Construction Research Congress 2022: Infrastructure Sustainability and Resilience

Governments, researchers, and contractors alike are looking for way to manage construction and demolition waste (C&DW) in the most environmentally friendly and economic way. The literature offers little guidance to contractors in making decisions pertaining to sorting procedures, transportation schemes, and waste treatment alternatives. Such decisions are deliberated individually for different projects since each project is unique in terms of geographical location, quantity and type of waste generated, and surrounding waste outlets. This paper lays the foundation for a novel web-based framework that takes into consideration the key principles governing C&DW management at the regional and project levels, and aims to provide guidance that is tailored to the project’s and waste market’s specific characteristics. The proposed framework has two main objectives: (1) establishing effective data interoperability between contractors and waste diversion markets through a web-based information sharing system that analyzes and integrates spatial data; and (2) optimizing waste management strategies for contractors based on the specific market, while taking into consideration their intended waste diversion goals. This work will allow for drafting waste management plans at the design and planning phase, while providing a common collaboration platform for construction waste stakeholders.

The urgent need to respond to present environmental conditions has led to the increasing popularity of sustainability. This, in turn, has led to the rise in solar panel use, especially in the residential sector. Some changes in the solar panel industry have also made residential solar panel installation more affordable and convenient, contributing to their current popularity. While solar panel use is clearly beneficial to the environment, there are few studies on its economic viability for homeowners. Therefore, this study aims to identify the main reasons for homeowners to install solar panels and analyze the solar panel use in a single residence, with respect to installation cost. Twenty-four homeowners were also surveyed to identify various reasons for installing or choosing not to install solar panels. The survey results showed that the main reason for installing the solar panels was they are eco-friendly. Detailed energy usage of a home with solar panels was gathered for a period of 10 years: two years preceding solar panel installation and eight years after installation. The analysis showed that the homeowner needs to use the solar panels for more than 100 years to have an equivalent annual cost equal to the cost they are paying for the energy during these years. Despite decreasing costs, the solar industry has a long way to go before it becomes economically viable over a reasonable time period and as a common household electricity source.

The current era of modular building construction has been largely immutable for the past century in terms of its aspirations, drivers, and objectives. Delivering prompt, cost-effective, and high-quality assets has characterized this era. Yet, a new era is emerging—centered on the post-asset-delivery phase, espoused by prominent circular economy principles. The ability to reconfigure and reuse modular building assemblies in a highly agile manner poses significant opportunities for revolutionizing the environmental and economic impacts of our ever-growing built environment. This paper establishes the groundwork for transitioning toward the next era of modular construction. First, a review of current efforts being made to facilitate this transition is identified. Then, using additional inputs from the industry, a People, Process, Technology (PPT) framework is used to summarize current drivers and constraints. This research provides a cross-sectional analysis of where the modular industry is and how it can transition into its next era.

As buildings evolve toward the envisioned smart building paradigm, smart buildings’ cybersecurity issues, and physical security issues are mingling. Although research studies have been conducted to detect and prevent physical (or cyber) intrusions to smart building systems (SBS), it is still unknown (1) how one type of intrusion facilitates the other and (2) how such synergic attacks compromise the security protection of whole systems. To investigate both research questions, the authors propose a graph-based testbed to simulate cyber-physical attacks on smart buildings. The testbed models both cyber and physical accesses of a smart building in an integrated graph and simulates diverse cyber-physical attacks to assess their synergic impacts on the building and its systems. In this paper, the authors present the testbed design and the developed prototype, SHSim. An experiment is conducted to simulate attacks on multiple smart home designs and to demonstrate the functions and feasibility of the proposed simulation system.

Across the US approximately 600 million tons of cargo worth nearly $220 billion travels through inland waterways. Infrastructure supporting this transportation of goods, including inland waterways, ports, dams, and levees, is current averaging just shy of a C-overall on the American Society of Civil Engineers’ report card. With little opportunity for detours, a single disruption on an inland waterway can halt all transportation beyond the origination point and create significant fiscal and societal impacts to communities both up- and down-river. In this paper, these disruptions are evaluated within two contexts. First, this research examines the impact of a disruption that originates on the river, such as a lock closure, where the transportation infrastructure systems are impacted first and the communities are impacted second, as the disruptions ripple outward from the origination point. Second, this research examines a disruption from the river, such as a flood, where both the transportation systems and community are impacted simultaneously. Across each of these types of disruptions, we evaluate the complex relationships between the affected communities, the transportation systems, the supply chains, and the economy to develop a conceptual framework that depicts these relationships. In doing so, we advance the connection between inland waterway systems and their impacts to society and create a mechanism to enable decision-makers to think holistically about disruptions to these systems.

