Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Compound Flooding Hazards Due To Storm Surge And Pluvial Flow In A Low-Gradient Coastal Region, Sunghoon Han, Navid Tahvildari

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Flood risk analyses often focus on a single flooding source, typically storm surge or rainfall-driven flooding, depending on the predominant threat. However, hurricanes frequently cause compound flooding through significant storm surges accompanied by heavy rainfall. This study employs a hydrodynamic model based on Delft3D-Flexible Mesh that couples flow, waves, and rainfall-driven flow to simulate five historical tropical cyclones in Virginia's southeast coastal region. These storms produced varying intensities of storm surge and rainfall in the study area. Model simulations, incorporating rainfall through a rain-on-grid approach, account for the dynamic interaction between storm tides, and pluvial flow and enable the definition …

A Practical Framework For Component-Level Structural Health Monitoring Of The Gerald Desmond Bridge, Mehran Rahmani, Vesna Terzic, Andrea Calabrese, Brittany Cambell

Mineta Transportation Institute

Bridges serve as critical transportation infrastructure, but traditional maintenance inspection to ensure their safety is time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive, especially for larger and more complex structures. This study presents a practical framework for the instrumentation, data acquisition, and remote condition assessment of the Gerald Desmond Bridge, California’s largest cable-stayed bridge. The framework aims to establish a foundation for real-time or near real-time remote health monitoring of the bridge’s critical elements. The study highlights the advantages of remote monitoring in terms of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and early detection of damage.

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Decoding Usage And Adoption Behavior Of The Low-Carbon Transportation Market: An Ai-Driven Exploration, Vuban Chowdhury

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transportation sector stands as a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, with its environmental impact steadily escalating over the past few decades. This has prompted government agencies to facilitate the adoption and usage of low-carbon transportation (LCT) options as alternatives to fossil-fuel-powered transportation. LCTs include modes of transportation that minimize the overall carbon footprint of the transportation sector by relying on energy sources that are environmentally sustainable. These sustainable transportation options have also garnered significant interest in the transportation research community. For government agencies and researchers alike, a comprehensive understanding of the adoption and usage …

Analysis Of Travel Behavior At International Border Crossings: Application Of Travel Surveys, Jennifer Areli Moreno Escamilla

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Transportation planning provides an insight into the demand and traffic distribution of existingconditions of a region and helps identify future transportation needs. The results generated from forecasting models influence many decisions on the selection of transportation projects and funding allocations. Thus, forecasting models require up-to-date trip information to represent trip patterns and generate representative traffic demand analysis in a such complex areas as binational regions. The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis on travel survey methodology applied to collect trip information at international border crossings. Based on the results of the survey, an analysis on trip pattern …

Fiber-Based Seismic Damage And Collapse Assessment Of Reinforced Concrete Single-Column Pier-Supported Bridges Using Damage Indices, Yu-Fu Ko, Jessica Gonzalez

Mineta Transportation Institute

Near-fault earthquakes can have major effects on transportation systems due to the structural damage they impose on bridges. Therefore, it is imperative to assess the seismic damage of bridges appropriately, and this research focuses on reinforced concrete (RC) bridges. This research advances the seismic performance assessment of RC single-column pier-supported bridges with flexural failure under near-fault ground motion by use of ductility coefficients and damage indices. The methodology included modeling fiber-based nonlinear beam-column elements to simulate the damage development process of RC bridge piers under earthquake loadings, considering the global buckling of longitudinal steel bars, examining the cracking and spalling …

System-Of-Systems Integration For Civil Infrastructures Resiliency Toward Multihazard Events, Vahid Balali

Mineta Transportation Institute

Civil infrastructure systems—facilities that supply principal services, such as electricity, water, transportation, etc., to a community—are the backbone of modern society. These systems are frequently subject to multi-hazard events, such as earthquakes. The poor resiliency of these infrastructures results in many human casualties and significant economic losses every year. An outline of a holistic view that considers how different civil infrastructure systems operate independently and how they interact and communicate with each other is required to have a resilient infrastructure system. More specifically a systems engineering approach is required to enable infrastructure to remain resilient in the case of extreme …

