Effective Criteria for Seismic Rehabilitation Planning of Road Transportation Infrastructures

While seismic rehabilitation process for road infrastructures has been traditionally based on seismic factors, consideration of non-seismic factors is necessary for reliable project ranking. Non-seismic factors include socioeconomic criteria, determining the value of a project to its users’ community. Based on the information obtained from a questionnaire survey and literature review, this paper identifies a set of effective rehabilitation criteria (ERC) for seismic rehabilitation decision-making to develop a priority index that is applied to determine the rehabilitation priority. The identified RC will then be weighted for four types of road structures including bridges, tunnels, retaining walls, and buildings. The results can be generalized to provide valuable insights for policy makers concerned with transportation infrastructure planning, especially in developing countries where project prioritization is often an issue. To underline the value of the study, the weighted RC are applied in ranking road rehabilitation projects in an illustrative example

Pavement material and technology elements in green highway rating systems-a conspectus

Since the effect of global warming and climate changes are becoming serious issues nowadays, most countries are trying to develop their own green highway rating system in order to implement the sustainable practices on their highway.Several studies have discussed the issues relating to the sustainable rating system, but no major study has been conducted to examine the green highway rating system in depth.Material and pavement technology are two most important parameters in the green highway rating systems and need to be addressed more critically. This study presents an extensive review to identify and establish the material and pavement technology elements that are most appropriate to be considered in developing the green highway rating systems.The relevant literatures have been reviewed to assist in identifying the elements of material and pavement technology. These elements in existing green highway rating systems are tabulated and ranked to show the importance level of each element. Understanding the comparison between these elements in existing green highway rating systems would help in identifying and overcoming the scarcity of the elements. Subsequently, the complete highway rating system can be developed as a performance measure or baseline reference that suit different environment and weather. The result shows that themost appropriate elements in material and pavement technology in highway development are recycled materials and regional materials.These elements could optimize the sustainable designs, encourage the usage of recycled materials, and minimize the transportation that help in reducing pollution and energy consumptio

Seismic damage detection using pushover analysis

Inter-story drift ratio is a general damage index which is being used to detect damaged stories after severe ground motions. Since this general damage index cannot detect damaged elements also the severity of imposed damages on elements, a new real-time seismic damage detection method base on artificial neural networks was proposed to overcome this issue. This approach considers nonlinear behaviour of structures and not only is capable of detecting damaged elements but also can address the severity of imposed damages. Proposed algorithm was applied on a 3-story concrete building .The obtained results confirmed accuracy and robustness of this method

Budget allocation management model for seismic rehabilitation of infrastructure assets

Economic efficiency is an important factor in seismic rehabilitation planning for infrastructure assets. An inventory of structures is screened to identify seismically susceptible parts and prioritize them in the order of need for rehabilitation purposes. In most cases, the financial resources for rehabilitation of infrastructure assets are limited. Therefore, there is a need to efficiently allocate such resources to various projects. The main goal of this research is to develop a budget allocation management model for rehabilitation of infrastructure projects, when there isn’t sufficient budget to allocate to all projects. Accordingly, a decision support system is developed and exercised in this research to optimize the budget for rehabilitation projects in three categories of road structures. To accomplish this, a computer-based Multiple Strategy Budget Allocation decision support System (MSBAS©) was developed to identify (including selection and prioritization) the best configuration (package) of seismic rehabilitation projects across existing structures. This system employs a multi-criteria assessment module that takes into account desirable criteria to estimate the financial needs for rehabilitation based on the existing budget constraints in a fiscal year. To select the optimal package of projects, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimization module is also developed. Multi-objective decision making is conducted under a specific decision strategy with solving a 0-1 Knapsack Problem. To demonstrate the applicability of the GA-based approach, a hypothetical decision making problem is presented. Using this system, managers can compare their decisions for different strategies and significantly improve management efficiency

Seismic vulnerability functional method for rapid visual screening of existing buildings

Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) method for buildings was originally developed by the Applied Technology Council (ATC) in the late 1980's for potential seismic hazards. This is a simple and almost a quick way of assessing the building seismic vulnerability score based on visual screening. The logarithmic relationship between final score and the probability of collapse at the maximum considered earthquake (MCE) makes results somewhat difficult to interpret, especially for less technical users. This study is developed to improve the simplicity and usefulness of RVS methodology to determine the numeric scores for seismic vulnerability of buildings using vulnerability functional form. The proposed approach applies the existing method in FEMA 154 (2002) for calculating the building rank based on RVS method. In this study RVS scores are used to evaluate populations of buildings to prioritize detailed evaluations and seismic retrofits. The alternate non-logarithmic format of scoring scheme is much better meeting the needs of the project managers and decision makers, as they require results that are easier to understand. It shows the linear equivalent of RVS final scores which is consistent with the existing ranking systems used in the buildings management program such as budget allocation decision making. The results demonstrate that the weight determined for the factor of Region Seismicity, which is 0.4033, has the highest contribution to seismic vulnerability scores of buildings. The applicability of the proposed method is demonstrated through a hypothetical example to rank ten seismically vulnerable buildings

A model for seismic vulnerability score assignment of road infrastructure using linear regression technique

Past earthquake damages to road and highway structures such as bridges and tunnels demonstrate that it can severely disrupt network performance. These types of lifeline damages negatively impact the economy of the region, as well as post-earthquake emergency response and recovery. The seismic performance of these structures is almost difficult to model, because performance is a function of design, age, and local geotechnical conditions. In addition, earthquake intensity is also highly uncertain. Since the vulnerability of transportation network is not a rapidly quantifiable concept, and road networks are vulnerable to many events, many of researchers tried to find acceptable definitions in this regard. This pilot study presents a Seismic Vulnerability Score Assignment Model (SVSA) applying linear regression technique for two types of road structures; namely bridges and tunnels as samples. This model helps the project managers and decision makers rank the road structures based on seismic vulnerability scores easily

Investigation on anatomical, chemical and pulping characteristics of Silybum marianum stem

To study the possibility of using plant Silybum marianum in paper industry, its stem yield potential, chemical properties, fiber indices and pulping was evaluated. Mean value of fiber length and diameter of Silybum marianumstem harvested in early June, were calculated 178 and 3.5 cm, respectively. Dry weight of whole stem determined 4710 kg per hectar. Mean value of fiber length, diameter, cavity diameter and wall thickness were obtained 1194, 16.06, 9.06, and 3.66 μm, respectively. Raunkel, flexibility, and slenderness ratios of its fibers were determined 80.83, 56.39, and 74.37, respectively. Results of chemical analysis showed that the stem comprises %70.35 holocellulose, %39.25 cellulose, %13.13 lignin, %3.09 acetone-soluble, %18 hot water-soluble extractives, and %11/85 ash. Soda pulp was obtained at 165 °C pulping time, 25% alkaline and 10:1 ratio of liquor to chips. Results of pulping showed that with increasing of pulping time from 30 to 210 minutes, the kappa number and yield decreased from 77.32 to 32.13 and 43.6 to 36.5, respectively; whereas accepted pulp yield (passed from 20 mesh) increased from 17.4 to 35.5% paper made of pulp with kappa number 32 had 36.82 Nm/g tensile index, 3.76 km breaking length and 1.75 Kpa.m2/g burst strength. In general, achieved results have shown that the present studied species could be regarded more for papermaking because of the suitable fiber biometrical and chemical properties as compared to other non-woody plants

Effective training factors for competency of demolition operatives in Malaysia

Recently, technology advancement influenced almost every field of life, brings new tools and techniques to reduce human effort and risk involved. Similar in the case of demolition industry, technology changed the demolition procedures significantly. Most of the countries are opting new techniques for demolition operatives, which ultimately reduce the risk involved the demolishing process. Effective competency based training modules has been adopted by the many countries to develop the demolition operatives skills, so the health and safety measure could be increased and also reduce the environmental impacts of the process. Malaysia has demolition procedure but unfortunately, the standards are not updated as compare to the other countries like UK, Australia etc., this enhances the element of the risk in demolition procedures. Current study has examined the factors that influence the demolition operative competency in Malaysian demolition industry. Results indicated that technical competency, risk management, health and safety and the environmental protection practices are the basic practices need for the demolition operatives