The aim of this study was to determine key components affecting schedule performance in reconstruction of transportation infrastructure following hurricanes. To conduct this study, comprehensive data on 30 case studies of post-hurricane reconstruction of transportation infrastructure were collected and analyzed. Next, significant factors that contribute to cost time delays in these projects were determined using appropriate statistical analysis methods. The method of factor analysis was then implemented to determine key components affecting schedule performance as well as reworks in the projects. The results that 23 factors (Fs) that contribute to cost time delays in post-hurricane reconstruction of transportation infrastructure were determined statistically significant. The results revealed that eight factors were recorded as key components for schedule performance in the stated projects. The findings of this study help project managers identify the significant factors that seriously affect the reconstruction schedule to allocate resources in reconstruction of transportation infrastructure due to hurricanes.

The increase in the number of hurricanes in recent years has impacted the affected communities in various ways, and the delays so often experienced by governors and federal authorities continue to be a significant issue. The direct impacts of the post-hurricane barriers on the recovery’s duration are frequently exacerbated by the impacts that some of the barriers have on each other, which can intensify their negative effects and lead to further delays. The aims of this study were to (1) investigate the relationships among the barriers to timely post-hurricane recovery, and (2) identify the extent to which the barriers and their interactions affect the timeliness of the recovery process according to experts’ and the public’s perspectives. A survey was developed to determine the impacts of 62 barriers that were identified as hindering timely post-hurricane recovery. Based on the collected data, two interrelated networks of the post-hurricane recovery barriers were developed, using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The impacts of potential barriers on the duration of the recovery after hurricanes were analyzed, and the model based on the experts’ perspectives showed that coordination-related post-hurricane recovery barriers have the most major impacts on the length of the recovery. The model based upon the public’s perspectives indicated that social-related post-hurricane recovery barriers have the most impact on the duration of the restoration. This study will help post-disaster recovery planners understand the differences between the public’s and experts’ perspectives so that they can develop recommendations and strategies to prevent unnecessary delays.

The increasing number of natural disasters that have occurred globally within the last decade has made it vital for decision-makers to understand the factors that affect the process of recovery. Damage sustained by the infrastructure is a fundamental post-disaster issue that has to be addressed as quickly as possible and reconstructing the damaged or destroyed residential housing in a timely manner is essential to the affected community’s ability to return to its normal level of functioning. This study investigated the causal relationships among the factors that delay the recovery process after hurricanes. The factors were identified by a literature review, and the relationships were determined by implementing a social network analysis (SNA). The results of this study show that misalignment among the policies, insufficient local government revenue, and lack of experience cause the most significant delays in the recovery process. Historically, many other factors, such as rate of employment, diversity of culture and languages, and damage to commercial buildings have not been adequately implemented in frameworks and models and deserve more consideration. The findings of this study will assist decision-makers of post-disaster recovery in achieving a more resilient community by identifying the relationships among the factors that prevent or delay recovery and planning how to avoid them.

The transportation sector has recently begun integrating resilience into its research, but there are not enough resilience measuring dimensions that are specific to the level of complexity of projects. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify the transportation infrastructure resilience-measuring dimensions and to establish the relationship of identified dimensions based on the complexity level of reconstruction project. To fulfill the aim of this study, a list of potential dimensions that can be used to measure the transportation infrastructure was developed after conducting a comprehensive literature review. Based on the list, a project-based survey was developed and distributed among highly experienced participants in complex projects. Results indicated that, according to experts working on complex transportation projects, a traditional investment process, where the focus of the capital investment is solely on reducing traffic delays, can greatly reduce the resiliency of the network. Instead, investing in adding alternate routes to the project, which is known as redundancy, increases the resiliency of the whole system. This study will help practitioners by providing dimensions for measuring the resiliency of complex projects and thus guide decision-makers to enhance the resilience of the complex transportation infrastructure.

For a transportation infrastructure to be resilient in the face of a disaster, the responsible personnel must understand the relationship between pre-event investments and post-event recovery success. The current literature provides few comprehensive lists of factors that affect the investment decision-making process for the transportation infrastructure system. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify the impacts of involving responsible personnel in making investment decisions related to transportation infrastructure. To fulfill the aim of this study, a comprehensive literature review was conducted, and a survey was developed. The survey was distributed, and the responses were collected and analyzed. The findings showed that the perceptions of resilient transportation infrastructure differ significantly based on the personnel involved in the investment decision-making process. For example, the involvement of transportation experts facilitates the appropriate distribution of the available funding to new projects and resilience enhancement activities of existing projects. This paper will help practitioners and researchers gain an in-depth knowledge of the factors that affect the resilient investment decision-making process.

As a significant attempt to save energy and minimize environmental pollution, green building has aroused public attention worldwide. Promoting green building with less time and high quality is the primary target in many countries. Although critical success factors that influence green building promotion have been identified in previous studies, there is no consensus reached on the factors and their significance. To fill the gap, this research aims to provide a systematic literature review on the critical success factors in promoting green buildings and further rank the factors quantitatively. Relevant literature was selected based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis framework. Forty critical success factors in green building promotion were identified from previous studies, and the meta-analysis was conducted to rank them based on the synthetical means. The results indicate that the roles of stakeholders and government are vital in green building promotion. The commitment, cooperation, and early involvement of stakeholders are essential in the green building practice, and the adequate incentives and mandatory requirements from the government are also significant. This study contributes to the existing green building knowledge body by deepening an explicit and in-depth understanding of critical success factors in green building promotion through a quantitative approach. Moreover, it provides suggestions for the government and practitioners, which is highly beneficial to making decisions.

The concept of resilience for the transportation infrastructure is relatively new, which means that the current literature provides little information and few recommendations for achieving or improving the resilience of roadway network. The goal of this study is to develop a list of strategies to enhance the resilience of the transportation infrastructure and to provide recommendations for implementing them. To this end, a comprehensive review of the existing literature was performed, and a list of potential factors that have impact over transportation infrastructure was prepared. Based on the outcome of the literature review, a survey was developed and distributed to experts in the field of transportation infrastructure. Ninety-two survey responses were collected and analyzed, and based on the analysis, resilience enhancement strategies for transportation infrastructure were developed. The findings of this paper demonstrate that maintaining an optimum number of nodes in the network to ensure the easy and efficient rerouting of traffic from a damaged link or node enhances resilience significantly. Incorporating optional routes at the beginning of a new project or for a roadway expansion will also eventually increase the resilience of the network. This study will help practitioners in selecting and adopting the appropriate strategies that enhance the resiliency of the transportation infrastructure.

This exploratory study summarizes the actions implemented by contractors due to the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020. The research specifically focuses on understanding how leading green contractors were or were not displaying meaningful actions related to social sustainability. Publicly available data were analyzed from the 2020 Top 100 Engineering News-Record Green Contractors. From this list, only seven contractors released either statement letters or website announcements acknowledging BLM. The majority of the statements were released right after the murder of George Floyd between the end of May 2020 and the beginning of June 2020, when most of the protests picked. The findings indicate that the contractors displaying meaningful actions are the ones that have already developed diversity and inclusion capabilities and coalitions besides their technical green construction expertise. Still, knowledge gaps were detected in acknowledging workforce justice and equity aspects, such as merit-based payment and promotion.

This exploratory study examines how environmental focus roofing strategies are implemented and used throughout the Front Range in Colorado. Case studies and articles from the Environmental Protection Agency, Solar Energy Industries Association, and the US Energy Information Administration were reviewed and a new Denver Green Building Ordinance. Then, two interviews were conducted to understand the implications of these strategies further. The interviews included one with a public owner representative and another with a regional green roofing contractor. The contractor asserted that these environmental focus roofing solutions would be more affordable over the next few years. As a result, more projects will be implementing solar and green roofs in the Front Range region. In addition, the owner representative provided new ways to overcome the initial cost of solar installation by using a solar power purchase agreement (PPA), which is a financial agreement where a developer arranges for the design, permitting, financing, and installation of a solar energy system on a customer’s property. The preliminary results of this study show that there is an excellent potential for growth based on targeted ordinances and PPAs. The significance of this study is to highlight roofing green and solar roofing strategies and the impact they will have in the coming years in the Front Range region. Further research can evaluate the correlation of PPAs, the Denver ordinance, and the implementation of more environmental-friendly roofs across the state and other regions in the United States.

The loss of critical infrastructure owing to natural disasters is an important issue for our society. The property damage and economic perturbations in the housing service sector due to natural disasters will lead to the inoperability of interrelated infrastructure and sectors. The major objectives are to define deterministic relationships between different infrastructure for strengthening the resilience and security of the housing service infrastructure in the event of natural disasters. This research conducts economic impact analysis that is the process of predicting the outcomes from a project using historical economic data. This study attempts to identify crucial infrastructure from the most affected to the least with respect to their interdependencies with the housing service sector. In case of loss in the housing service infrastructure or sectors due to natural disasters, identifying which critical infrastructure or sectors will be the most affected will be helpful to minimize the risks and property damages.

An impediment to the transition from more conventional concrete stormwater systems to more green stormwater systems is the public’s hesitation to adopt green infrastructure. Aiding how the public constructs preferences about stormwater options may help alleviate this barrier. When facing complex and less familiar choices, people tend to construct preferences rather than hold pre-existing preferences. In this research, a national survey with 946 people explored how the public constructs preferences about stormwater infrastructure options. Participants evaluated the perceived risk and perceived benefits of a conventional concrete infrastructure system and a green stormwater infrastructure system. Half of the participants were randomly primed to think about the value of sustainable design by reviewing a green infrastructure case that received the Envision Rating System’s Bronze Award. This intervention group (i.e., the Envision Group) was also asked to rate the potential sustainability achievement for both of the options presented to them. Both groups believed the green infrastructure option presented more risks. They also recognized the higher benefits of the green stormwater option compared to the conventional concrete option. The Envision Group perceived the benefits of the green stormwater option as significantly more and were more likely to choose the green infrastructure option as their recommendation. These results help to demonstrate how the public constructs preferences for infrastructure options and how the use of rating systems like Envision can help prime the public to think about the value of sustainable design.

The 3Ds represent some of the key technological terminologies widely misused or rendered inappropriately in literature, particularly the construction management (CM)-related literature. This may be attributed to the ongoing digital transformation within the industry where there still remains a certain degree of misunderstanding regarding these constructs. While the disparities of these terms have been highlighted in some publication outlets outside the CM scholarship domain, this study intends to clarify the etymological underpinnings and disparities regarding the 3Ds and the evolution of the digital technologies and tools within the construction industry. A thorough bibliometric search of the 3D-related documents is conducted to ascertain the past and extant studies dedicated to elucidating these constructs as well as their understanding and applications in the construction industry. Both content and thematic analyses are employed to analyze the textual contents of the documents retrieved. A conceptual framework is developed to provide a better understanding of the disparities and relationships among the 3Ds. The study contributes toward the digital transformation of the construction industry and adds to the literature of the related scholarship domain. The framework developed is generalizable, thus, entrancing its significance and impact in different jurisdictions.

Large rebar cages are commonly used in building and bridge constructions, especially for cast-in-place concrete columns, bridge piers, and cast-in-drilled-hole piles. These temporary structures are made of longitudinal and transverse reinforcing bars connected by tie wires. The stability of large rebar cages is usually dominated by the stiffness and strength of the tie wire connections. To improve the stability of the rebar cages, mechanical connectors can replace tie wire connections at critical locations. This paper is focused on experimental testing of mechanical connectors to capture their force-deformation response in different degrees of freedom. The results show that mechanical connectors can provide stiffer and stronger cross-rebar connections as compared to tie wires. Therefore, they can be used to improve the stiffness and strength of rebar cages, and thus, the construction productivity and safety.

HVAC systems account for majority of energy consumption in buildings and play a vital role in energy efficiency and occupants’ comfort. Efficient control of HVAC systems could reduce energy consumption while maintaining occupants’ comfort at an acceptable level. Predictive control strategies that leverage the thermal capacity of buildings have been shown to be an effective approach in decreasing the energy consumption of buildings. One of the conventional methods in representing comfort in the formulation of predictive controllers is to consider a fixed temperature range as a constraint. However, this method does not account for differences in occupants’ thermal preferences. Therefore, in this paper, we have compared the performance of two model-predictive controllers in terms of energy consumption and thermal satisfaction: the first one is a conventional controller constrained by a fixed temperature range and the second proposed controller is constrained by information from personal comfort profiles. The controllers were formulated as optimization problems using multivariate regression for predictive modeling and genetic algorithm for optimization. To represent human thermal preferences, probabilistic comfort profiles of occupants were developed by utilizing real-world thermal votes. The performance of these controllers was evaluated in a residential building through EnergyPlus simulations for different multi-occupancy scenarios of one, two, and four occupants. The proposed MPC controller improves thermal satisfaction by 15% while increasing energy consumption by 4% on average.

The connections between natural disasters and socioeconomic inequality are complex and dynamically change due to the vicious cycle of socioeconomic disadvantage and disaster impacts. Because of the inherent complexity and the evolving nature of vulnerability, it is very difficult to deduce general statements or a general theory of vulnerability. This paper presents a novel social sensing approach for near real-time and context-specific identification of the physical and socioeconomic vulnerabilities in areas affected by natural disasters. A variety of data analysis and data mining techniques such as sentiment analysis, geo and temporal coding, content analysis, and clustering were used to identify socioeconomic, infrastructure, and regional vulnerabilities to natural disasters. The proposed method was tested for the impacts of the 2019 Hurricane Dorian on South Carolina. The results showed the promising capabilities of the proposed method in near real-time detecting of events such as flooding and power outages as well as identifying different types of vulnerabilities among various socioeconomic groups. The findings of this study facilitate quick decision-making for prioritization and allocation of resources to vulnerable communities in areas where major disaster events or infrastructure failures are detected. In addition, the proposed method enables identifying the underlying factors that make a community or an individual most vulnerable to the impacts of natural disasters.

This paper outlines an exploratory case study implemented in a Canadian high school for engaging end-users in the re-design of their facilities to achieve the practical needs and comfort levels of users while also moving toward sustainable energy efficient building practices. The case study aimed to use interactive online systems to help facility users in sharing suggestions about possible changes to their building and empower them to take the lead in the re-design of their building. The observed outcomes are mixed. Facility users welcomed the interactive nature of the online tool. They offered suggestions for changes and improvements unique to their building and demonstrated an ability to overcome technical knowledge shortcomings. The discussions and interactions between participants appeared limited until participants were divided into smaller groups. Feedback from participants suggests that the overall process and online tool were well received. However, the general level of participation was lower than expected.

Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are responsible for managing and maintaining transportation assets in the US. DOTs manage a wide variety of assets throughout their lifecycle, including high-value assets such as pavements and bridges, in addition to a wide variety of ancillary assets. Managing transportation assets with declining funding and deteriorating infrastructure conditions requires that DOTs have reliable and useful quality data to make better decision-making and efficient capital investments. However, they are still facing challenges in collecting, managing, and sharing transportation asset data. By conducting a comprehensive review of the DOTs’ current practices in managing their transportation asset data, used technologies to assist in managing asset data, challenges faced, and addressed efforts to pass those challenges were extracted and grouped into six major data management practices. Furthermore, this paper investigated the possibility of implementing Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a hub that allows for a seamless asset data management approach.

Understanding availability and accessibility of critical infrastructure systems during the pre-disaster phase and evaluating the impact of their possible disruption during the disaster phase are crucial for measuring the vulnerability and resiliency of communities. This study proposes a new quantitative framework for flood risk assessment that helps understand the existing disaster risk and proactively mitigate the impact of infrastructure disruption on communities by systematically analyzing: (1) reliability of a transportation network and (2) vulnerability of residents and critical facilities. The methodology addresses the following infrastructure systems categorized as: (1) distribution-based and (2) facility-based systems. This study has modeled the dependency of the facility-based category on the transportation network and developed a general framework that measures the deficiency in pre-disaster phase and possible disruptions during the disaster response phase. For a cast study, this framework was applied to evaluate the vulnerability and resiliency of emergency facilities in the East Baton Rouge. It was concluded that a detailed analysis of both pre-existing conditions and during disaster conditions along with social vulnerability provide a more realistic insight and more accurate benchmark of vulnerability and resiliency of communities pertaining to infrastructure systems. This framework is expected to improve hazard mitigation and decision-making processes in investments and prioritization of infrastructure improvement projects.

Communities in hazard-prone regions worldwide are navigating adverse impacts from increasing disasters, leaving many in a constant state of recovery and preparedness. In particular, in regions with weak regulatory enforcement of construction, such as Puerto Rico, housing is often built informally, that is, builders without formal training construct housing that may not adhere to formal building codes or other regulations. The safety of this informally constructed housing directly influences disaster impacts and a community’s recovery. In this study, we administer and analyze surveys on perceptions of safe building in Puerto Rico’s informal construction sector and compare this to engineering performance assessments of typical shelter designs in earthquake and hurricane events—two hazards to which Puerto Rico is exposed—to reveal design or construction practices that may be misaligned. We describe one of these misalignments, the preference for infill over confined masonry construction in seismic regions. We then propose an initial framework for the creation of a communication design practice that targets perceptions that do not align with engineering assessments of housing safety, applying communication theory to intervene in housing construction practices and reduce disaster risk.

As infrastructure systems are interdependent, the disruption of one infrastructure system may generate cascading impacts on other infrastructure systems. Thus, becoming necessary to adopt an integrative approach to manage multiple infrastructure systems. However, the interaction between multiple infrastructure agencies may place challenges for developing an integrated management approach. This study aims to identify existing challenges in agencies managing urban infrastructure systems to implement an integrated management approach, namely, water, wastewater, stormwater, and transportation infrastructure. The authors carried out 11 semi-structured interviews during 2020 and 2021 with multiple stakeholders involved in managing water, wastewater, stormwater, and transportation systems in Chile that were qualitatively analyzed. The results revealed that the legal framework, limited workforce, and limited coordination protocols among agencies limit the implementation of an integrated urban infrastructure management approach. Furthermore, our results suggest that there is a high awareness among respondents for challenges related to operational problems (i.e., short-term issues), such as access to information, and human resources. Conversely, long-term challenges, such as policies, strategies, and risk analyses shown a lower awareness by interviewees. Identifying existing challenges faced by agencies managing urban infrastructure systems may assist in developing policies to successfully implementing an integrated infrastructure management approach.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way societies operate. Consequentially, the public, businesses, and industry used water differently, leading to changes in overall demand, along with spatial shifts in use. These changes stressed US water utilities, as they had to implement social distancing policies, adjust to changing revenues, and create customer assistance programs. The capabilities and characteristics of water utilities vary throughout the US, which may impact their resilience. Here, we aim to understand which pre-existing characteristics of water utilities may have led to resilience during the pandemic using results from a qualitative analysis of interviews with 27 US utilities conducted during 2020. We searched for statistical associations between utility characteristics (e.g., population dynamics, geographic location) and the challenges or changes experienced during the pandemic. Results of this study reveal the possible operating environments that increase the resilience of pandemic-induced shocks and help utilities prepare for future pandemics or population dynamics.

