The paper explores building collapses at the cross-cutting edges of urban sustainability and the socio-economic and political–cultural influences of vulnerability for the phenomenon – in departure from the traditional conceptualisation of the phenomenon as an ‘engineering’ problem. It confers insights into the influences of vulnerability for building collapse in the urban context and makes a case for

Delimiting urban areas is crucial for planning and managing cities. In Portugal, urban limits are exclusively decided at the municipal level according to the strategic vision of each municipality. Consequently, urban delimitation is a significantly changeable process. This paper presents a methodology to fill this gap aiming at delimiting urban areas based on objective and quantitative spatial data

Urbanisation modifies the natural hydrological cycle and aggravates floods. If the limits imposed by the natural environment are respected in the urban planning process, it is expected that the city resulting from this process will be able to coexist with floods, suffering minor damages. In this context, this work uses the concept of low-impact development (LID) to ‘go back in time’, with the aid of

Buried utilities (e.g. gas, water, electricity, drainage), many installed decades ago, are vital urban support systems. Their locations are often not well documented, yet accurate location greatly helps replacement, rehabilitation and maintenance of existing services and is crucial for installation of new utilities: it minimises utility strikes / third party damage and the huge associated costs of

Waste mud processing is an urgent problem in in situ construction with no existing method of address. Identifying a highly effective, low-energy and environmentally friendly treatment method would hold great significance. This paper introduces a fast, economic and environmentally friendly construction technology centred on the in situ solidification process. After solidification, bearing capacity and

Pedestrian facilities: geometric design for safety and mobility – second edition

Construction is one of the most hazardous and complex industries worldwide, which may result in the most fatal accidents and occupational illnesses. It is also regarded as a major industry not only in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries but also worldwide and it is rapidly growing. This study reports an assessment of different body parameters, including physiological factors and body pain of construction

Differential settlement of footings of reinforced-concrete buildings is expected to have a considerable effect on design forces in various structural components depending on the characteristics of the soil. The differential settlement combined with the soil–structure interaction (SSI) effect during earthquakes may be a significant factor in deciding the structural response especially for structures

One of the most common problems in construction projects is delay. Delays lead to loss of time and an increase in cost, which causes great damage to firms and the economies of countries. In previous studies, many researchers have attempted to identify the factors causing the delay by carrying out questionnaire surveys and interviews. However, there are very few studies that have compared the data obtained

The leachate released from dumpsites can cause severe contamination of land and water. By studying seasonal variations of leachate characteristics generated from three active landfill sites of Delhi (India), it was found that seasonal variations can significantly affect the composition of leachate. Various parameters, such as conductivity, total dissolved solids (TDS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD)

In recent years, a large number of metro systems have been built in Chinese cities, this is especially true in Shanghai. As an emerging information management technology, building information modelling (BIM) has been introduced in the metro projects. However, very few data models of the completed metro projects conform to a uniform BIM standard. In fact, the existing deliverable models of different

Resilient and sustainable municipal organisations develop long-term capital investment plans to balance capital investment needs with organisational financial capacity in the most optimum way to en...

Investigating trip purposes of transit passengers is crucial in assessing current urban transportation systems and prioritizing investments in the public transportation infrastructure. Smart card d...

This paper proposes a method to predict highway travel times using a spatio-temporal algorithm based on a gated recurrent unit (GRU) to predict the link and route travel times. It could reduce the ...

This briefing paper presents the modular integrated construction (MiC) approach drawing on the literature, the theories of modularisation and production and pioneering practices. MiC is a game-changing approach introduced in Hong Kong focusing on high-density, high-rise building construction, to transform fragmented site-based construction into integrated value-driven production with the opportunity

Is there such a thing as an urban direction to infrastructure innovation in today's rapidly expanding cities? City growth has driven evolution of urban infrastructure through a combination of technological, political and commercial innovations to produce today's top-down, centralised models; however, these now stand in the way of the innovation necessary to accommodate the city growth anticipated in

Infrastructure reconstruction and development facilitates the transition of post-conflict economies to socio-economic stability and financial normalcy. The current system of measuring success is output-based and not a reliable indicator of outcome. Furthermore, standardised output metrics are easily and often abused. However, the outcome of any infrastructure project is by definition retrospective

