Vehicle make and model recognition for intelligent transportation monitoring and surveillance.

Vehicle Make and Model Recognition (VMMR) has evolved into a significant subject of study due to its importance in numerous Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), such as autonomous navigation, traffic analysis, traffic surveillance and security systems. A highly accurate and real-time VMMR system significantly reduces the overhead cost of resources otherwise required. The VMMR problem is a multi-class classification task with a peculiar set of issues and challenges like multiplicity, inter- and intra-make ambiguity among various vehicles makes and models, which need to be solved in an efficient and reliable manner to achieve a highly robust VMMR system. In this dissertation, facing the growing importance of make and model recognition of vehicles, we present a VMMR system that provides very high accuracy rates and is robust to several challenges. We demonstrate that the VMMR problem can be addressed by locating discriminative parts where the most significant appearance variations occur in each category, and learning expressive appearance descriptors. Given these insights, we consider two data driven frameworks: a Multiple-Instance Learning-based (MIL) system using hand-crafted features and an extended application of deep neural networks using MIL. Our approach requires only image level class labels, and the discriminative parts of each target class are selected in a fully unsupervised manner without any use of part annotations or segmentation masks, which may be costly to obtain. This advantage makes our system more intelligent, scalable, and applicable to other fine-grained recognition tasks. We constructed a dataset with 291,752 images representing 9,170 different vehicles to validate and evaluate our approach. Experimental results demonstrate that the localization of parts and distinguishing their discriminative powers for categorization improve the performance of fine-grained categorization. Extensive experiments conducted using our approaches yield superior results for images that were occluded, under low illumination, partial camera views, or even non-frontal views, available in our real-world VMMR dataset. The approaches presented herewith provide a highly accurate VMMR system for rea-ltime applications in realistic environments.\\ We also validate our system with a significant application of VMMR to ITS that involves automated vehicular surveillance. We show that our application can provide law inforcement agencies with efficient tools to search for a specific vehicle type, make, or model, and to track the path of a given vehicle using the position of multiple cameras

Maintaining the Sustainability of Critical Infrastructure

Critical infrastructures operations significantly affect the triple bottom lines of sustainability. Considering the dynamic nature of infrastructure and its surrounding environment, the interaction between them can dramatically change over time. This results in a deviation from the predictions used in the design and construction of the infrastructure. Therefore, the negative impacts of critical infrastructures on the environment, society, and economy can exacerbate throughout their service life. It is crucial to maintain these impacts within the desired limits. The measures that attempt to perpetuate a facility’s adverse effects on the triple bottom lines of sustainability can be called sustainability maintenance. Regular maintenance operations of infrastructure create an opportunity to integrate sustainability maintenance into preventive, corrective, and periodic maintenances. This chapter discusses four categories of sustainability maintenance of critical infrastructures: (1) minimizing adverse impacts of the infrastructure on people through maintenance, (2) keeping the maintenance operations sustainable, (3) sustainable material allocation throughout the maintenance process, and (4) environmental protection and restoration in maintenance operations. In each category, some of the best practices and methods are discussed

Incorporating Sustainable Practices in Asphalt Industry

Shrink of nonrenewable natural resources and the pollution generated by many manufacturing industries have initiated a global determination for pushing the industry toward more sustainable products. Asphalt as the principal element of almost any street and highway pavement is integral in transportation development, which, in turn, is pivotal for sustainable development. On the other hand, the material consumption and pollution generated in the asphalt industry pose significant threats to the environment and, therefore, to sustainability. This chapter reflects some of the sustainability concerns of the asphalt industry and discusses some of the possible solutions to mitigate them. The sustainability considerations are categorized into four phases of asphalt life cycle namely: (1) extraction of materials, (2) processing of raw materials, (3) transportation of asphalt raw materials and products, and (4) reusing and recycling at the end of a pavement’s life. In each phase, best practices to improve and maintain the sustainability of asphalt pavements are discussed. This chapter also discusses sustainable approaches and technologies in the asphalt industry such as warm mixes, permeable asphalt pavements as well as the potentials for improving the mechanical properties of asphalt pavements particularly in terms of resisting heavy load traffic, clogging, and freeze-thaw

Dynamic Risk Analysis of Construction Delays Using Fuzzy-Failure Mode Effects Analysis