Hurricane is one of the major coastal disasters and causes loss of life and property damage. Resilient residential buildings are essential to protect the affected communities in the face of hurricanes. Residents’ knowledge of the building structures in which they stay and their perception of the risks are critical to their disaster preparation and response, such as rational evacuation decisions. In order to better understand whether and how people’s knowledge and perception of building structures affect their evacuation decisions, an online survey was created and distributed. The survey mainly includes two parts. In the first part, respondents’ knowledge on the structure characteristics (e.g., building materials, roof style) of their homes were tested. In the second part, respondents were asked if they were to stay at home or evacuate under hypothetical hurricane scenarios. The survey was distributed to 452 undergraduate civil and environmental engineering students at the University of Connecticut. Seventy valid responses were collected. Several findings were identified through analysis of the survey responses. First, it was found that many respondents lacked basic knowledge of crucial structural characteristics of their homes. Second, it was found that over 50% of the respondents overestimated the structural performance of their homes in the face of hurricanes. The lack of knowledge and misperception could lead to irrational evacuation decisions of respondents in the hypothetical scenarios. Finally, it was identified that providing additional information (e.g., pictures of damage from previous hurricanes) to the respondents could lead to more rational decision making.

The construction industry is one of the largest industries creating energy and resources consumption at high levels as well as leading to greenhouse gas emissions. This generates negative impacts in economic, social, and environmental aspects. In order to mitigate these negative impacts, sustainable construction plays a crucial role. At this point, Lean strongly interacts with sustainable construction for the fact that these concepts have similar objectives such as reducing waste, maximizing value, increasing efficiency and productivity, and improving health and safety. A major portion of the studies have investigated the implementation of sustainability and Lean construction simultaneously, which created positive outcomes for the construction firms. In this study, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is analyzed to reveal the impact of Lean practices in increasing project success when it is integrated with sustainable construction. In this respect, a systematic literature review is conducted to investigate the synergy between Lean construction and sustainability. For this purpose, a comparative matrix is structured to integrate Lean construction with the LEED certification processes. Commonalities are revealed to best reflect the level of interaction in between based on semi-structured interviews. This study indicates that Lean construction is strongly associated with sustainable construction and Lean has a strong potential of facilitating the achievement of LEED certification.

Both sustainability and resilience considerations are important for infrastructure systems; however, there is a lack of single effective framework to unify sustainability and resilience, especially in context of building systems. The empirical literature also suggests very limited efforts that unify both aspects in a holistic manner, a challenge to accomplish in practice. This requires identification of critical indicators associated with sustainability and resilience. Careful assessments are required while exploring the different phases of infrastructure life cycle because they can reinforce or undermine each other. Along these lines of research, this study contributes a novel experimental framework to assess masonry structures and support the unified approach. Specifically, this study performed structural analysis for resilience assessment in masonry structures and energy simulation for sustainability. Based on the openings available in masonry walls, the study observed the changes in sustainability indicators, such as electricity consumption, due to space and water heating, and area lighting among others. Moreover, changes in resilience indicators such as story drifts in each floor were also observed. Results from sustainability assessment indicate that overall sustainability is compromised with additional openings in most cases (i.e., the building becomes less sustainable because of higher electricity energy consumption), except for electricity consumption for space heating. Results from resilience assessment show an increase in story drift of different floors with additional openings. It indicates that with additional openings, an unreinforced masonry building becomes more vulnerable. Moreover, differential effects (positive/negative correlations) were observed when concurrent assessments were made on sustainability and resilience indicators.