Extending The Service-Life Of Bridges Using Sustainable And Resilient Abutment Systems: An Experimental Approach To Electrochemical Characterization Of Lightweight Mechanically Stabilized Earth, Fariborz M. Tehrani, Kenneth L. Fishman, Farmehr M. Dehkordi

Mineta Transportation Institute

Bridges are critical components of transportation infrastructure. This research addresses the need to extend the service life of bridges by improving the safety and reliability of bridge abutments and reducing their life-cycle cost and footprints. Mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) is a known strategy to enhance the economy and performance of bridge abutments. In addition, the application of rotary-kiln-manufactured lightweight aggregate backfills improves the performance of MSE bridge abutments with a leaner structural system. Such improvements include a reduction of structural demands due to a lower density, free drainage of granular materials, a high internal friction angle, less settlement with no …

Pavement Condition Survey Using Drone Technology, Lerose Lane, Dingxin Cheng

Mineta Transportation Institute

Timely repairs of pavement defects are essential in protecting both public road and highway systems. Identification of pavement distresses is necessary for planning pavement repairs. This has previously been performed by engineers surveying the roadways visually in the field. As drone usage has progressed, it has become clear that drones are a valuable tool to enhance visual documentation, improve project communication, and provide various data for processing. The use of drone technology has improved both the speed and accuracy of capturing data. Available software has allowed the data to be processed and analyzed in an office environment. This report summarizes …

The Effect Of Four Decades Of Deregulation On Competition And Productivity Of The U.S. Freight Transportation Industry, Seungjae Shin

Theses and Dissertations

This study reviews the competition and productivity of the U.S. freight transportation industry for the past 41 years. This study investigated the trends of HHI market concentration index values and labor productivity values of rail and truck sectors and tried to find any relationships between the two values in the separate periods before and after the abolishment of the ICC. This study also investigated how the existence of a regulatory body impacted productivity of the freight transportation industry by using a Cobb Douglas production function on annual financial statement data in the U.S. stock exchange market. This study found that: …

Trace Dna Detection Using Diamond Dye: A Recovery Technique To Yield More Dna, Leah Davis

Master's Theses

This study aspires to find a new screening approach to trace DNA recovery techniques to yield a higher quantity of trace DNA from larger items of evidence. It takes the path of visualizing trace DNA on items of evidence with potential DNA so analysts can swab a more localized area rather than attempting to recover trace DNA through the general swabbing technique currently used for trace DNA recovery. The first and second parts consisted of observing trace DNA interaction with Diamond Dye on porous and non-porous surfaces.

The third part involved applying the Diamond Dye solution by spraying it onto …

Historic Downtown Streetscape Plan Price City, Utah, Patricia Beckert

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The idea of a small-town Main Street has profound meaning within the American culture that has prevailed for the past two centuries. Historically, Main Street serves as the beating heart of a community, a place where economic, social, cultural, and civic activities are centered (Francaviglia, 1996; Main Street America, n.d.). Since the beginning of the 19th century, many factors have led to the decline of Main Streets, and despite a variety of efforts from different stakeholders, that decline has only intensified in recent decades (Isenberg, 2008; Orvell, 2014 Howard, 2015). In 1980, after a three-year project conducted by the National …

Rattus Norvegicus As A Biological Detector Of Clandestine Remains And The Use Of Ultrasonic Vocalizations As A Locating Mechanism, Gabrielle M. Johnston

Master's Theses

In investigations, locating missing persons and clandestine remains are imperative. One way that first responder and police agencies can search for the remains is by using cadaver dogs as biological detectors. Cadaver dogs are typically used due to their olfactory sensitivity and ability to detect low concentrations of volatile organic compounds produced by biological remains. Cadaver dogs are typically chosen for their stamina, agility, and olfactory sensitivity. However, what is not taken into account often is the size of the animal and the expense of maintaining and training the animal. Cadaver dogs are typically large breeds that cannot fit in …

Experimental Investigation Of The Self-Healing Potential Of Bacteria For Sustainable Concrete Structures, Pitiporn Asvapathanagul, Simone Galano, Andrea Calabrese, Mehran Rahmani, Maggie Ly, Daniela Flores, Michael Hernandez, Nicholas Banuelos

Mineta Transportation Institute

Although concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, its limited tensile strength makes cracking a common phenomenon in concrete elements. This study investigates the potential of autonomous self-healing as an eco-friendly and lowcost method to increase the durability of concrete. The crack-healing potential of different types of high-alkaline-tolerant bacteria or calcite-precipitation microorganisms is investigated. High-alkaline-tolerant bacteria and calcite-precipitation microorganisms were used to retrofit lab-fractured concrete samples. The samples healed with each of these bacteria groups were cast and tested under compressive load up to failure to measure the compressive strength of the concrete samples. The outcomes …

Preconstruction Support Cost Hours Estimating On Caltrans Pavement Rehabilitation Projects, Nigel Blampied, Tariq Shehab, Elhami Nasr, Laxmi Sindhu Samudrala

Mineta Transportation Institute

Because the construction phase accounts for the majority of project costs for pavement rehabilitation projects, most research on infrastructure project cost estimating focuses on that phase, rather than on the preconstruction phases. Nevertheless, costs incurred prior to construction, referred to in this report as "preconstruction costs" are significant and worthy of consideration (See Section 2.1 of the report for a more detailed and precise definition of preconstruction). In the 20202021 fiscal year, for instance, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) spent more than $169 million on preconstruction work for pavement rehabilitation projects. This report presents the results of a study …

Smart Transportation In Small- And Medium-Sized Cities In Central California, Hongwei Dong

Mineta Transportation Institute

The research on smart transportation in the United States has centered on large metropolitan areas. The adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities outside of large metropolitan areas is less studied and understood. This study examined the adoption of smart transportation technologies in small-and medium-sized cities in Central California. The analysis was based on the online survey responses from 29 transportation officials and professionals who worked for 18 municipal government departments and six metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in Central California as well as in depth semi-structured interviews with seven of them. The study showed that smart transportation in …

Electric Vehicle Routing Problem – Models And Algorithms, Hesamoddin Tahami

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The transportation sector is a major greenhouse gas emitter that is heavily regulated to reduce its dependence on oil. These regulations along with the growing customer awareness of global warming have led to the investigation of new transportation problems that consider using eco-friendly vehicle fleets. Promising alternatives to traditional fleets include alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) and electric vehicles (EVs). These twenty-first-century vehicles offer an appealing advantage of consistently reducing their environmental impact, but due to the current technology, they exhibit bothersome limitations. The short driving range along with limited charging infrastructure may consequently cause issues related to range anxiety, i.e., …

Unleash The Heat: Exploring Geothermal Energy Perspectives And Energy Literacy In São Miguel, Azores, Lena Mcdonough

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The green energy transition is moving ahead in EU countries at very different paces, and there are some key challenges that all regions currently face in trying to phase fossil fuels out of their energy mixes. One of these challenges is that most regions simply cannot harness enough renewable energy sources and simultaneously have the storage technology for creating a baseload power source as reliable as oil, coal and natural gas. That is, unless you sit in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on the boundary of three tectonic plates, with a continuous and reliable renewable energy source beneath your …

Modeling And Evaluating Alternatives To Enhance Access To An Airport And Meet Future Expansion Needs, Srinivas S. Pulugurtha, Abimbola Ogungbire, Chirag Akbari

Mineta Transportation Institute

The continued growth of air travel calls for the incessant construction effort at many airports and their surroundings. Thus, there is a need to determine how airports can better manage existing infrastructure to accommodate this growth. This study, therefore, focuses on (1) investigating how changes in transportation infrastructure have affected travel time reliability (TTR) of the surrounding road network within the airport vicinity over time, and, (2) exploring selected unconventional intersection designs and proposing new inbound/outbound access routes from the nearby major roads to the airport. The efficiency of road networks that surrounds large airports is discussed using Charlotte Douglas …

