Search

Copyright of Legacy: Jurnal Hukum dan Perundang-Undangan is the property of UIN Sayyid Ali Rahmatullah Tulungagung, Department of Constitutional Law and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Bulletin of the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. Technical science & Technology series is the property of L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Honeybees are insects very sensitive to environmental pollution and at the same time very good indicators of the pollution levels for certain types of pollutants. The morphology and ethology of these insects make them perfect vectors for dust and substances, including heavy metals produced by anthropic activities or naturally generated and deposited on foraged flora. When bees are raised to produce foods such as honey and pollen, they can easily transfer pollutants collected from contaminated flower affecting the quality of these products. However, depending on geographical location of the apiaries and their distance from pollution sources, the risk to contaminate bee products can be higher or lower requiring deep investigations. In this study, two apiaries were built near ground transport infrastructures and used as monitoring stations for investigating heavy metal presence in beehive products such as bee wax, pollen, and honey. Another apiary was placed between these two locations at a distance of 500 m from each one and used as central node to asses possible diffusion trends. Parallel, air quality was monitored in the proximity of each apiary to verify the air pollution of the environments close to these sites. The results of the study suggest that the presence of the highway and the train station affected the levels of heavy metal presence in the apiary products. Air quality near apiaries was also negatively affected by ground transport, especially in proximity of the highway. Wax resulted significantly more polluted in the apiary close to train station with elements such as Al, Zn, and Ni, while honey and pollen were significantly more polluted in the proximity of the highway with elements such as Al, Fe, Cu, and Zn. Honey was the product suffering less the contamination by heavy metals while pollen was the worse. In conclusion, the presence of transportation nodes determined a higher accumulation of heavy metals in beehive products respect the apiary placed in between, suggesting to pay particular attention in the site selection for the placement of apiaries to protect both bees and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fences can reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions, but it is not always possible to fence over long distances, especially not in multi-functional landscapes. Side roads, driveways, and the need for access to agricultural fields all result in gaps in the fence. In some cases, wildlife guards or gates are installed at access points. However, gates usually require people to get in and out of their vehicle and they are often left open. Wildlife guards are typically only suited for low traffic speed, and while they can be a substantial barrier to ungulates, they are readily crossed by species with paws, including bears. Electrified barriers embedded in travel lanes can be a substantial barrier to both ungulates and bear species and while they can be suitable for higher traffic volume and speed, the costs are typically higher than for low volume and low speed roads. We explored the potential of low-cost electrified barriers to keep bears from accessing fenced road corridors at low traffic volume and low speed vehicle access points. As a first step, we conducted the study on private land at a melon patch that was a known attractant for black bears. We investigated the effectiveness of an electric fence and 5 different types of electrified barriers designed to keep black bears out of the melon patch. The electrified barriers included a swing gate, a standard bump-gate, a modified bump-gate with conductive netting, drive-over wires a few inches above the ground, and a drive-over mat. Trail cameras were installed at each access point to document approaching black bears and potential crossings into the melon patch. The swing gate, modified bump-gate, drive-over wires, and drive-over mat were an absolute (100%) or near absolute barrier (94.3%) for black bears while the standard bump-gate was a poor barrier (48.4%). Through a step-by-step process, the weak points of the electrified barriers at the vehicle access points and the electric fence around the melon patch were addressed. After addressing a weak point at a vehicle access point, the bears increasingly dug under the fence to enter the melon patch. However, eventually the melon patch became almost inaccessible to black bears. The number of black bears trying and succeeding to enter the melon patch at a particular location depended on how difficult it was to enter at other locations. This illustrates that fences and vehicle access points should be designed, operated, maintained, and monitored as a system rather than as individual features, regardless of whether the goal is to protect crops or to keep animals out of a fenced road corridor. The total number of black bear observations at the locations monitored with a trail camera, regardless of which side of the fence or electrified barriers the bears were on, was 95% lower in 2021 than in 2020. Combined with having no indication of a substantial drop in black bear population size from 2020 to 2021, this suggests that after the black bears were no longer able to enter the melon patch, they drastically reduced their presence in the immediate surroundings and reduced their effort to try and access the crop; the attraction of the melon patch and the habit of eating its melons was broken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates soil heavy metal contamination behind the green belts along National Highway 107 in China. Soil samples were collected from both sides of the highway to determine the concentrations of heavy metals such as copper, cadmium, chromium, lead, and zinc. The distribution patterns, ecological risks, and health hazards associated with these heavy metals were analysed. In order to provide more sample examples and data support for soil heavy metal pollution control. Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) was employed to detect the concentrations and speciation of these five heavy metals in the soil samples. The Geo-Accumulation Index method, the Nemerow pollution index method, and a health risk assessment model were used to evaluate the ecological and health risks of heavy metal pollution adjacent to the highway. Results indicated that: (1) The concentrations of Cu, Cd, Cr, Pb, and Zn in the soil decreased with the increasing number of protective forest layers, highlighting the significant role of protective belts in impeding the migration of heavy metals from the highway. (2) In terms of pollution assessment, the Geo-accumulation index method revealed prominent Cd contamination, the Geo-accumulation index of Cd peaked at 1.95 indicating a moderate to mild pollution level overall. Conversely, the Nemerow index method suggested a medium to extremely high risk of soil heavy metal Cd contamination. Specifically, the peak value of Cd single-factor pollution index in the study area reached 5.78, and the mean value of its Nemerow index (P) was 4.67. (3) In health risk assessment, it was found that children are more susceptible to heavy metal threats. The non-carcinogenic risk indices of all five heavy metals were less than 1, implying minimal risk. However, the total carcinogenic risk index for Cr ranged between 10–6 and 10–4, posing a certain level of carcinogenic risk to humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how highway connections influenced the entry of polluting firms based on panel data from 257 Chinese prefectures from 1998 to 2012. We also investigate the heterogeneity and influencing channels. We use the generalized difference-in-difference method as a tool in the empirical analysis. We have three main findings. First, highway connections increased the entry of polluting firms by 54.5 percent. Second, the heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect is mainly caused by prefectures on provincial borders, prefectures in central China, and prefectures with more than 1 million residents in urban districts. Third, highway connections reduced the concern about environmental protection by local governments of prefectures on provincial boundaries but increased concern about local governments of prefectures in interior regions. The concern about employment increased regardless of a prefecture's location in a province. These results indicate that less developed regions, i.e., those on provincial boundaries, valued the benefit of job creation for welfare improvement more than the harm of pollution. Hence, they intentionally reduced environmental regulation to induce polluting firms' entry. Our results provide new and insightful insights into the transition of economic development to a sustainable path, especially in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The depth and reserves of snow cover, as well as chemical composition of the snow, have been investigated in the landscape of the upper reaches of the Klyazma River (Solnechnogorsk raion, Moscow oblast). Determination of the component composition of the snow cover was based on the geochemical taxonomy of chemical elements according to characteristics of their water migration ability and abundance. Data from 23 snow sampling points have been interpolated in SAGA GIS using the inverse distance weighting (IDW) method. On this basis, zones differing in the chemical composition of snow have been identified. One of the zones is confined to the Moscow–St. Petersburg M-10 highway, while the second borders on populated areas. The highway-adjacent area is characterized by increased levels of calcium, sodium, aluminum, and chloride ions in the snow cover. The second zone, which is adjacent to populated areas, is characterized by a high content of calcium, copper, and manganese in the snow. The third zone is characterized by low concentrations of components in the snow, which is typical for a superaquatic landscape due to the distance from sources of pollution. According to their composition, the studied snow waters belong to the bicarbonate–sodium–calcium–chloride class. It has been shown that the depth and reserves of snow cover are partially controlled by two factors: the type of elementary landscape and the type of ecosystem. The spatial distribution of elements and anions in snow is predominantly controlled by the anthropogenic factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pile sheet wall is a commonly used support measure in landslide control of highways, and the optimization design of its structural parameters is a research focus in engineering construction. Taking the pile sheet wall project of AK0 + 560 ~ AK0 + 660 section of Jianshui (Gejiu) to Yuanyang Expressway in Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan Province as the background, the influence and optimization of three structural parameters of pile embedded length, pile spacing and pile width were studied by combining numerical simulation with grey correlation analysis and orthogonal test design, and finally the stability of the optimized structural parameters under earthquake conditions was verified. The results show that the pile spacing is the main influencing factor, and the correlation between the embedded length and the pile width is similar, which is the secondary influencing factor. The optimal combination of the structural parameters of the pile-sheet wall is the pile embedded length of 15. 