Due to rapid depletion of natural resources, and increase in frequency and magnitude of natural disasters, sustainability and resilience are becoming vital concepts. As both concepts are crucial to sustain an infrastructure for longer duration, their concurrent assessment with a unifying approach is inevitable. Review of existing literatures revealed the lack of a single effective systematic framework that can simultaneously assess these two concepts while designing an infrastructure, which is the main knowledge gap in the literature. Specifically, the major gap in literature is the lack of an effective unification framework can accurately quantify and unify sustainability, resilience, and their indicators. Another challenge in the unification of sustainability and resilience is to accurately establish their interrelationship, because a single decision could reinforce one and undermine another. Additionally, quantification of various dimensions of both concepts, especially dimensions dealing with qualitative parameters, is another challenging task for their effective unification. Moreover, most literatures analyze sustainability and resilience separately rather than with an integrated perspective, which is why the design becomes less effective than it should have been. The scope of this study includes: (1) critical assessments of the concept of sustainability and resilience of civil infrastructure systems and difficulties in their quantification; (2) exploring complexity of their inter-relationship and major issues in their unification; and (3) identifying new factors to be considered for their unification in case of buildings. The study contributes toward a better understanding of the key challenges in the unification of sustainability and resilience for civil infrastructure systems.

Resilient infrastructure, which better withstands, adapts, and recovers from disasters, plays an important role in mitigating the impacts of natural hazards to the communities. However, disparities exist in infrastructure damage and recovery across communities with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Socially vulnerable communities experience more severe infrastructure damage and require longer time to repair and resume infrastructure services. Thus, there is a need to systematically integrate social equity with infrastructure resilience assessment. To address this need, this paper proposes a social welfare-based infrastructure resilience assessment framework that accounts for (1) the unequal distribution of infrastructure damage and recovery across communities with different socioeconomic statuses and (2) the potentially higher infrastructure damage and longer recovery time in socially vulnerable communities. The proposed model can facilitate equitable resilience in infrastructure planning and recovery by allowing for a better understanding and assessment on how infrastructure in different communities is equally or unequally affected by disasters.

Smart building is an emerging concept in the contemporary built environment that aims to leverage new technologies and practices to improve building’s performance. Despite recent efforts to articulate the concept, there is still no commonly accepted definition for the term smart or intelligent building. Also, there are discrepancies in smart buildings’ components and evaluation criteria identified by academic literature and industry publications. This paper analyzes the concept of smart building in order to determine its context and applications. For this purpose, in this paper, we completed a comprehensive literature review of both academic articles and building certification standards to summarize the current interpretations and characteristics of smart buildings. Subsequently, we conducted a comparative ontological analysis on the selected publications and the relevant building certification standards to further identify smart building’s components in comparison with other relevant concepts including sustainable building. The results of this study will benefit future research in smart buildings as well as the development of certification standards for smart buildings’ evaluation.

Construction safety culture in active construction sites is frequently challenged due to the uncertainties and unknowns associated with construction activities. The construction industry requires expertise from multifaceted professionals who differ widely in hazard identification, risk perception, and situational awareness. While the existing literature aims at the implementation measures of construction safety, it does not provide enough guidance on how the efficacy of these measures varies among the construction affiliates. Moreover, frequently occurring natural hazards and extreme weather events significantly impede construction activities as well as the proposed schedule. The empirical literature is inconclusive of how such events influence the risk perceptions of several stakeholders involved in construction activities. As such, the goal of the study is to develop a multi-disciplinary risk-perception framework based on a comprehensive set of hazards in contrasting scenarios (i.e., regular vs. extreme weather). In particular, the study contributes by (1) identifying the knowledge gaps in the existing literature related to construction safety practices and risk perception; (2) designing and conducting an extensive survey involving diverse scenarios related to construction activities (i.e., sub-structural, super-structural, etc.), types of hazards (i.e., tipping, fall, lifting, excavation, etc.), and weather conditions among others; (3) apprehending risk observations of construction practitioners, researchers, and experts; and (4) developing a unified construction risk spectrum to enhance construction site resilience. The findings of this study could shed new light on advancing the resilience capacity of active construction sites that can be observed in practice.

The construction industry is under obligation to address sustainability, especially, after the United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To achieve these 17 SDGs, promoting the development of sustainable infrastructure is key to transform the behavior of the construction sector; and public procurement has been highlighted as the tool to link the success of infrastructure projects with the goals of the SDGs. However, the assessment of the performance of companies and projects against the SDGs has not been currently resolved, and research in this matter is scarce, being a topic of great relevance to be addressed. Therefore, this research, through an extensive literature review, analyzes the factors and indicators to assess the social sustainability of the SDG in public procurement of civil engineering projects. This study provides insights into the challenges regarding the implementation of the SDGs and is a point of departure for future research and development of practical solutions.

Water infrastructure in Southwest Florida (SWFL) exposed its vulnerability when Hurricane Irma directly hit the region in 2017. This study empirically investigated the hurricane impacts on water infrastructure of two counties in this region. Data were collected from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and other publicly available sources. Employing a data-analytics approach for unstructured data, this study evaluates the extent of vulnerability in terms of the number, duration, and cause of the incidents with and without the impacts of the hurricane and its aftermath. The number of incidents increased 30 times in the month of Irma aftermath. The total duration of incidents was also substantially prolonged. While the causes varied under the normal conditions, power outage appeared to be the major cause of incidents during the hurricane aftermath. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding on the level of vulnerability of water infrastructure, especially in moderately populated areas. Further studies should be performed to compare with similar events around the world.

