CONDITION ASSESSMENT OF RC BRIDGES. INTEGRATING MACHINE LEARNING, PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND BIM

Abstract. The survey of building pathologies is focused on reading the state of conservation of the building, composed by the survey of constructive and decorative details, the masonry layering, the crack pattern, the degradation and the color recognition. The drawing of these representations is a time-consuming task, accomplished by manual work by skilled operators who often rely on in-situ analysis and on pictures. In this project three-dimensional an automated method for the condition survey of reinforced concrete spalling has been developed. To realize the automated image-based survey it has been exploited the Mask R-CNN neural network. The training phase has been executed over the original model, providing new examples of images with concrete cover detachments. At the same time, a photogrammetry process involved the images, in order to obtain a point cloud which acts as a reference to a Scan to BIM process. The BIM environment serves as a collector of information, as it owns the ontology to recreate entities and relationships. The information as extracted by neural network and photogrammetry serve to create the pictures which depict the concrete spalling in the BIM environment. A process of projecting information from the images to the BIM recreates the shapes of the pathology on the objects of the model, which becomes a decision support system for the built environment. A case study of a concrete beam bridge in northern Italy demonstrates the validity of the process.</p

Effect of stocking density of fish on water quality and growth performance of European Carp and leafy vegetables in a low-tech aquaponic system

Aquaponics (AP) is a semi-closed system of food production that combines aquaculture and hydroponics and represents a new agricultural system integrating producers and consumers. The aim of this study was to test the effect of stocking densities (APL, 2.5 kg m-3; APH, 4.6 kg m-3) on water quality, growth performance of the European Carp (Cyprinus carpio L.), and yield of leafy vegetables (catalogna, lettuce, and Swiss Chard) in a low-technology AP pilot system compared to a hydroponic cultivation. The AP daily consumption of water due to evapotranspiration was not different among treatments with an average value of 8.2 L d-1, equal to 1.37% of the total water content of the system. Dissolved oxygen was significantly (p < 0.05) different among treatments with the lowest median value recorded with the highest stocking density of fish (5.6 mg L-1) and the highest median value in the hydroponic control (8.7 mg L-1). Marketable yield of the vegetables was significantly different among treatments with the highest production in the hydroponic control for catalogna (1.2 kg m-2) and in the APL treatment for Swiss Chard (5.3 kg m-2). The yield of lettuce did not differ significantly between hydroponic control and APL system (4.0 kg m-2 on average). The lowest production of vegetables was obtained in the APH system. The final weight (515 g vs. 413 g for APL and APH, respectively), specific growth rate (0.79% d-1 vs. 0.68% d-1), and feed conversion (1.55 vs. 1.86) of European Carp decreased when stocking density increased, whereas total yield of biomass was higher in the APH system (4.45 kg m-3 vs. 6.88 kg m-3). A low mortality (3% on average) was observed in both AP treatments. Overall, the results showed that a low initial stocking density at 2.5 kg m-3 improved the production of European Carp and of leafy vegetables by maintaining a better water quality in the tested AP system

Fertimetro, a Principle and Device to Measure Soil Nutrient Availability for Plants by Microbial Degradation Rates on Differently-Spiked Buried Threads

A novel patented method (PCT/IB2012/001157: Squartini, Concheri, Tiozzo, University of Padova) and the corresponding application devices, suitable to measure soil fertility, are presented. The availability or deficiency of specific nutrients for crops is assessed by monitoring the kinetics of progressive weakening of cotton or silk threads due to in situ microbial activity. The method is based on a nutrient-primed incremented substrate degradation principle. Threads are buried as is or pre-impregnated with N or P solutions, and the acceleration of the degradation rate for the N-supplemented or P-supplemented thread, in comparison to the untreated thread, is proportional to the lack of the corresponding nutrient in that soil. Tests were validated on corn crops in plots receiving increasing fertilizer rates in a historical rotation that has been established since 1962. The measurement carried out in May significantly correlated with the subsequent crop yields recorded in October. The analysis allows an early, inexpensive, fast, and reproducible self-assessment at field level to improve fertilization rates. The device is envisaged as a user-friendly tool for agronomy, horticulture, and any environmental applications where organic matter cycling, soil quality, and specific nutrients excess or deficiency are critical considerations

Delivering COBie data - Focus on curtain walls and building envelopes

COBie is a standard data framework whose main purpose is to transmit useful, reliable and us-able information collected throughout the whole building process and to be consumed in order to properly maintain the facility. Focusing on Facility Management information exchanges and considering the UK BIM policies and requirements, this paper shows the results obtained applying COBie to complex products such as curtain walls. Two Information Delivery Manuals (IDMs) were also developed, in order to provide a com-monly known and standardized framework, which can regulate the COBie-based information exchanges. Fu-ture developments of this study could concern the application of the developed IDMs to different case studies in order to overtake that specificity characterizing each single project and verify the validity of the proposal

Electronic excited states of conjugated cyclic ketones and thioketones : A theoretical study

Absorption spectra of a series of cyclic conjugated ketones and thioketones have been computed at the multiconfigurational second-order multistate perturbation level of theory, the CASSCF/MS-CASPT2 method. Excitation energies, transition dipole moments, oscillator strengths, and static dipole moments are reported and discussed for excited states with energies lower than ≈ 7–8 eV. The main bands of the spectra have been assigned and characterized in most cases for the first time. The spectroscopy of the different systems is compared in detail. Thioketones in particular have low-energy and intense ππ∗ transitions which suggest corresponding enhanced nonlinear molecular optical properties. Additionally, some of the methods used to estimate these properties from spectroscopic data have been considered in order to analyze the main contributions to the nonlinear optical [email protected] ; [email protected]

ENT management of children with adenotonsillar disease during COVID-19 pandemic : ready to start again?

Clinical manifestations of COVID-19 in children are milder, but the real burden of disease is unknown. After the lockdown, in our Region Lombardia we have been requested to progressively resume medical services including outpatient assessment and priority surgery. Therefore, we screened surgical waiting lists with identification of 47 children candidates to priority surgery (among 358). No homogeneous national health surveillance/screening programs are ongoing or have been conceived to test susceptible population among children/healthcare workers in preparation of coming down to routinely daily activities, and diagnostic strategies are not completely accurate in children. So, restoring medical services now might be untimely

Computational design and classification systems to support predictive checking of performance of building systems

The aim of control the economic, social and environmental aspects connected to the construction of a building imposes a systematic approach for which it is necessary to make test models aimed to a coordinate analysis of different and independent performance issues. BIM technology, referring to interoperable informative models, offers a significant operative basis to achieve this necessity. In most of the cases, informative models concentrate on a product-based digital models collection built in a virtual space, more than on the simulation of their relational behaviors. This relation, instead, is the most important aspect of modelling because it marks and characterizes the interactions that can define the building as a system. This study presents the use of standard classification systems as tools for both the activation and validation of an integrated performance-based building process. By referring categories and types of the informative model to the codes of a technological and performance-based classification system, it is possible to link and coordinate functional units and their elements with the indications required by the AEC standards. In this way, progressing with an incremental logic, it is possible to achieve the management of the requirements of the whole building and the monitoring of the fulfilment of design objectives and specific normative guidelines. The informative model, indeed, offers through the whole building process, the possibility to list the expected performance requirements defined at the design level for the singles technical elements. Once filled in those values and given the model interoperability to analysis platforms, we can gather the results and publish them by using computational design algorithm in parameters of functional units with the aim to monitor the relation with the expressed specifications. In that way, the model assumes the role of decisional basis for the building process because it allows to gather the technical specifications of simple components and functional units and in the same time compare them to the performance requirements of building products and to all the system composing the building, both active or passive. This research is proposed as a hypothesis for the extension of the project informative content, with the aim to support the decision-making skills related to information management to ensure the success on projects. The work has been developed during a research program in partnership between University of Padova and F&M Ingegneria S.p.A., an Italian company operating on engineering and architecture. In the first phase of work the study focused on the literature analysis dealing with development and spread of standard classification codes, with more attention on OmniClass and its implementation in BIM platforms. In the second stage, it concentrated on the implementation of the standard classification system and the performance specifications on the BIM platforms used for project design and management. The result has been achieved through the use of Computational design and data integration solutions, developed with the help of visual programming language (VPL). The same solutions have been used to fill in the performances of the whole system that has been simulated with FEA software and to validate the choices in relation to the proposed aims and to the normative prescriptions by comparing requirements and performances. The project has made possible to activate a real integrate performance-based design process thanks to the realization of the map previously mentioned and to the fact that BIM technology can define the relationship between technical elements and determined spaces and, at the same time, to monitor functions and requirements on that space

Implementation of different integrated crop-livestock systems in lowlands of Southern Brazil: an animal production approach.

The introduction of integrated crop-livestock systems (ICLS) is an alternative to rice monoculture in lowlands of Southern Brazil..

Comparison of different primer sets for use in automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis of complex bacterial communities

ITSF and ITSReub, constituting a new primer set designed for the amplification of the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic transcribed spacers, have been compared with primer sets consisting of 1406F and 23Sr (M. M. Fisher and E. W. Triplett, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 65:4630-4636, 1999) and S-D-Bact-1522-b-S-20 and L-D-Bact-132-a-A-18 (L. Ranjard et al., Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 67:4479-4487, 2001), previously proposed for automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA) of complex bacterial communities. An agricultural soil and a polluted soil, maize silage, goat milk, a small marble sample from the fac\ub8ade of the Certosa of Pavia (Pavia, Italy), and brine from a deep hypersaline anoxic basin in the Mediterranean Sea were analyzed with the three primer sets. The number of peaks in the ARISA profiles, the range of peak size (width of the profile), and the reproducibility of results were used as indices to evaluate the efficiency of the three primer sets. The overall data showed that ITSF and ITSReub generated the most informative (in term of peak number) and reproducible profiles and yielded a wider range of spacer sizes (134 to 1,387) than the other primer sets, which were limited in detecting long fragments. The minimum amount of DNA template and sensitivity in detection of minor DNA populations were evaluated with artificial mixtures of defined bacterial species. ITSF and ITSReub amplified all the bacteria at DNA template concentrations from 280 to 0.14 ng l 1, while the other primer sets failed to detect the spacers of one or more bacterial strains. Although the primer set consisting of ITSF and ITSReub and that of S-D-Bact-1522-b-S-20 and L-D-Bact-132-a-A-18 showed similar sensitivities for the DNA of Allorhizobium undicula mixed with the DNA of other species, the S-D-Bact-1522-b-S-20 and L-D-Bact-132-a-A-18 primer set failed to detect the DNA of Pseudomonas stutzeri