Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Urban Road Congestion During And Post Covid-19 Pandemic In Shanghai, China, Pengfei Xu, Weifeng Li, Xianbiao Hu, Hangbin Wu, Jian Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become one of the most serious global health crises in decades and tremendously influence the human mobility. Many residents changed their travel behavior during and after the pandemic, especially for a certain percentage of public transport users who chose to drive their owned vehicles. Thus, urban roadway congestion has been getting worse, and the spatiotemporal congestion patterns has changed significantly. Understanding spatiotemporal heterogeneity of urban roadway congestion during and post the pandemic is essential for mobility management. In this study, an analytical framework was proposed to investigate the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of urban roadway congestion in …

A Case Study Of Community-Engaged Design: Creating Parametric Insurance To Meet The Safety Needs Of Fisherfolk In The Caribbean, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The creation of the Caribbean Ocean and Aquaculture Sustainability faciliTy (COAST) is used as a case study of community-engaged design addressing safety needs. COAST is a parametric insurance product, sold to national governments, which was designed to meet the food and nutrition security of small- and medium-scale fisherfolk. The design of COAST is an example of convergence research, where the discipline of engineering was integrated with another discipline to solve pressing societal needs of Caribbean fisherfolk. This case study demonstrates that community-engaged design helps to (1) identify and include historically underrepresented stakeholders, (2) emphasize the importance of professional responsibility for …

Effects Of Long Duration Earthquakes On The Interaction Of Inertial And Liquefaction-Induced Kinematic Demands On Pile-Supported Wharves, Milad Souri, Arash Khosravifar, Stephen E. Dickenson, Nason Mccullough, Scott Schlechter

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nonlinear dynamic analyses were performed to evaluate the effects of ground motion duration on the dynamic response of a pile-supported wharf subjected to liquefaction-induced lateral ground deformations. The numerical model was first calibrated using recorded data from a well-instrumented centrifuge test, after which incremental dynamic analyses were conducted using a suite of spectrally matched motions with different durations. The nonlinear dynamic analyses were performed to evaluated three loading scenarios: combined effects of inertial loads from the wharf deck and kinematic loads from ground deformations, deck inertial loads only in the absence of liquefaction (with minimal kinematic loads), and kinematic loads …

Assessing The Impact Of Bicycle Infrastructure And Modal Shift On Traffic Operations And Safety Using Microsimulation, Katherine E. Lee

Master's Theses

A transportation system designed to prioritize the mobility of automobiles cannot accommodate the growing number of road users. The Complete Streets policy plays a crucial part in transforming streets to accommodate multiple modes of transportation, especially active modes like biking and walking. Complete streets are referred to as streets designed for everyone and enable safety and mobility to all users. A strategy of complete streets transformation is to connect isolated complete street segments to form a complete network that improves active mobility and public transit ridership.

This research assessed the impact of efficiently and equitably connecting and expanding the biking …

Burn Probability And Climate Change: A Quantitative Evaluation Of The Temporal Alterations Of Wildfire, David N. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

The intensity of extreme weather events, specifically wildfires, along the West Coast has slowly grown overtime due to atmospheric changes caused by climate change. The Air Force, though aware of the threat that is wildfire, does not currently have a quantitative way to assess the hazard to base locations. In this paper, burn probability is quantitatively calculated through the geospatial analysis programs to provide a means of assessing wildfire vulnerability. The FlamMap fire simulator generated burn probabilities for Vandenberg Air Force Base using climate data generated by the remote automated weather station on the base to highlight how the burn …

A United States Air Force Site Selection Methodology In A Contested Agile Combat Employment Environment, Zachary T. Moer

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force’s (USAF) Agile Combat Employment (ACE) strategy relies on host country access and underlying local infrastructure to facilitate airpower. However, numerous factors, including peer-to-peer threats, complex geopolitics, and intricate supply chain management, often complicate site access and thwart site selection decisions. When shaping the battlespace for future conflict, strategists and planners face the difficult task of identifying optimal locations to conduct adaptive basing operations given these complicating factors. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can help strategists appropriately account for competing objectives and maintain a competitive advantage with theater adversaries. This thesis presents an MCDA model that evaluates …

A Thematic And Reference Analysis Of Touchless Technologies, Eric R. Curia

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to explore the utility and current state of touchless technologies. Five categories of technologies are identified as a result of collecting and reviewing literature: facial/biometric recognition, gesture recognition, touchless sensing, personal devices, and voice recognition. A thematic analysis was conducted to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the five categories. A reference analysis was also conducted to determine the similarities between articles in each category. Touchless sensing showed to have the most advantages and least similar references. Gesture recognition was the opposite. Comparing analyses shows more reliable technology types are more beneficial and diverse.

Prioritizing Water Distribution Network Asset Maintenance Using Graph Theory Methods, Ashton E. Doyal

Theses and Dissertations

Water distribution networks, like any other large infrastructure system, should be designed for reliability and resilience to resist failure. A literature review of graph theory methods pertaining to water distribution networks reveals a wide scope of mathematical and statistical measures that can be used to identify and classify many important features of a network. From this, an analysis using a combination of graph theory metrics and generated condition indices for the pipes is performed on the Tyndall drinking water system as a case study. The goal is to provide understanding to the risk of the current system and propose asset …

Carbon Estimation And Decision Making In Usaf Acquisition, Robert F. Gray

Theses and Dissertations

Recent executive orders and international agreements require the United States to significantly reduce its carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. The DoD is a significant contributor to the carbon emissions of the USA and will be required to reduce the emissions. Therefore, in order to make appropriate programmatic decisions the DoD needs to develop an appropriate method for estimating carbon and making programmatic decisions; trading-off carbon emissions with the traditional cost-schedule-performance metrics. This thesis examines the possibility of developing a model that can be used to estimate the carbon footprint of producing a system before detailed engineering designed have been complete.

Hydrologic Profiles And Geospatial Trend Analysis Evaluating Recurrent Flooding At Coastal U.S. Air Force Installations, Dylan D. Bechen

Theses and Dissertations

Military installations are exposed to numerous threats, including a changing climate and the risk of recurrent flooding. The four components of recurrent flooding are sea-level rise, tidal fluctuations, storm surges, and precipitation. This research analyzed 40 years of historical precipitation and tidal data at 17 coastal U.S. Air Force installations using indicators of both peak and threshold exceedances to identify long-term temporal trends in the hydrologic components that make up recurrent flood risk, establishing an installation’s “hydrologic profile” which can be used to better inform decision makers when evaluating portfolio-wide adaptation strategies and prioritization of long-term infrastructure investments.

Defining Resilience, Robustness, And Vulnerability Metrics To Guide Facilities And Infrastructure Decision Making For The United States Air Force, Kelly W. Minor

Theses and Dissertations

Tyndall AFB was nearly destroyed after a category five hurricane named Michael tore through the Florida panhandle in 2018. A Program Management Office was stood up to coordinate, plan, and carry out the rebuild efforts of Tyndall AFB. The office’s primary responsibility is “building a base capable of supporting a 21st-century mission while also focusing on structural resiliency and efficiency” (Laidlaw 2019). Despite the requirement to build a resilient infrastructure portfolio, the United States Air Force has yet to fully quantify and qualify measures of resilience, including robustness and vulnerability, in the context of their current built infrastructure portfolio. This …

The Application Of Virtual Reality In Firefighting Training, Dylan A. Gagnon

Theses and Dissertations

Immersive simulations such as virtual reality is becoming more prevalent for use in training environments for many professions. United States Air Force firefighters may benefit from incorporating VR technology into their training program to increase organizational commitment, job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and job performance. With implementing a new training platform, it is also important to understand the relationship between these variables and the perceived benefits and efficacy of the VR training, which has not yet been studied in previous research. This study addresses this issue by gathering data from fire departments currently fielding a VR fire training platform.

Solving The Negative Earnings Dilemma Of Multistage Bidding In Public Construction And Infrastructure Projects: A Game Theory-Based Approach, Muaz O. Ahmed, Islam H. El-Adaway, Kalyn T. Coatney

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

With the tremendous increase in spending on public projects, contractors need to employ efficient and effective bidding strategies to cope with the competitive bidding environment. Usually, general contractors carry a portion of the work and subcontract other parts to eventually submit a holistic joint bid. This bidding setting is referred to as multistage bidding where subcontractors submit their quotations/bids to the general contractor, after which the general contractor submits a final joint bid for the whole project. In a multistage bidding environment, general contractors may be faced with an increase in the probability of negative or below normal profits. Despite …

Field Retrofit And Testing Of A Corroded Metal Culvert Using Gfrp, Mahmoud Reda Taha, Susan Bogus, Mohammed Abdellatef, Daniel Heras Murcia

Data

One of the current pressing problem for all DOTs is the corrosion-oriented deterioration of the existing metal culverts. These metal culverts typically are designed for a life of 50 years. However, corrosion is making them last no longer than 30years. Here we propose use of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymers (GFRP) pipe section as a fit-in GFRP profile liner for complete repair and rehabilitation of the corroded metal culvert with an expected life of 75 years. This is mainly because of the corrosion free nature of the GFRP material. In the current study, the design method for using glass fiber-reinforced polymer …

Understanding Effects Of Permafrost Degradation And Coastal Erosion On Civil Infrastructure In Arctic Coastal Villages: A Community Survey And Knowledge Co-Production, Min Liew, Ming Xiao, Louise Farquharson, Dmitry Nicolsky, Anne Jensen, Vladimir Romanovsky, Jana Peirce, Lilian Alessa, Christopher Mccomb, Xiong Zhang, Benjamin Jones

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the results of a community survey that was designed to better under-stand the effects of permafrost degradation and coastal erosion on civil infrastructure. Observations were collected from residents in four Arctic coastal communities: Point Lay, Wainwright, Utqiaġvik, and Kaktovik. All four communities are underlain by continuous ice-rich permafrost with varying degrees of degradation and coastal erosion. The types, locations, and periods of observed permafrost thaw and coastal erosion were elicited. Survey participants also reported the types of civil infrastructure being affected by permafrost degradation and coastal erosion and any damage to residential buildings. Most survey participants reported …

Fill Materials At Integral End Bents, Charlie Sun, Tony Beckham

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Jointless bridge designs have become increasingly popular due to their low construction and maintenance costs. But this design carries risks. Most notably, integral end bents can be displaced and undergo settlement due to soil movement in embankments and loads carried by the superstructure. In response, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) devised a novel treatment for end bent and abutment backfills on low- and middle-span concrete bridges in which elasticized geofoam is placed between geosynthetically confined soil and an integral end bent (GCS-IEB). However, this design requires modification where the elasticized geofoam and overlying pavement meet. Using elasticized geofoam is also …

Electric Vehicles: Analysis Of Revenue Issues And Charging Station Implementation Plans, Chris Van Dyke, Bryan Gibson, Ryan Griffith, Andrew Martin, Jeeyen Koo, Doug Kreis

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

No abstract provided.

Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Urban Road Congestion During And Post Covid-19 Pandemic In Shanghai, China, Pengfei Xu, Weifeng Li, Xianbiao Hu, Hangbin Wu, Jian Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become one of the most serious global health crises in decades and tremendously influence the human mobility. Many residents changed their travel behavior during and after the pandemic, especially for a certain percentage of public transport users who chose to drive their owned vehicles. Thus, urban roadway congestion has been getting worse, and the spatiotemporal congestion patterns has changed significantly. Understanding spatiotemporal heterogeneity of urban roadway congestion during and post the pandemic is essential for mobility management. In this study, an analytical framework was proposed to investigate the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of urban roadway congestion in …

Living Off The Grid With Renewable Energy: A Case Study, Jake Reid O'Balle

Construction Management

The trend towards green, sustainable living is on the rise and the benefits are continuing to make noise in the world of homeowners. In this project, the benefits of renewable energy and consumer preferences were analyzed and applied to off-grid living in the form of a case study. It was found that the majority of homebuyers are concerned about the environment and wanted an environmentally friendly home but are not willing to pay more in order to achieve these desires. This information spurred the need for a detailed assessment of the feasibility of sustainable off-grid living. After conducting extensive research, …

A Case Study Comparing Panelization And Modularization Construction Methods, Tuukka Juhani Jaakkola

Construction Management

Construction industry is notoriously inefficient industry with a lot of room for improvement. Construction companies are constantly looking to increase their efficiency. NCC Finland decided to explore the method of modular construction as part of the efforts to increase production. NCC also happened to build a similarly sized project with the more traditional method of panelization and tilt-up construction. This Case study explores the experience of NCC as the general contractor of both projects. The aim is to understand the differences of the challenges and benefits experienced by the team from NCC. The findings show that Modular construction offers wide …

Investigating Student Interest In The Addition Of A Construction Law Topics Course, Flint D. Merrill-Gehrke

Construction Management

In the Construction Management program, our goal is to prepare for the responsibilities imposed upon us during a construction project. A major responsibility among these is navigating the complex legal relationships inherent to a construction project. While Cal Poly offers one Construction Law course, students are underprepared for what they will face. This project is designed to gauge interest from the Cal Poly Construction Management student body in the addition of a Construction Law topics course. It also aims to understand if additional legal studies would better prepare students for their entrance into the industry. Students were asked to answer …

Creating A Demolition Topic Course, Eli Jeremiah Lipton

Construction Management

Demolition is as old as construction itself and has always played an integral role in the construction process. That is, however, not the reality of the Construction Management (CM) program at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). The current curriculum covers a wide range of topics and prepares students to be able to join any residential, commercial, and heavy civil projects. These projects all have something in common, the demolition process. Undergraduates are not prepared with the basic demolition knowledge to be successful in the industry. Demolition is overlooked at Cal Poly and is not a primary focus in any …