Using Thermal Remote Sensing To Quantify Impact Of Traffic On Urban Heat Islands During Covid, My-Thu Tran, Bo Yang

Mineta Transportation Institute

A three-month lockdown in the U.S. at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 greatly reduced the traffic volume in many cities, especially large metropolitan areas such as the San Francisco Bay Area. This research explores the impact of transportation on climate change by using remote sensing technology and statistical analysis during the COVID-19 lockdown. Using thermal satellite data, this research measures the intensity of the urban heat island, the main driver for climate change during the urbanization process. The research team acquired morning and afternoon MODIS data in the same periods in 2019 before the pandemic and 2020 …

Planning For Pedestrians And Bicyclists During Construction Projects, John Habermann, P.E.

Purdue Road School

This session will explore how the Texas Department of Transportation Waco District addressed pedestrian/bicyclist safety and mobility during a multi-year construction project along I-35. This presentation will demonstrate the value of online tools, field implementations, and data collection. Attendees will learn the value of assembling a stakeholder steering committee; counting pedestrian and bicyclists before, during, and after construction; effectively using pavement clings; and using a webpage dedicated to pedestrian/bicyclist updates.

See A Sign? Make A Call, John Habermann, P.E.

Purdue Road School

DOT staff and technology resources have the proven potential to help combat human trafficking if DOT employees know the indicators of human trafficking and how to cooperate with requests from agencies for information that can be derived from DOT assets. The Texas A&M Transportation Institute, NCHRP, and the Heart of Texas Human Trafficking Coalition will discuss the intersection of human trafficking with the transportation sector. Attendees will also learn the main components of human trafficking, the basic signs of human trafficking on DOT facilities, and resources to use in their own states.

Evaluating Automated Truck Platoon (Atp) Deployment For The Los Angeles–Inland Empire Trade Corridor Enhancement, Shailesh Chandra, Aastha Chaudhary, Prakhar Srivastava, Jose Torres-Aguilera

Mineta Transportation Institute

The California Freight Mobility Plan 2020 lists the Los Angeles-Inland Empire trade corridor region as a prominent industrial hub experiencing an increase in freight flows. The California Freight Mobility Plan also regards automated truck platoon (ATP) as an emerging opportunity to minimize congestion on the trade corridor routes. Percentage change in accessibility from 2022 (“without” ATP) to 2040 (“with” ATP) is calculated for the eighteen industry sectors of the Los Angeles-Inland Empire trade corridor. The application of the accessibility formulation was carried out with data on travel time from I-710 and I-10 within Los Angeles County. The findings suggest that …

Evaluation, Comparison, And Improvement Recommendations For Caltrans Financial Programming Processes And Tools, Wenbin Wei, Nigel Blampied, Raajmaathangi Sreevijay

Mineta Transportation Institute

The California Transportation Improvement Program System (CTIPS) is the main tool used by Caltrans’ Division of Financial Programming to support the business of transportation programming. It is a multi-agency joint-use project programming database system applied to develop and manage various state and federal transportation programming documents. The goal of this project is to evaluate CTIPS and explore various new options that will maintain the current functionality of CTIPS, meet legislative guidelines for ADA compliance, ensure security of the system, and have sufficient scalability and capabilities for integration with other systems in the future. The research is based on the review …

Integration Of Public Policy Into Civil Engineering Undergraduate Curricula: Review Of Civil Engineering Body Of Knowledge And Course Application, Michelle R. Oswald Beiler

