Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Temporal Lidar Scanning In Quantifying Cumulative Rockfall Volume And Hazard Assessment: A Case Study At Southwestern Saudi Arabia, Abdullah A. Alotaibi, Norbert H. Maerz, Kenneth J. Boyko, Ahmed M. Youssef, Biswajeet Pradhan

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Rockfalls and unstable slopes pose a serious threat to people and property along roads/highways in the southwestern mountainous regions of Saudi Arabia. In this study, the application of terrestrial light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology was applied aiming to propose a strategy to analyze and accurately depict the detection of rockfall changes, calculation of rockfall volume, and evaluate rockfall hazards along the Habs Road, Jazan Region, Saudi Arabia. A series of temporal LiDAR scans were acquired at three selected sites. Our results show that these three sites have different degrees of hazard due to their geological differences. The mean ...

Sustain Water Conservation Behaviors Using Nonparametric Ranking And Social Marketing, Mahmudur Rahman Aveek

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Circulation of water use feedback and conservation messaging are strategies implemented to reduce water demand on a short-term (seasonal) basis. Often considered a less impactful strategy than other tactics such as price increments and usage restrictions, authorities mostly use feedback in informational campaigns with a focus to apprise users about their water use. Such conservation programs have had limited success that has been attributed to the fact that the information provided with the feedback campaigns was generic and did not motivate users enough to sustain their water-saving behaviors. However, the advent of disaggregation technologies that can provide appliance-wise water use ...

Advancing The Cyberinfrastructure For Smart Water Metering And Water Demand Modeling, Nour A. Attallah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With rapid growth of urban populations and limited water resources, achieving an appropriate balance between water supply capacity and residential water demand poses a significant challenge to water supplying agencies. With the recent emergence of smart metering technology, where water use can be monitored and recorded at high resolution (e.g., observations of water use every 5 seconds), most existing research has been aimed at providing water managers with detailed information about the water use behavior of their consumers and the performance of water using fixtures. However, replacing existing meters with smart meters is expensive, and effectively using data produced ...

Using Computational Fluid Dynamics To Predict Flow Through The West Crack Breach Of The Great Salt Lake Railroad Causeway, Michael Rasmussen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA, is a terminal, saline lake and is divided into two primary sections (northern and southern) by an east-to-west railroad causeway. Shortly after completion of the earth-fill causeway in the late 1950s, the two sections became dramatically different with differences in water surface elevation and water density. These differences cause the formation of a unique flow behavior commonly referred to as a density-driven exchange flow or bi-directional flow; a behavior observed in other lake and ocean settings where two fluids of differing densities interact. Measuring these exchange flows is a priority for lake managers ...

Measuring Accessibility To Food Services To Improve Public Health, Efthymia Kostopoulou

Masters Theses

Food accessibility has lately been of primary interest given its impact on public health outcomes. This thesis illustrates the gaps in food access by applying spatial analysis in Massachusetts accounting for a variety of demographic and socioeconomic factors. The number of grocery stores, farmers markets, and convenience stores within 1/4 and 1 mile of the Census tracts’ centroids are the two accessibility metrics used in the spatial analysis. In addition, a regression model is developed using the Gradient Boosting machine learning method to show the relationship between the socioeconomic factors and the number of grocery stores within 1 mile ...

Laboratory Assessement Of Emulsion-Cement Paste And Cold Recycled Mixtures At Varying Amounts Of Emulsion, Cement, And Water, Ahmed Saidi

Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of this study was to assess the performance of cold recycled mixtures (CRMs) at: (1) binder level through evaluating the rheological and mechanical properties of emulsion-cement paste (ECP), and (2) mix level through characterizing the density and performance of CRMs. The testing program for ECPs included multiple stress creep recovery (MSCR), bending beam rheometer (BBR), linear amplitude sweep (LAS), penetration test, and isothermal calorimetry. For CRMs, a balanced mix design (BMD) approach was used to develop performance interaction charts to select optimum contents of emulsion, cement, and water maximizing the resistance of CRMs to rutting and cracking ...

