to select the ten most rational ones for that user. Across the world, no other system offers these functions yet. The Recommender Thermometer was developed and fine-tuned in the course of the Android (Academic Network for Disaster Resilience to Optimise educational Development) project

Editorial

„Editorial" Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 15(1), p. 5-6 First Published Online: 14 Oct 201

Modelling the behavior of I-shape concrete beams reinforced with fibers and prestressed steel and GFRP bars

This paper reports the behavior of I-shaped fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) beams flexurally reinforced with prestressed steel and glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars. The use of steel fibers aims to enhance the durability of pre-fabricated concrete structures by partially or completely replacing steel stirrups. In addition, GFRP and steel bars/tendons are combined as flexural reinforcement, creating a hybrid reinforcement system. GFRP bars are immune to corrosion and are positioned with minimum concrete cover, while steel reinforcement has adequate concrete cover thickness to minimize its risk to corrosion and ensure the required flexural capacity in a fire occurrence. Nonlinear finite element analysis (NLFEA) software was utilized for a critical analysis on the use of smeared crack model for predicting the behavior of this type of beams, including deflection, crack pattern, load-carrying capacity, and failure modes.The first author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of “Fundação para a Ciênciae Tecnologia” (FCT-Portugal), through the PhD grant SFRH/BD/09253/2020. The authors acknowledge the support provided by FCT through the project FemWebAI, reference PTDC/ECI-EST/6300/2020, and PID2021-125553NB-I00 (MCI/AEI/FEDER, UE). This work was partly financed by FCT / MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) under the R&D Unit Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering (ISISE), under reference UIDB/04029/2020, and under the Associate Laboratory Advanced Production and Intelligent Systems ARISE under reference LA/P/0112/2020

Deformation analysis of fibre-reinforced polymer reinforced concrete beams by tension-stiffening approach

Fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) is free from corrosion problem and is a viable alternative reinforcement material for concrete structures in lieu of steel reinforcing bars. Since FRP has lower elastic modulus compared to steel, the serviceability aspect of FRP reinforced concrete (FRP-RC) members should be particularly considered in the structural analysis and design. This study addresses the deformation analysis of FRP-RC flexural members with thorough consideration of the tension-stiffening phenomenon in post-cracking state. The approaches for analyzing the tension-stiffening flexural response of FRP-RC beams are presented. These include the use of empirical or theoretical models to compute effective flexural stiffness, the use of finite element method in conjunction with nonlinear constitutive material models, and the use of tensile stress block in combination with member analysis. Among them, the latter is a relatively simple analysis approach. Aiming for serviceability assessment of FRP-RC beams in structural engineering practice to circumvent sophisticated theoretical approaches and constitutive models, parametrized tensile stress block is derived based on tension stress fields computed from finite element analysis, and is proposed for use in member analysis for prediction of deflections. Four FRP-RC beam specimens tested in the literature are analyzed to verify the proposed tensile stress block. Close agreement between the experimental and analytical results is achieved, thereby endorsing the applicability and reliability of the proposed method.European Social Fund (Project No. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0145) under a grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT)