Modular construction is increasingly seen as an efficient construction method in terms of time, cost, and energy. The full realization of these advantages partly relies on the efficiency of the production process inside the modular factories, which currently rely on tedious manual monitoring methods or expensive automated techniques. As a...
Geospatial data analysis is a multifaceted discipline encompassing the collection, processing, and visualization of diverse datasets. It models and delineates the interactions of people, objects, and phenomena within geographical spaces and predicts patterns based on the relationships between different locations. Despite significant advancements in geospatial data engineering and analytics over...
Sediment convergence and divergence zones create subaqueous morphological features that range from ripples O (cm) to coastlines O (km). However, there is a gap in knowledge associated with quantifying the contribution of small-scale ripple mobility to the evolution of large-scale morphology. To address this gap, we investigate how small-scale ripples...
Asphalt pavements constitute more than ninety percent of the nation’s roadway network. Besides serving the key role of providing a smooth and durable all-weather surface that benefits a range of users, they are also the lifelines of the nation and the world and contribute tremendously towards economic and social development....
Coastal landslides and erosion are major natural hazards resulting in unstable slopes, constituting immense challenges to modern infrastructure. Developing, maintaining, and performing risk assessments of infrastructure on, or close to, these hazards require a detailed understanding of the geophysical processes destabilizing the slope. These efforts start with the collection of...
Engineering education research has led to a greater understanding of the gap in preparedness of students for the engineering industry. Multiple studies comparing the workplace and academic contexts and the participants in those contexts (i.e., students, faculty, and engineering practitioners) have emphasized similarities and differences between the two contexts by...
Submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) species, such as seagrasses, are highly valued in estuaries because of the many economic, ecological, and cultural services that they provide, including shelter for fisheries, minimizing water turbidity, and improving am-bient water quality. SAV can also alter its physical environment by attenuating wave and current velocities,...
Conflicts and disasters displace millions of populations worldwide. There is a need for rapid and affordable housing to cater to the needs of the displaced and unhoused population. Experience from previous post-disaster responses shows that temporary housing should be rapidly deployable, planned for months to years, and should be environmentally...
This thesis builds on a modeling tool that has been developed to link thermodynamic modeling and concrete performance. This tool is intended to predict the performance for modern concrete mixtures made with ordinary portland cement (OPC), conventional and novel supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), and limestone (Ls). The first part of...
With growing interest in mass timber, especially mass timber panels (MTP), there has been a need to better understand their structural properties. One of the most versatile uses for MTP are as floor systems. Under new code provisions, these floors can be utilized in new and taller building types, but...
Pile caps are structural elements used to transfer loads from columns to a group of piles, which transfer them to stronger soil layers. Pile cap with horizontal distance between the column and piles less than twice its effective depth is categorized as "deep," where significant nonlinear strain distribution occurs through...
Characterizing stakeholder behavior when making decisions in watershed management is a great challenge for planners, not only because plans are associated with physical uncertainties but also because stakeholders’ behaviors are influenced by numerous factors. Since stakeholders’ decision-making is linked to multiple types of uncertainty, communication of uncertainty to stakeholders by...
The continuous improvement of construction operations requires a systematic approach of monitoring and making appropriate control actions. However, the lack of real-time information hinders this workflow and eventually compromises timely and effective decision-making. Project managers spend a great deal of time and effort to solve problems emerging from lack of...
The coastal region is home to many types of surface fronts that exist on a submesoscale (1-10 $km$). While in situ observations capture point or transect observations of frontal behavior subsurface, their complex spatial patterns can be well-captured using remote sensing techniques, which provide synoptic views of the ocean surface...
Wave runup is an important physical process that affects nearshore sediment transport, coastal erosion, and flooding. Large and unexpected runup events can also be dangerous to beach goers. Extreme runup statistics are essential parameters used in engineering design of marine structures and in coastal management. Although the study of runup...
Vulnerable road users, anyone interacting with the roadway facility without the protection of an automobile, experience greater risk for more severe crash outcomes. Multimodal roadway facilities often times provide less separation and more points of conflict between different types of road users. To promote vulnerable road user safety, transportation agencies...
The pozzolanic reactivity test (PRT) is used to quantify the pozzolanic reactivity of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). The PRT computes reactivity by measuring heat release (Q) and calcium hydroxide (CH) consumption, as interpreted using thermodynamic modeling. The robustness of PRT is examined by experimentally varying CH-to-SCM ratio, solution-to-solid ratio, sulfate...
A variety of stakeholders require information about marine systems. In the open ocean, pilots of marine vessels require knowledge about environmental conditions for safe passage and route planning. On the coastline, communities rely on information about nearshore dynamics to increase safety from coastal hazards such as nearshore pollutants, coastal erosion,...
Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) has been of significant research interest worldwide over the past several decades because of its variety of applications in both offshore and coastal engineering. Researchers analyzing FSI systems rely heavily on experimental tests in model scale in laboratories or large-scale sea trials. However, these tests are often...
Coastal dunes provide a diverse set of ecosystem services including coastal protection against destructive surge and waves during storm events. Dunes are constantly evolving through various stages of response to storm events and post-storm recovery at rates that vary due to a range of drivers including pre-existing morphology, environmental forcing...
Shallow landslides are destructive natural hazards that result in widespread losses, both of infrastructure and lives, throughout the world. To help mitigate the impact of landslide hazards, they are commonly characterized across a regional scale by (1) their location and likelihood using susceptibility maps, (2) their magnitude and frequency using...
The most common test methods to evaluate alkali-silica reaction (ASR), the concrete prism test (CPT) and the accelerated mortar bar tests (AMBT), have limitations and are not entirely reliable in terms of predicting the performance of concrete with prevention measures under field conditions. In this study, the miniature concrete prism...
The resistance of asphalt concrete pavement to distresses such as fatigue cracking and permanent deformation is governed by how well the structure can resist loading under a variety of traffic and climate-related conditions. Asphalt binder type and content are typically the variables that pavement engineers can manipulate to render the...
Social scientists have studied people's responses to disasters for many decades, and behavioral commonalities and variations are summarized in different mental schemes/models in disaster studies. Integrating those findings from social science into evacuation simulation can improve simulation accuracy and eventually better support decision-making and disaster preparedness. However, this kind of...
The development of technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), light detection and ranging (lidar), and sensor-based systems poses new opportunities for researchers to rethink how construction safety and health can be approached during the design, planning, and construction phases of a project. Nevertheless, the majority of the technology applications...
Mass timber has been considered as a promising building material because of its structural rigidity, environmental sustainability, and renewability nature. In Europe and Australia, mass timber materials have been used for many different types of construction such as residential, commercial, education, and industrial. However, the construction practitioners in the U.S....
The rapid growth in the number of roundabouts raises some significant research challenges, especially around safety performance and evaluation in the U.S. Despite the safety advantages that roundabout geometric design brings, crashes still occur. While operationally roundabouts are good at preventing severe crashes, they may lead to more less severe...
The seismic response of deep deposits of liquefiable and cyclic-softening susceptible soils has presented the geotechnical profession with significant engineering challenges. Strong ground motions may serve to soften soils under cyclic shear, trigger liquefaction, and produce damaging displacements as a consequence. This study improves the understanding of the in-situ, nonlinear,...
Vertical datum is a reference system used for specifying the elevation of specific points on or near the Earth. Precise and accurate definition and realization of vertical references are, therefore, crucial to ensure consistency between height measurements. The vertical datums can be divided into two categories: 1) vertical geodetic datums...
This dissertation studies the development of the design procedures for Steel Slit Panel Frame (SSPF). The (SSPF) system is a seismic force-resisting system (SFRS) with ductile behavior and good energy dissipation up to 5\% to 7\% lateral drift that acting as seismic fuses. The current design guidelines provided valuable information...
Reliability-based geotechnical foundation design focusses on soil and structure analysis that meets necessary safety, performance and/or serviceability criteria, calibrated based on probabilistic analyses and an accepted level of risk. As the civil engineering community seeks to better harmonize geotechnical and structural design methodologies, reliability-based design is being incorporated more into...
Nonlinear response history analysis (NRHA) is increasingly becoming more accessible and prevalent in research and practice. As the accuracy of the NRHA results depends on the ground motion characteristics and the robustness of the numerical model, research has focused on the development of guidance for performance-based seismic design and assessment...
Coastal multi-hazards, i.e., earthquakes followed by tsunamis, induce severe damage to coastal infrastructure. The multi-hazards can cause soil liquefaction, which is one of the major concerns for evaluating sediments transport potential and structure failure mechanisms. The objectives for this work is threefold. First, to build and validate a soil numerical...