The Development And Evaluation Of A New Trench Safety Equipment, Joshua D. Clesi

Construction Management

One of the most dangerous works in construction is trench work and excavation. Fatalities that range from permanent injuries to death happen to construction workers every day, not having a lot of alternatives to prevent unfortunate incidents such as cave-ins and shoring failures. What this paper is proposing is a new invention that may solve this ongoing problem with trench safety. The idea is a crane-like lift attached to the back of a pick-up truck that will vertically lift people out of the trenches in a matter of seconds before shoring collapses or the trench caves in. This project primarily …

The Integration Of Virtual Reality In The Commercial Construction Industry, Justin T. Gin

Construction Management

Virtual reality has recently been spreading throughout the commercial construction industry rapidly. Some of its capabilities are safety training, helping spot Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) issues, logistics planning, and virtual walkthroughs. Many construction companies were starting to utilize virtual reality's advantages until COVID-19 hit. The initial wave of COVID slowed down construction in general as well as the need or use of virtual reality. Now, some companies are worried about the health risks and implementation issues that virtual reality headsets might bring while other companies are optimistic about the future of virtual reality. This report will explore the different …

Using Project Production Methodology To Compare Onsite Prefabrication Steel Erection To Traditional Stick-Built, Corinne R. Nalder

Construction Management

Project production management provides continuity, predictability, and optimization of a process in comparison to the traditional approach of project management. Prefabrication is an example of project production management in which there is continuity of the product, reduced variability, and where the assembly process can be altered for best results. This paper will examine the benefits of project production management and compare two methods of steel erection in which one method performs an onsite prefabrication process while the other method employs the traditional stick-built process. The two methods will be modeled by a tool that replicates a repetitive process similar to …

Analysis Of The Potential Structure Of A Peer Mentorship Program For The Construction Management Department At Cal Poly, Slo, Jane C. Runte

Construction Management

The Construction Management Department at Cal Poly, SLO has no structured peer mentorship program as of 2022. The department has attempted to implement a peer mentoring program in the past but none with longevity. This paper analyzes data collected from the students of the CM Department through a qualitative and quantitative survey regarding the need and structure of a peer mentorship program to begin again. The survey’s main goal was to gain an understanding of whether or not the students think the department should implement a peer mentorship program and the structure that the student body would find most beneficial …

Sustainability Within Asphalt And Concrete Paving Systems, Matthew Clapp

Construction Management

The construction industry is continually determining ways to make the building process more streamlined, cost efficient and, more recently, sustainable. As the commercial construction industry becomes more structured, industry leaders are looking for new ways to make installation of materials and cleanup more environmentally friendly. Construction is responsible for a large portion of the overall harm toward the environment. Although the commercial sector has made great strides toward this effort in the last fifty years with programs such as LEED, there is still much to be taken into consideration. The goal of this research is to analyze the current trends …

Gnss Construction Surveying, Jake C. Carter

Construction Management

This Senior Project examines world of cutting-edge surveying technology which will be implemented into Cal Poly’s Construction Management 239 Construction Surveying course. It creates a field exercise for student learning that mimics the application the of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and how they are used in the construction industry. The new exercise includes the use of GNSS receivers, base hubs, field computers, and a Topcon MAGNET Field application. From the research phase to the training/learning phase to the implementation of the assignment into the course this project embodied the “Learn-By-Doing” philosophy. This project was successful in demonstrating how GNSS …

Introduction To A Demolition Topics Course, Scott Martin

Construction Management

The California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) Construction Management (CM) program was created to allow graduates the opportunity to work effectively in practically every part of the construction industry. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics and prepares students with the ability to join various projects, such as residential, commercial, and heavy civil projects. What these projects all have in common, a topic almost entirely ignored at Cal Poly but nonetheless very important and relevant, is demolition in the construction industry. By offering a course focused entirely on the demolition process, principles, and safety, students will be better prepared …

Proposal For Adobe Earthbag Disaster-Relief Structure, John Camacho

Construction Management

The science behind creating an adobe house has been around for thousands of years; the primitive mixture contains only dirt, water, and straw. Left to cure in bricks or as a single cast-in-place system, the structure will provide long-lasting protection from the elements. Science has taken this a step further with the introduction of cementitious admixtures and reinforcement. The result is an adobe structure with exemplary thermo-retentive properties and load-bearing capabilities. This project provides an analysis on the “SuperAdobe” earthbag system that has been put into practice by independent contractors and housing-relief initiatives. The goal of the project was to …