The disposal of plastic waste is a great dilemma in present times due to its non-biodegradable nature and the scarcity and unsustainability of landfills. Studies reveal that it can be successfully utilised in bituminous concrete (BC) mixes in flexible pavements. There are two methods available, namely, dry method (DM) and wet method (WM) that incorporate plastic wastes in the BC mixes. In this study

This paper presents the project management of a transnational workshop in urban engineering, held as education and training for students from Brazil (UFRJ – Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá State University) and France (UTC – Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Compiègne University of Technology, Sorbonne University)

This research study was conducted to assess the potential of a fuzzy logic approach for flood hazard (FH) modelling in five suburban basins in Hamadan city, Iran. The soil conservation service (SCS) method in the Hydrologic engineering center-hydrologic modelling system (HEC-HMS) model was used to assess the accuracy of this method. The results revealed that the two employed methods had almost the

In this study, the fast and safe predictability of the California bearing ratio (CBR) from some important soil parameters that can be obtained easily and cheaply was investigated. Within the scope ...

A probabilistic risk assessment is presented for earthquakes in the northwest of the Mexican state of Baja California. Six seismic sources are considered for determining the seismic hazard, and vul...

A city's points of interest reflect the character and identity of urban environments, setting the scene for various functions and activities. Built form, active travel behaviour and residential pre...

This study is based on a use of Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) as tools and methods well suited for the selection of the app...

The planned development of urban areas depends on zoning applications. Although zoning practices are performed using different techniques, the parceling operations that shape the future view of the...

Trip mode choice, one of the stages of the four-step travel process, is influenced by individual and family attributes, such as economic, social and cultural characteristics. The purpose of this st...

Syrians fleeing from the civil war in their county to Turkey have started to live mostly in the southern provinces which are close to the border like Gaziantep, Kilis, Mardin, Şanliurfa, Adana, Osm...

Earthquake fault zoning and geological survey have attracted considerable attention in Turkey, particularly, after the major earthquake on 17 August 1999. Detection of faults, processing the result...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of different roadway surfaces’ roughness on cyclists’ velocity choices. Could surface roughness be efficiently used for designing velocity choi...

If you've been stuck in a traffic jam caused by roadworks this summer, you will understand the Local Government Association's (LGA) urgency in asking the government to grant councils the power to introduce a daily rate or lane rental for digging up certain busy roads. According to the LGA, the country currently has a £12 billion backlog of repairs, and one in five roads is classed as being in poor

Governance mechanisms of public–private partnership (PPP) projects can alleviate opportunism behaviours and indirectly reduce transaction costs from the perspective of transaction cost economics. T...

Among Asian countries, India has a vast potential to adopt a public bicycle-sharing system (PBSS) as a sustainable mode of transport after China. However, various barriers pose as hindrances in the...

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, made the following observation. ‘Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do’. This apparently s...

Book review of O’Flaherty, C. with Hughes, D. (2016) Highways: the location, design, construction and maintenance of road pavements 5th edition. ICE Publishing, London

This paper examines right-turning merging areas at junctions. The utilisation rate and headway distribution of the outside lane are set up at the exit of the intersection and used to study the conflict between the main traffic stream and the right-turning traffic. On the basis of the theory of gap acceptance and probability, under the condition that the flow rate of the right-turning vehicles do not

The Exe Estuary Trail is a 25 km long sustainable cycling and walking route on the south coast of Devon, UK. The largely off-road facility links Exeter city centre to the coastal towns of Exmouth and Dawlish on either side of the Exe Estuary. The route mainly runs parallel to existing railway lines, and allows public access to the unique European environment and wildlife site. This paper describes

Ground and structural responses to presence of trees can be detrimental if their probable interactions are not duly considered. For example, trees growing in swelling/shrinking clays can lead to damage of buildings that are in close proximity. Very often the problem is not identified until appreciable damage has occurred. Guidelines relating to acceptable distances of trees to buildings are available

Mauritius has experienced an economic recession that has negatively impacted infrastructural project development. There is a presumed skill gap between local and foreign entities. This study explor...

This paper has been withdrawn by the authors due to errors in the results. A dissolved oxygen (DO) model is calibrated under low and medium flow conditions, while verification of the model is done under low flow condition, for a heavily polluted river. The Soan River is located in Pakistan, with large flow variations. The biokinetic rate coefficients for nitrogenous biochemical oxygen demand and carbonaceous