Unconventional Water Resources: Global Opportunities And Challenges, Zahra Karimidastenaei, Tamara Avellán, Mojtaba Sadegh, Bjørn Kløve, Ali Torabi Haghighi

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Water is of central importance for reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. With predictions of dire global water scarcity, attention is turning to resources that are considered to be unconventional, and hence called Unconventional Water Resources (UWRs). These are considered as supplementary water resources that need specialized processes to be used as water supply. The literature encompasses a vast number of studies on various UWRs and their usefulness in certain environmental and/or socio-economic contexts. However, a recent, all-encompassing article that brings the collective knowledge on UWRs together is missing. Considering the increasing importance of UWRs ...

Legal Characterization Of The Challenges Faced By The Construction Industry During Covid-19 And Devaluation Of The Egyptian Pound, Riham Abuzaid

Theses and Dissertations

With all the challenges this past decade has inflicted on the economy on a global scale, Egypt had its share with two major events, starting with the Egyptian pound devaluation against the U.S dollar in 2016 and currently the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. These major events instigated the interference of the legal/contractual sectors in the construction market to find solutions that range from agreeable to stringent to protect the assets of their beneficiaries.

Both events are impactful and require extensive analysis to determine and classify each situation. This thesis addresses the implementation of standard internationally acknowledged legislative ...

Why We Should Reuse Wastewater, Bridget Sarver

Certified Public Manager® Applied Research

As population and industry grow, the need to reuse wastewater is growing. Aquifers are often the dominant water supplies to surrounding areas. The levels of those aquifers are declining each year. Water loss affects many things like water wells, lakes, and rivers. Lakes and rivers that are used as water sources are seeing a decline in levels. Low water levels and drought occur because of the changing water cycle. Heavy rain and runoff can help refill lakes and rivers; however precipitation does not always fall back on the area that it evaporated from. By reusing wastewater, we will be saving ...

Western Kentucky University Stormwater Utility Survey 2022, Warren Campbell

SEAS Faculty Publications

The main goal of this survey is to identify as many U.S. Stormwater Utilities (SWUs) as possible. Because many stormwater professionals do not have the time to respond to questionnaires, our primary method of identification was Internet searches. We searched on key terms such as “stormwater utility”, “stormwater fee”, and “drainage fee”. We scoured on-line municipal codes such as Municode, AmLegal, Sterling, LexisNexis, General Code, and others. We searched through many city web sites trying to find utilities. We have also had many people contact me to update fees and identify new utilities. However, the data primarily comes from ...

Site-Specific Site Response Analysis And Cascadia Subduction Zone Ground Motions Evaluation For A Site Near Portland, Brian Ackerman

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Site-specific ground motions, site-specific site response analysis, and development of site-specific acceleration ground spectra at the ground surface was developed per ASCE 7-10 for the Kirkland Renaissance Boardwalk, a site in Vancouver, Washington.

Synthetic broadband ground motions developed specifically for Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) megathrust earthquake were used for site-response analysis. The results of site-specific site response analyses using the strong motions were compared with the results from the 5 motions considered for the ASCE 7-10 procedure. The effect of motion duration and other ground motion intensity measures on the results of the site-specific site response analysis was investigated.

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Multi-Criteria Contractor Selection Framework For Indian Construction Projects, Ambawrish Pati, Abhijit Rastogi, Virendra Kumar Paul

International Journal of Advanced Technology in Civil Engineering

In this paper contractor selection practice in India has been analyzed in detail to find out the gaps in the prevailing system & also compared with the selection systems outside India. This study aims to develop a multi-criteria contractor selection framework that can incorporate multiple evaluation criteria along with the relative weightage.

In this study, it has been identified that in India, as per the guidelines the contractor selection in the case of most popular Design Bid Build (DBB) projects is done based on Least Cost Selection (LCS) only. In LCS, the final selection is based on cost or bid price ...