0 m, the pile spacing of 5. 0 m, and the pile width of 3. 0 m. Under seismic conditions, the earth pressure at the cantilever section of the anti-slide pile, as well as the displacement and settlement difference of the pile body meet the specification requirements, and the slope stability is good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subgrade deformation is one of the main causes of highway disease, and its hidden dangers in the process of highway construction, management, operation and maintenance are increasingly prominent. At present, the relevant technologies represented by remote sensing mapping, geophysical exploration and multi-sensor have played an important role in subgrade deformation testing. In order to study the dynamics and development trend of road engineering field, and sort out the research status of theory, method, technology and equipment in road engineering field in recent years, the main forms and influencing factors of roadbed deformation were expounded, the types of roadbed deformation testing technology and their advantages and disadvantages were analyzed, and the understanding and development trend of the whole cycle intelligent monitoring system was further discussed. The construction of subgrade deformation monitoring system was the main way to perceive the state of subgrade, evaluate the stability of subgrade and forewarn the disaster. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and advanced testing technology, the testing technology of subgrade deformation presented new characteristics such as dynamic, transparent and intelligent. It is an important development direction of road safety operation and maintenance in the future to strengthen the research and development of test theory, technology and equipment and form a multi-means subgrade health monitoring system based on three-dimensional space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the stress state of lining structures in a tunnel traversing a water-rich fault zone, the long-term in-situ stress monitoring of surrounding rock, initial steel arch frames, and secondary lining concrete were conducted in a red-bed mudstone section of a tunnel under construction in Gansu. The force patterns of the tunnel structure were analyzed during the water and mud outburst control period in the water-rich fault. The results show that moisture seepage from the water-rich fault results in a maximum surrounding rock pressure of 498.28 kPa on the crown during construction. Following the application of the secondary lining, the pressure decreases gradually, but the pressure on the inverted arch continues to rise, reaching a peak of 352.75 kPa. The initial steel arch supports display a clear asymmetrical force distribution, with greater force on the upper outer side than the lower. Maximum compressive stress occurs at the crown and right waist, where the right waist experiences bending and breakage due to stress from fault activity. Inside the arch, stress distribution is lower at the top and higher at the bottom, with the greatest compressive stress on the left side of the inverted arch. Overall, the secondary lining concretes comply with the safety factor requirements of tunnel. The crown and right waist, being directly impacted by the water-rich fault, sustain the maximum concrete compressive stress. Continuous moisture penetration from the fault zone to the tunnel's base rock post-construction prolong the stress stabilization period for the inverted arch, increasing the risk of floor heave during long-term operation. It is crucial to monitor the deformation of the tunnel base during operation. These results offer valuable insights for optimizing reinforcement strategies and formulating drainage plans in similar tunnel projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disturbance of infrastructures may affect biological communities that are exposed to them. This study assesses the impact of high-speed (highway and railway) infrastructures in a protected study site, the Natural Reserve Fontanili di Corte Valle Re (Emilia–Romagna, Italy). We compared bird diversity with sound intensity and frequency in three sampling areas, increasingly distant from the infrastructures at the border with the reserve, during the last 4 years (2019–2022), monitoring sedentary, nesting, and migratory bird species. We hypothesize a decreasing diversity closer to the source of disturbance, which is mostly attributable to noise pollution. Our findings confirmed this trend, and we show that, in particular, disturbance seems to influence species richness more than the total abundance of birds. We also discovered that highway disturbance was much higher than railway in terms of frequency and duration. In light of these results, we suggest that some species, which have a behavioral ecology strongly based on singing to communicate with each other for their reproductive and defensive strategies, may suffer more from constant acoustic disturbance. The installation of effective noise barriers to shield the sound produced by the highways should be considered a mandatory request not only in proximity to houses but also in the vicinity of protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether the construction of the highway network is economical and can produce positive