A Perspective on Engineering Computing
Computing in engineering seems to be evolving very rapidly and yet the data shows that it frequently takes twenty years before a viable concept becomes widely available. Economics is the...
Water and Wastewater, Time to Automate?
Water and wastewater engineers have been slow to adopt a full circle systems approach to automated monitoring and control. Such a technical tactic for controlling water and wastewater...
Construction Company Builds a Computer System
The case history of the computerization of a construction company is presented. The report reviews the stages that the company went through from manual operations for bookkeeping, estimating,...
Effective Pedestrian Safety Programs
Pedestrian fatalities account for 16 percent of all highway-related deaths and about 129,000 pedestrians are involved in accidents each year. Analyses of pedestrian accident data and determining...
Safety Impacts of Installing Pedestrian Crosswalks
At-grade pedestrian crossovers (PXO's) have been installed at about 700 locations in Metropolitan Toronto to assist pedestrians in crossing busy streets at minimal delay to...
Economic Analysis of Highway Safety Projects
The most commonly used economic analysis for highway safety projects is the cost-benefit ratio. While this is a valid analytical tool, it must be used correctly to produce valid results....
Evaluation of Safety Alternatives by Benefit/Cost Analysis
There is an increasing awareness of the need to use limited highway safety funds on projects that offer the greatest benefits. This paper describes the development and application of a...
Some Questions on the Accuracy of Safety Effectiveness Evaluations
The generally positive benefits of safety improvements, and, in particular, upgraded traffic control devices, are well-established. More difficult is the explicit rank-ordering of traffic...
Shoulder Rumble Strips at Narrow Bridges
The highways in the United States have thousands of minimum design narrow bridges. Replacement of these bridges with current state of the art designs is not cost effective nor feasible...
Selection of Performance Levels for Longitudinal Barriers
There is a demand within the highway community for multi-service level safety features, including traffic barriers. The need has become more acute in recent years as revenues decline and...
Performance of Highway Traffic Barriers
This paper describes an investigation of traffic barrier performance in New York State. A one-year sample of all traffic-barrier accidents in the state was obtained from Department of...
Hazardous Events After Redirectional Collisions
The potential for hazardous events occurring to vehicle occupants after a redirection from a longitudinal barrier has not been adequately addressed. Very few studies are available which...
Occupant Risk in Longitudinal Barrier Collisions
The following paper presents data derived from sled test experiments, full-scale vehicle crash tests as well as an in-depth analysis of accident data which suggest that occupants are not...
What is a Forensic Engineer?
A forensic engineer is one who is concerned with the relationship and application of engineering facts to legal problems. He is an acknowledged expert who investigates construction-related...
Failure Investigations for Forensic Engineering
Failure investigations related to construction Industry is described in detail in the article. A failure investigation is one of the most demanding of engineering undertakings. It requires...
What to Do When a Failure Occurs
When a major building problem involving structural failure occurs, action should begin immediately to determine the damage or failure and detect the underlying problem. This paper will...
Arbitration: A Risky Method for Resolving Disputes
Arbitration has been widely praised as a speedy, 'inexpensive' alternative to litigation for resolving a wide range of disputes, including disputes arising from...
An Historical Perspective of Failures of Civil Engineering Works
The blight of failures has smitten civil engineering works since ancient times. An examination of historic cases reveals relationships to contemporary cases that are useful in guiding...
Failure Classifications
A detailed description of the failure classification with respect to the constructed facilities is presented. Author is of the opinion that most reports of failure even of an extensive...
Data Collection and Information Dissemination: Current Efforts and Challenges
The need for the civil engineering community to collect and disseminate information on failures has been discussed widely. It appears that in recent years our profession's reluctance to...
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