Single-Pass Inline Pipeline 3d Reconstruction Using Depth Camera Array, Zhexiong Shang, Zhigang Shen

Faculty Publications in Construction Engineering & Management

A novel inline inspection (ILI) approach using depth cameras array (DCA) is introduced to create high-fidelity, dense 3D pipeline models. A new camera calibration method is introduced to register the color and the depth information of the cameras into a unified pipe model. By incorporating the calibration outcomes into a robust camera motion estimation approach, dense and complete 3D pipe surface reconstruction is achieved by using only the inline image data collected by a self-powered ILI rover in a single pass through a straight pipeline. The outcomes of the laboratory experiments demonstrate one-millimeter geometrical accuracy and 0.1-pixel photometric accuracy ...

Evaluation Of Polymer Binder Technisoil G5® In Concrete Mixture, Shadi Saadeh, Pritam Katawal

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Plastic is everywhere, and with its increasing use in so many everyday materials, the production and demand of plastic has skyrocketed. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the accumulation of a mammoth amount of plastic waste and adverse effects on the environment. To optimize the huge amount of materials required by the pavement industry each year and reuse recycled plastics, the use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) has been common practice. This research studied the use of a binder completely made from recycled waste plastic named Technisoil G5® and compared it with performance grade PG 70-22 mix containing virgin aggregates and ...

Water Efficiency In Residential Homes In San Luis Obispo County, Parker John Jacobs

Construction Management

Sustainable building has reshaped the construction industry and has led to new innovations that have benefitted the human race. Water efficiency in buildings has become increasingly important to the U.S. Green Building Counsel (USBGC) for buildings to obtain a LEED certification. To obtain a LEED certification buildings are rated on a point system in which the building is rewarded points by being environmentally responsible and using its resources efficiently. There are nine categories of LEED points with water efficiency being one of them. This has led the construction industry to innovate new technologies that help conserve one of if ...

Farm Stand Build And Service Days For The Ranch, John Reis Blackwood Calhoun

Construction Management

This paper outlines the building of a farm stand and service days done for The Ranch which works with the United Cerebral Palsy of Central California. The construction of a farm stand was requested by the client because they did not have one and would like to start selling the vegetables and fruits that they grow on their property. Additionally, there was an opportunity to do other improvements around the farm and simultaneously help brothers in the fraternity get service hours. To do this set up service days were set up where miscellaneous tasks around the farm such as spreading ...

Updating The Cal Poly Construction Management Community Partners List, Braden Hotra

Construction Management

The Cal Poly Construction Management Department currently has a list of community partners that students use to find organizations to contact for classes that involve construction service learning and senior project project-based ideas. There are many project-based class projects that are designed and built every year for organizations in the community. The current list needs to be updated to help construction service learning and project-based topics become more successful in the future. This project was created with the goal of updating the Cal Poly Construction Management Community Partners List with new community partners and an updated sheet layout that includes ...

Oceanside Angler's Club David Pine Memorial Weight Board, Tanner Joseph Pine

Construction Management

The David Pine Memorial Weight Board was constructed for the Oceanside Angler’s Club. I was contacted by this organization, to create a weigh board in founding member David Pine’s memory. The club had a previous weight board that was destroyed due to the harsh conditions of the coast. The process of building this board incorporated many of the facets taught in the Cal Poly curriculum. I had to work with the owners in order to create a suitable design, materials had to be acquired using alternative methods, subcontractors were worked with to create components of the board, and ...

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden Bridge Rebuild, Anthony T. Flores

Construction Management

This paper will outline the process of designing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a utility bridge at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden. The San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden’s entrance was recently changed deeper into the property. The old entrance was at the front and was home to a bridge utilized by staff, volunteers, and visitors alike. This project’s goal was to rebuild the utility bridge so that it could be used by the facilities staff and volunteers when working on property. There was one student involved in this project who acted as the designer, performed the preconstruction work, and ...

Skip The Grid: Installation Of Solar Powered Refrigeration In The Navajo Nation, Connor T. Avrit

Construction Management

The Skip the Grid project was a project completed with the joint efforts of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) and many other company sponsors including Solv Energy, Dometic, Goal Zero and Heart of America a nonprofit. Skip the Grid’s project goal and outcomes was to improve the quality of life and provide clean sustainable off grid energy to families within the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation is located in the Four Corners region of the United States with approximately a third of its residents without the means or circumstances to be tied into grid level ...