economic benefits has been a hot topic of discussion in recent years. Previous scholars have explored the impact from multiple perspectives. Our paper draws the “trade potential” model proposed by Armstrong, based on the universal gravity model and the principle of space interaction, which is different from the traffic accessibility, market potential, and market access used in most of the literature. We argue that it is more appropriate to consider both the size impact and the time distance or trade cost impact of the two cities. The paper constructs a conceptual framework and theoretical model for the impact of highways on regional economic growth, measures the “minimum transit time” of highways between prefecture-level cities in China, and calculates the trade potential of prefecture-level cities. Through corresponding empirical model testing, we have obtained some meaningful conclusions. First published online 17 September 2024

The Post-project evaluation in highway construction is crucial but underdeveloped in infrastructure management, especially for Iraqi road project authorities. This comprehensive study combines insights from global schemes in England, Scotland, France, Australia, Norway, and New Zealand to develop a strong post-evaluation framework. This study used criteria from six international schemes, a thematic analysis framework, and open interviews with experts to identify and improve the final list of criteria that could be used in the evaluation process. Five criteria were identified as the final result, which are efficiency (cost, time, and quality), traffic analysis (volume, travel time, and impact), safety (accidents and security), sustainability, and impact (economic and social). Then, to develop a multiple regression model for the success of a project, criterion weights were derived through the utilization of the Inner Product Vector (IPV). This study emphasizes the need for a comprehensive post-evaluation framework, especially in complex highway construction. A milestone is reached when international standards and careful variable extraction are combined. Based on empirical data and expert judgment, the mathematical model simplifies assessment and predicts project success, giving stakeholders a systematic, impartial, and comprehensive evaluation tool.

Current modern trends in road construction are the increase in traffic intensity and the carrying capacity of motor transport, as well as the expansion of the road network, including local roads. These trends put forward the task of not only increasing the durability of road structures, but also the use of local materials and soils in the construction of highways. Several methods have been developed to strengthen the soils of the road base. A variety of surfactants, modifiers and additives are also produced to strengthen the roadbed. Many of them have not shown their effectiveness in practice. Therefore, there is a need for plenty laboratory and field studies on this topic. Laboratory studies were carried out to investigate the effect of the modifier on the roadbed soil. The type of soil and its maximum density were determined at optimal humidity. Based on this, cement and a modifier were introduced into the soil composition, density and compressive strength were determined. The results of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) were obtained to study the effect of the modifier on the roadbed soil. Laboratory studies and SEM-analysis have shown that the addition of a modifier to the soil leads to an increase in its maximum density, a significant increase in compressive strength and that the modifier serves to improve the binding properties by forming a crystalline bond with cement.

Today, traffic accidents are still a difficult and urgent problem for many countries around the world. Traffic accidents on highways are often more serious than accidents on urban roads. Therefore, disseminating emergency information and creating immediate connections with road users is key to rescuing passengers and reducing congestion. Thus, this study applies data fusion and data mining techniques to analyze travel time and valuable information about traffic accidents based on the real-time data collected from On-Board Unit installed in vehicles. The results show that this important information is the vital database to analyze traffic conditions and safety factors, thereby developing a smart traffic information platform. This result enables traffic managers to provide real-time traffic information or forecasts of congestion and traffic accidents to road users. This helps limit congestion and serious accidents on the Highway.

To address the glare issues caused by highway ETC gantry monitoring and imaging illumination devices, this paper first investigates the mechanism of disability glare and derives the formula for the glare threshold increment. Subsequently, using the glare increment threshold as the evaluation metric and incorporating the current regulatory requirements for illumination devices, a simulation model for ETC gantry monitoring and imaging illumination devices was developed. A single-variable control method was applied to conduct simulation experiments on the glare problems from multiple perspectives (e.g., different standard illuminance levels, various luminous areas, varying installation heights, and different lateral offsets), and the glare level was analyzed using the glare increment threshold method. It was found that when the lateral offset of the illumination device reached 4 m, the glare increment threshold decreased by more than 50%. Additionally, it is recommended that the illuminance of the illumination device should be greater than 15 lx.

The impact of disturbances on a transportation network varies depending on the location and characteristics of the affected highway segments. Given limited resources, it is crucial to prioritize the protection and repair of highway segments based on their importance to maintaining overall network performance during disruptions. This paper proposes a novel method for ranking the importance of highway segments, leveraging a novel local–transit percolation and clustering-based method. Initially, the highway network is constructed by Graph theory, and the k-means clustering method is applied considering each segment’s transit and local traffic flows. Subsequently, a local–transit percolation model is constructed to generate an initial ranking of segments based on the size of the second-largest clusters during the percolation phase transition. A secondary ranking is performed by refining the results from the clustering phase. Results of a control experiment show that, compared to baselines, the proposed ranking approach demonstrates a significantly improved ability to sustain network demand and connectivity when high-ranked segments are moved. The model uncertainty analysis was conducted by adding noise to the gantry records, and the experiments demonstrated that the model exhibits robustness under noisy conditions. These findings highlight the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.

The rapid development of highways greatly affects the flow of people, finance, goods, and information between cities, and monitoring the OD flow of travel has become a very important task for intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The temporal dynamics and complex spatial correlations of OD traffic distribution, as well as the sparsity and incompleteness of data caused by uneven traffic distribution, make OD traffic prediction complex and challenging. This paper proposes a multi-task prediction model for OD traffic between highway stations. The model adopts a hard parameter shared multi-task learning network structure, which is divided into sub-task learning inflow trend modules, sub-task learning outflow trend modules, and main task learning modules for OD traffic. At the same time, the attraction intensity matrix between stations is constructed using the population density data as the external feature of the sub-task module for outlet outflow flow, and stronger constraints between tasks are introduced to achieve better fitting results. Finally, an OD flow prediction case experiment was conducted between stations on highways in Sichuan Province. The experimental results showed that the proposed model not only had higher accuracy in predicting results than other baseline models, but also had better effectiveness and robustness.

The article presents the results of determining the strength and deformation characteristics of the soils of the roadbed. Models of road structures located on a weak soil base are also considered, with the justification of design schemes reflecting the basic physical conditions of the structure. The strength of weak soils under the influence of vibration loads depends on their variety and porosity. The higher the density of the soil, the higher its dynamic stability and the greater the values of vibration accelerations, which cause a decrease in its strength. When comparing the calculated data of the dynamic deflection of a weak soil base with experimental data, it was found that the discrepancy in quantitative values does not exceed 10 %, which is quite acceptable for this kind of research. The results obtained and the accepted models of road structures are recommended to be used in calculations of the stability of embankment slopes of the roadbed, as well as in calculations of the precipitation of the embankment body on weak foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the basis and implementation effects of differential toll rate formulation for expressways, reduce the financial burden of expressway operators, and scientifically guide traffic flow, this study proposes an expressway differential toll rate optimization model. The model is demonstrated using two pilot sections of G25 and G1112 expressways in J province of China, where differential tolling is implemented. Based on the change characteristics of traffic flow and toll amount of the two pilot sections before and after differential tolling, we propose an optimization model of differential toll rate for expressways that maximizes the net revenue of expressway operators while minimizing individual travel impedance. The optimization model is solved using MATLAB, and an optimal differential toll rate scheme by road section, time period, and vehicle type is obtained. The evaluation of the model is based on the net revenue of highway operators and individual travel impedance. The findings reveal that the proposed optimal rate scheme improves the net revenue of road operators while reducing individual travel impedance compared to the original toll rate scheme. Specifically, the differential toll pilot sections of G25 and G1112 can increase net revenue by approximately Rmb25,000,000 and Rmb16,000,000 per month, respectively, and reduce vehicle travel impedance by about Rmb37 and Rmb32 per vehicle. The proposed model balances highway operator revenue with individual travel costs, leading to more sustainable and efficient expressway use, which benefits expressway transportation sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hot mix asphalt, which is frequently used in road pavements, contains bitumen in certain proportions. This bitumen ratio varies according to the layers in the road pavements. The bitumen ratio in each pavement is usually estimated by the Marshall design method. However, this method is costly as well as time-consuming. In this study, the Naive Bayes method, which is a machine learning algorithm, was used to estimate the bitumen ratio practically. In the study, a total of 102 asphalt concrete designs were examined, which were taken from the wearing course, binder course, and asphalt concrete base course and stone mastic asphalt wearing course layers. Each road pavement layer was divided into three different classes according to the bitumen ratios and the algorithm was trained with machine learning. Then the bitumen ratio was estimated for each data set. As a result of this process, the bitumen ratios of the layers were estimated with an accuracy between 75% and 90%. In this study, it was revealed that the bitumen ratio in the road pavement layers could be estimated practically and economically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth is an indicator to see useful development results and to determine the direction of future development. A positive economy is an economy with increasing growth, while a negative economy is a decline in growth. This study aims to analyze how much influence infrastructure development has on economic growth in Mataram City. The data used is secondary data from 2009 to 2023 sourced from PLN, Public Works and Spatial Planning Office, and PDAM Giri Menang. The research approach uses a quantitative approach. The data analysis technique used is Multiple Linear Regression Analysis. The results showed that the Highway variable had a significant effect on economic growth, the Electricity variable was significant to economic growth, and the water variable had a significant effect on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Automobile Technology is the property of Automobile Technology Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Electric Power Automation Equipment / Dianli Zidonghua Shebei is the property of Electric Power Automation Equipment Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nowadays, ultra-wide cross section highway is a hotspot in construction and brings some unique noise distribution characteristics. In this work, we further investigate noise distribution characteristics of diverse building layouts along ultra-wide cross section highway in Guangdong Province with multiple noise mitigation measures. By the aid of vehicle noise emission model and noise mapping, the influence of high-rise building layouts and shielding in the urban planning on noise mitigation is also considered. Some key findings are summarized as follows: (1) Under the same distance, the noise level of non-frontage building facades is higher than frontage building facades. After taking noise reduction measures, the noise reduction effect of non-street-facing building facades, buildings facing the road, and buildings at a long distance to the road is greater than street-facing building facades, buildings sideways to the road, and buildings at a short distance; (2) the distribution trend of insertion loss (IL) of non-frontage buildings is influenced by the height of the frontage buildings. Specifically, the trend of insertion loss first increases and then decreases as the floor rises when the height of non-frontage buildings is higher than frontage buildings. Comparatively, the trend of insertion loss decreases as the floor rises when the height of non-frontage buildings is equal to frontage buildings; (3) when double noise reduction measures are implemented, the noise distribution trend in buildings is similar to that observed with individual noise reduction measure, where the difference between both is only 0.6 dB(A). Thanks to the high representativeness of the case area, this work can provide some design guidance for the urban planning and the selection of noise reduction measures along the ultra-wide cross section highway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes through which northern townships, customarily governed by strong manorial institutions, came to embrace the structures and routines of vestry governance and supervision by county justices have long required further scholarly investigation. This paper presents a reassessment of the role played by the constables of the West Riding township of Sowerby, Halifax parish, in managing the highways function over the seventeenth century. This is feasible through the happy combination of contemporaneous paper records for the Wakefield court leet and of unusual and exceptionally revealing petty constables' accounts. Sowerby's constables creatively exploited mechanisms at the leet to enforce tenurial and township obligations for road repairs. While the appointment of surveyors is unattested before 1694 and statute duty arrangements are, at best, uncertain, a precocious policy of tax-funded maintenance became embedded in governance routines, as the township's propertied and clothier elite responded to the mid-century political crisis and pulses of assertiveness from the Justices' bench. Independency and improvisation are strongly supportive of change from below as the north's distinctive contribution to state formation in early modern England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to climate change, abnormal climate phenomena occur frequently, damaging aging highway facilities. Therefore, it is necessary to develop adaptation projects for highway systems. Adaptation projects focus on mitigating the impact of climate change on highway facilities and enabling safe use. The present study aims to develop quantified evaluation indicators that are necessary for planning and selecting appropriate climate change adaptation projects. By analysing previous studies, the most important factors to be considered in the evaluation process of climate change adaptation projects were defined, and 20 preliminary evaluation indicators were divided into three layers. A feasibility study for each class was performed on the preliminary evaluation indicators by an expert panel; 16 evaluation indicators were selected through a feasibility study, and the weight of each indicator was calculated using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. The priority of the evaluation indicators was service improvement through adaptation projects (weight 8.76), cost reduction and job creation (weight 8.46), and climate change impact reduction and vulnerability reduction (weight 8.31). These quantified evaluation indicators can help organizations that manage highways respond to climate change and establish adaptation projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the highway construction, a large number of spoil areas will be generated while a large amount of waste slag and soil could not be rationally utilized. Besides, the vegetation recovery is slow in the spoil areas due to the soil depletion. Aiming at recycling the solid waste, the sieved engineering waste slag with local red clay and corn straw biochar was supplied to solve the problem of insufficient nutrients in engineering waste slag and soil. In addition, planting experiments of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) and Amorpha fruticosa L. combined with physical and chemical experiments were carried out to prove the feasibility of the novel improved substrate for the reclamation of spoil areas. The results show that the substrate's improvement effect is mainly affected by the soil to slag ratio and the biochar content. The improvement effect of soil matrix in highway spoil area decreases with the increase of the waste slag content, especially when the soil-slag ratio is less than 3, and the promotion of plants is limited. On the contrary, the improvement effect is proportional to the biochar content (3%–8%). But it is noted that the Cu and Pb in the soil will exceed the clean limit corresponding to the Nemero soil pollution index level when the biochar content is 8%. Therefore, it is recommended that the soil-slag ratio should be ≥3, and the biochar content should reach 3%–5%. This research provides experimental basis and technical support for utilizing solid waste resources in the reclamation of highway spoil areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been widely adopted in the building sector. However, it is still an emerging topic in road infrastructure projects despite its enormous potential to solve ongoing issues. While there have been several recent studies on BIM implementation in road projects, there is a lack of research analyzing the actual BIM Uses in road projects as reported in academic and technical documents. Considering this gap, this paper presents a systematic review of BIM Uses and complementary technologies to BIM in road infrastructure projects. The research method consisted of a systematic review composed of five stages: (1) question formulation, (2) searching of relevant documents, (3) document selection, (4) evidence collection, analysis, and synthesis, and (5) results report. A total of 384 documents were collected, from which 134 documents reporting BIM Uses on roads were analyzed. This study has two main contributions. First, 39 BIM Uses were identified, which are classified into nine categories: road design, traffic analysis, soil aspects, road safety, environmental issues, other engineering analysis, construction planning and analysis, cost analysis, and construction monitoring and control. Second, a set of 26 technologies complementary to BIM adoption in roads were identified, among the most prevalent of which are geographic information systems (GISs) and laser scanning. The results serve as a basis for researchers to learn about the status and propose future developments on BIM adoption in road infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-of-the-art encompasses the application of deterministic and geostatistical algorithms to quantify the effect of spatial variation of unit prices across different locations. No studies have evaluated the efficacy of the different combinations of variogram and kriging models when used to characterize the spatial variability of major highway bid unit prices, as well as how well they predict future unit prices at unsampled locations. In this paper, ordinary kriging was combined with three commonly used semivariograms (spherical, exponential, Gaussian) models one at a time to predict six years of the top five common highway bid items obtained from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) and evaluated the prediction uncertainty for each bid item. The results show that the best-performing combination of ordinary kriging and semivariogram varied depending on the type of bid unit-price data. This study advances the state of practice by comparing the efficacy of various combinations of the variogram and ordinary kriging models in predicting highway bid unit prices and provides insight into the models' behavior in describing bid unit price spatial heterogeneity. Transportation agencies can employ this methodology to model other highway bid items and project types that have not been experimented in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transportation Science & Technolgy is the property of Transportation Science & Technology Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Real-time collision risk