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

The field of civil and environmental engineering directly ties with serving the needs of the public through infrastructure development and improvements in sustainable environments. Integrating this reciprocal connection between public policy and civil engineering into undergraduate civil engineering education is critical for the preparation of the next generation of engineers. This project, first, reviews the guidance of public policy in civil engineering programs, such as ASCE’s Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge. Then, a pedagogical application is presented that focuses on the integration of public policy concepts, methods, assessment tools and techniques in a required, upper level course in civil and …

Social Media-Based Crisis Communication: Analysis Of Twitter Data From Local Agencies During Hurricane Irma, Naiyara Noor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

As social media platforms have become vital means of communications, it has become imperative for emergency managers and policy makers to understand how people are interacting with different agencies on these platforms for enhancing community response coordination during disasters. Although many public agencies have already adopted social media platforms for crisis communication purposes, empirical evidence on whether and how these agencies are effectively engaged on these platforms is lacking. This research aims to examine crisis communication activities of a variety of agencies on Twitter in response to Hurricane Irma in 2017. In this study, we analyzed 13,353 hurricane-related tweets posted …

Understanding And Assessing Demographic (In)Equity Resulting From Extreme Heat Exposure Due To Lack Of Tree Canopies In Norfolk, Va Using Agent-Based Modeling, Virginia Zamponi, Kevin O'Brien, Erik Jensen, Brandon Feldhaus, Russell Moore, Christopher J. Lynch, Ross Gore

VMASC Publications

Prolonged exposure to extreme heat can result in illness and death. In urban areas of dense concentrations of pavement, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat, extreme heat conditions can arise regularly and create harmful environmental exposures for residents daily during certain parts of the year. Tree canopies provide shade and help to cool the environment, making mature trees with large canopies a simple and effective way to reduce urban heat. We develop a demographically representative 1 (agent): 1 (person) agent-based model to understand the extent to which different demographics of residents in Norfolk, VA are equitably shaded …

Are Ride-Hailing Services Safer Than Taxis? A Multivariate Spatial Approach With Accomodation Of Exposure Uncertainty, Guocong Zhai, Kun Xie, Hong Yang, Di Yang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Despite many research efforts on ride-hailing services and taxis, limited studies have compared the safety performance of the two modes. A major challenge is the need for reliable mode-specific exposure data to model their safety outcomes. Moreover, crash frequencies of the two modes by injury severities tend to be spatially and inherently correlated. To fully address these issues, this study proposes a novel multivariate conditional autoregressive model considering measurement errors in mode-specific exposures (MVCARME). More specially, a classical measurement error structure is used to accommodate the uncertainty of mode-specific exposures estimated, and a multivariate spatial specification is adopted to capture …

Evaluation Of Nanoclay Additives For Improving Resistance To Moisture Damage In Hot Mix Asphalt (Hma), Amro El Badawy, Ashraf Rahim

Mineta Transportation Institute

Transportation has an enormous impact on the U.S. economy and on the lives of all Americans. Many modes of transportation rely on pavement, but pavement conditions deteriorate over time because of the combined effects of traffic and climate. Exposure to moisture often causes premature failure of asphalt pavements as it reduces the stiffness of the asphalt and enables stripping of the asphalt from the aggregate. This research evaluates the effectiveness of clay nanomaterials (i.e., nanoclays) in improving the resistance of hot mix asphalt (HMA) to moisture damage and compares the enhancement results to anti-stripping additives commonly used in pavement construction. …

Evaluation Of Left Shoulder As Part-Time Travel Lane Design Alternatives And Transportation Management Center Staff Training Module Development, Zhuohang Deng, Zhiliang Luo, Neil Hockaday, Ahmed Farid, Anurag Pande

Mineta Transportation Institute

Permanent capacity expansion, such as adding new lanes, is no longer a viable strategy to address traffic congestion in California; hence, ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) strategies, such as part-time use of the shoulder as a travel lane, need to be explored. The use of the shoulder as a travel lane during peak traffic hours has limited applications in the US, and most use the right shoulder as a part-time travel lane even though either the right or left shoulder (but not both) may be used. Caltrans District 5 is exploring the use of Left Shoulder as a Part-time Travel Lane …