Considering the tremendous losses in the worldwide economy caused by construction delays, it is essential to invest in minimizing the risks of delays. In order to make this happen, two measures should be taken: 1) The roots and fundamental causes of delay should be identified and strategies to mitigate their risks be developed (General remedy). 2) The most significant potential causes of delay in each project should be identified and these causes should be given priority to control (Project-Specific Remedy). The current research invests in both of the measures. To provide the general remedy, causes of delay in the construction industry of the United States is investigated through a national survey responded by the 224 construction experts with an average experience of over 27 years. The results of this study rank the criticality of the thirty main causes of construction delay in the U.S construction industry. The focus of the research is on the project-specific remedy. The research aims at designing a tool, which can prioritize different causes based on their criticality. This is crucial as there is often a large number of potential causes and investing in prevention of all of them is not practical. The designed tool is capable of identifying the most critical causes by assessing its status of the potential causes of delay in three elements of criticality which are: 1) The likelihood of occurrence of the cause, 2) the severity of the cause in creating delays (in case it happens), and 3) the resolvability or likelihood of handling the potential cause before it creates a delay, in case it happens. The three elements of assessment are inserted in a designed tool in Matlab®, which uses a fuzzy logic system to generate a “risk priority number’. This number is a representative of the riskiness of each potential cause. The next contribution of the research is a model that is capable of predicting the percentage of delay based on the “fuzzy risk priority number”. This model uses the output of the aforementioned fuzzy inference system to make a prediction about the percentage of delay. The model was tested by comparing its predictions with actual data (the delay that has actually happened) and has been able to predict the amount of delay with an error of less than 20%

Aristotelian ‘Phronesis’ and the dilemma of its translation

Phrónesis es uno de los conceptos clave en la ética y la política de Aristóteles. Aparece especialmente en el Libro VI de su Ética Nicomáquea. Los traductores de la obra de Aristóteles solo pudieron traducir aquellos aspectos de su significado que pudieron comprender. El presente estudio examina las formas en que la phrónesis se transmite al árabe en la versión revisada de la primera traducción conocida del NE por Isḥāq Ibn Ḥunain (siglos III / IX) donde lo traduce a ta‘aqqul, ‘aql o fahm, y la traducción realizada por‘ Abd ar-Raḥmān Badawī (siglos XV / XX), que lo traduce como fiṭna. Los hallazgos se comparan ocasionalmente con las traducciones al inglés y al alemán del mismo texto. El artículo concluye que, si bien las representaciones de Ibn Ḥunain están históricamente justificadas, en general Badawī ha traducido los términos griegos con relativa fidelidad, aunque ocasionalmente no logra establecer una correlación entre los conceptos.The Greek Phronesis is among the key concepts in Aristotle’s ethics and politics. It appears especially in the Book VI of his Nicomachean Ethics. The translators of Aristotle’s work could only render those aspects of its meaning that they were able to comprehend. The present study examines howphronesis is transmitted into Arabic in the revised version of the first known translation of the Nicomachean Ethics by Isḥāq Ibn Ḥunain (9thcentury) where he renders it to ta‘aqqul, ‘aqlor fahm, and the translation made by ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān Badawī (20th century), who translates it as fiṭna. The findings are occasionally compared with the English and German translations of the same text by two significant commentators of Aristotle.The paper concludes that while Ibn Ḥunain’s renderings are historically justified, all in all,Badawī has translated the Greek terms with relative faithfulness, although he occasionally fails to establish a correlation between the concepts

Identifying the key barriers to promote sustainable construction in the United States: A principal component analysis

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedThe need to build more facilities has intensified the inherited adverse impacts of the construction industry on the triple bottom lines of sustainability (i.e., people, planet, and profit). The current practice of sustainability in the construction industry is far from reaching the targeted green goals. In order to foster these endeavors, this study aims to explore sustainable construction barriers in the United States. To achieve the objective, first, 12 sustainability barriers were identified based on an excessive and comprehensive literature review and solicitation of experts’ opinions to validate the barriers. Next, a questionnaire survey was developed and distributed among 135 industry professionals to evaluate the relative importance of factors. To offer a practical solution, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to analyze the data and find the most effective barriers. The results show that four major barriers, including (1) pre-construction constraints, (2) managerial constraints, (3) legislative constraints, and (4) financial and planning constraints are the most influential challenges that the industry faces to foster sustainable construction. Practical solutions are suggested to tackle sustainable construction barriers. The findings of this study are beneficial to the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry members along with owners and policymakers.ECU Open Access Publishing Support Fun

Lessons Learned From Using An Ill-Conceived Nonmonetary, Prepaid Incentive In A Self-Administered Survey Of College Students

An experiment was conducted to determine how effective a prepaid, nonmonetary incentive would be at inducing college students to participate in a self-administered survey. The experiment was conducted on two college campuses in Los Angeles County.  As students exited their campus library, an interviewer approached them for an interview.  Half of those approached were offered a prepaid, nonmonetary incentive; the other half were not. Contrary to expectations, the prepaid, nonmonetary incentive dampened the response rate to the survey. Explanations are offered as to why the incentive was counterproductive