prediction is essential for improving highway safety and reducing traffic accidents. However, previous studies have mainly used crash data and associated spatially discrete and temporally continuous traffic data, overlooking the potential of vehicle trajectory data, which provides comprehensive spatio-temporal information to characterize traffic near a specific location. Moreover, researchers have typically focused on either traffic flow characteristics or inter-vehicle microscopic kinematic characteristics for real-time risk prediction, with a dearth of studies integrating these two aspects. Given that risk events transpire more frequently than accidents and exhibit a strong correlation with them, it is imperative to concentrate more on risk events to proactively diminish crash probabilities. This study introduces a novel approach that extracts traffic flow and inter-vehicle kinematic features from risk events. It also provides a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of five machine-learning methods (Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbors, eXtreme Gradient Boosting, Random Forests, and Multilayer Perceptron) and two data-processing strategies (oversampling and undersampling) in addressing risk identification and prediction issues. The results showed that (1) the synergistic use of traffic flow and inter-vehicle kinematic features surpasses the use of a single feature in identifying and predicting risks; (2) The eXtreme Gradient Boosting model, trained on the undersampled dataset, emerges as the optimal model for risk identification, boasting an Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC) of 0.976 and an F1 score of 0.604; (3) The RF model exhibits commendable performance under both risk prediction conditions (5 s ahead prediction and 10 s prediction), demonstrating the highest performance with F1 scores of 0.377 and 0.374, respectively. Additionally, it was discovered that the resampling strategy does not always prove effective in developing risk analysis models and should be chosen based on the model's characteristics and target metrics. This offers valuable insights into the selection of data-processing strategies when handling unbalanced data. Finally, the study's limitations and potential enhancements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expropriation is widely used to introduce highway projects into the society. Expropriation is the registration process of real estate and equities owned by natural and legal persons on behalf of the administration for public interest, provided that property and easement right amount shall be paid in cash or in advance or by equal installments. In what situations and by which institutions expropriation is carried out are restricted by the law. In accordance with the Article 3 of the Expropriation Law Number 2942 amended by the Law Number 4650, the expropriation process shall not be started without an adequate allowance provided by the administration. The exercise of the right of property shall not be against public interest." Project areas are required to be converted into public property after the development plans for the public projects are prepared. Areas regarded as private property but intersected by highway, railway or waterway routes can only be occupied after expropriation. Without expropriation, projects based on transportation in improvement areas can be opened to public with the application of the provisions of the Development Law Number 3194, while those in areas having no development plan can be opened to public with the application of the relevant provisions of the Agricultural Reform Law Number 3083 on Land Consolidation in Irrigated Areas and Law Number 5403 on Soil Conservation and Land Use. In this article, opening highways, railways, and waterways to public in Türkiye using the implementation of development plans is discussed. For the real estate coinciding with the route of public investments, if land and land lots are arranged in accordance with the Article 18 of the Development Law Number 3194, state withholding up to 45% may be imposed. The objective function in the state withholding can be stated as f= costmin= f(a,b). Land acquisition increases as the ratio of state withholding increases, resulting in the minimization of the expropriation costs. Public projects such as highway can be opened to public free of charge with development plan implementation in improvement areas and with land consolidation in rural areas having no development plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hot mix asphalt, which is frequently used in road pavements, contains bitumen in certain proportions. This bitumen ratio varies according to the layers in the road pavements. The bitumen ratio in each pavement is usually estimated by the Marshall design method. However, this method is costly as well as time-consuming. In this study, the Naive Bayes method, which is a machine learning algorithm, was used to estimate the bitumen ratio practically. In the study, a total of 102 asphalt concrete designs were examined, which were taken from the wearing course, binder course, and asphalt concrete base course and stone mastic asphalt wearing course layers. Each road pavement layer was divided into three different classes according to the bitumen ratios and the algorithm was trained with machine learning. Then the bitumen ratio was estimated for each data set. As a result of this process, the bitumen ratios of the layers were estimated with an accuracy between 75% and 90%. In this study, it was revealed that the bitumen ratio in the road pavement layers could be estimated practically and economically.