While primary use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT), various GNSS applications have emerged over the past decades that includes GNSS meteorology. GNSS meteorology is the remote sensing of the atmospheric constituents in the neutral atmosphere – mostly in the troposphere - using GNSS...
The constitutive behavior of high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (HPFRCCs) under mechanical loading is characterized by significant tensile properties that play an essential role in the structural response of several applications in structural engineering. The significance of tensile properties of HPFRCCs in structural engineering is the focus of three manuscripts presented...
Public housing (PH) provides a substantial portion of the housing in both developed and less developed countries, and the demand for it is increasing. The PH projects, however, are facing many challenges that are affecting their performance and cause their failures. The United States has demolished large portions of their...
Construction is a strategically important industry and its productivity has a significant impact on a nation’s economy. However, productivity in the US construction industry has been widely reported to be on the decline. Among several causes identified, the lack of innovation in project management practices has been described as having...
The impact of tsunamis on coastal structures gained great a new impetus following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. While several experimental programs have been performed to gain a fundamental understanding, numerical models are needed to study additional features that cannot all be tested...
Travel demand has increased due to population growth, increase of vehicle ownership, and development patterns resulting in greater levels of congestion, pollution, and crash frequency. One approach to demand management is to increase the share of trips made by bicycles. With the increase in bicycling rates, there is a critical...
Imagery acquired from unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and processed with structure from motion (SfM) – multi-view stereo (MVS) algorithms provides transformative new capabilities for surveying and mapping. Together, these new tools are leading to a democratization of airborne surveying and mapping by enabling similar capabilities (including similar or better accuracies,...
While safety improvements have been made in the construction industry, construction still experiences one of the highest numbers of fatalities annually compared to other industries in the United States with over 970 fatalities in 2016 alone. This number of fatalities drives researchers and safety managers to improve safety measures and...
Accommodating motor vehicles that are turning (left or right) at signalized intersections requires a careful understanding of the safety and efficiency of design and operational variables. Turning vehicles are the primary collision risk for non-motorized road users at signalized intersections. When turning movements need to be controlled, proper driver response...
Minimal research has focused on the social dimension of sustainability in the built environment especially as it relates to the construction workforce. As a result, there are few to no tools available to industry stakeholders to holistically assess and improve the social sustainability of the construction workforce. Given the high...
The use of remote sensing techniques in coastal science and engineering has rapidly increased in the past few decades. This dissertation outlines new remote sensing tools using two remote sensing technologies (lidar and X-band marine radar) along with two nearshore hydrodynamic and morphodynamic analyses supported or motivated by these remote...
The issue of chloride-induced corrosion of reinforcing steel in concrete and its economic impacts are well-known. Chlorides that cause reinforcement corrosion can be from constituent materials used to prepare concrete or can enter the hardened concrete when the structure is exposed to chloride environments. To minimize the risk of reinforcement...
Thermodynamic modeling of cementitious material is an established tool for predicting the hydrated phase assemblages, pore solution pH, and pore solution composition of mixtures of various chemical compositions and water-to-binder (w/b) ratios. However, traditional thermodynamic techniques have major limitations for modeling mixtures containing supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), and when modeling...
The safety of coastal infrastructure has been a concern after the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the Great East Japan Tsunami in 2011. The western coast of the United States is also exposed to tsunami hazards due to the Cascadia subduction zone. Therefore, it is critical to design coastal...
Roadway departure crashes accounted for 18,275 fatal crashes in 2017 across the United States (Jones et al. 2017). Rumble strips (RS) provide audible and haptic interior alert when a vehicle is departing the roadway reducing run-off-the road crashes. Although inexpensive to install, and easy to maintain, RS are not installed...
Despite numerous techniques for measuring and estimating water depth, bathymetry in the nearshore zone is notoriously difficult to map. Dangerous sea states, noisy environmental conditions, and expensive survey operations, particularly in remote areas, contribute to the difficulties of obtaining data along the coast. Global datasets, derived mainly from satellite altimetry...
Soil instability from tsunami hazards causes substantial damage to coastal infrastructure (e.g., the damage caused by the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami, or the Heisei Tsunami). Tsunamis are unpredictable, so it is difficult to obtain field-scale measurements. Simulating tsunamis in a laboratory setting is therefore important to further understanding of...