The behavior of critical infrastructure systems (CISs) greatly depends on the performance and reliability of the human agents that interact with the CISs. To accurately assess and predict the behavior of interdependent CISs, interdependent CISs models must not only consider the heterogeneities and interdependencies of the systems, but also the human factor. Previous studies focused on developing interdependent CISs models that only consider the technical factor. In this study, a framework for incorporating the human factor in the modeling of interdependent CISs is proposed, one that can integrate the knowledge, data, and simulation tools of CISs and humans from various domains. Domain-specific CIS models and human performance models are co-simulated to capture systemic heterogeneities and the complex dynamic system–system and human–system interactions. A case study of two interdependent power system and water system is presented to reveal the influence of considering the human factors on the behavior and performance of interdependent CISs.

Urban heat island (UHI) as one of the major consequences of urban development has been extensively studied. Various strategies have been proposed to mitigate the UHI effect. Particularly, the blue–green infrastructure (BGI) using vegetation and water bodies for environmental cooling have received growing attention. However, there are limited publications on the microclimatic effects in the vicinity of river corridors in urban areas and strategies to improve thermal comfort. Using a restored urban stream as a case, this research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of different strategies on thermal performance, including the expansion of water coverage, addition of vegetation, and conversion of the original concrete riverbed into porous substrate. A micro-scale computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was used to simulate the diurnal profiles of the river corridors. Using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) as an indicator, the study found that street trees are associated with the average lowest values of UTCI during the daytime, while using porous substrate can also reduce UTCI with a maximum UTCI reduction of 3.46°C. However, during the hottest hours of the day, porous substrate even causes an increase in UTCI by reflecting more short-wave radiation. This finding also provides the general procedure of evaluating the relationship between BGI optimization strategies and outdoor thermal comfort.

Energy consumption and electricity demand in the residential building sector depends significantly on the energy consuming devices in a building, the building envelope, and the occupants’ interaction with these systems. To evaluate the reliability, energy saving potential, and demand reduction potential of various occupancy sensor systems connected to the heating, cooling, and ventilation (HVAC) systems in residential buildings, a full-scale experimental test setup was developed, including two parallel, identical test buildings built to current energy codes and built to be consistent with residential building construction techniques and typical residential systems. To evaluate energy and demand savings, first, normalization testing was completed to ensure that both buildings were operating similarly. The energy use collected over several weeks was compared, then adjustments were made to each building, then the buildings were re-tested in an iterative process to ensure similar operation and consumption patterns. Following normalization, baseline data was then collected to calibrate an energy model of the test buildings. An energy model was developed using EnergyPlus to mimic the laboratory conditions and calibrated and validated to fit the measured data following ASHRAE Guideline 14. This paper discusses the development, construction, and instrumentation of the laboratory facilities for experimental smart technology testing, and the development, calibration, and validation of the building energy model. Future applications of these parallel laboratories include their use to evaluate performance impacts from various smart building technologies. This effort can be useful for those developing experimental full-scale laboratory test facilities and those engaging in occupancy sensor system evaluation.

Sustainable infrastructure plays a critical role in improving the quality of life for the public, cultivating resilience against extreme weather and recurring disaster events, and ensuring sound economic development. However, to this end, many infrastructure projects fail to meet sustainability goals and are often plagued with schedule delays and cost overruns. This study aims to investigate existing synergies between six key elements from an FEP tool [i.e., Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI)] and 20 Envision credits to develop a reliable matrix that provides correlation and strategies to enhance project performance. To achieve this objective, this research surveyed 109 stakeholders of more than 45 Envision projects, representing more than 60% of the current Envision-certified projects in the US. The obtained data are analyzed using a threshold model and an ordered probit regression model to formulate a conceptual matrix that shows the correlation between Envision and the PDRI.

Global warming and climate change are extreme weather phenomena that lead to an exponential increase in destructive hurricanes causing severe flooding and critical damage to infrastructure systems in coastal cities. It is critical to explore and adopt innovative and effective resilient design strategies such as Safe-to-Fail for infrastructure systems to reduce disaster damages. This study aims to (1) collect the Safe-to-Fail strategies from literature and aggregate them; and (2) evaluate the aggregated Safe-to-Fail criteria to determine the most suitable criteria for reinforcing infrastructure resilience in coastal cities. This study utilized a multi-criterion decision-making tool Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the resulting weights indicate that the highest-ranked criterion is Redundancy (38.88%), followed by Resource efficiency (24.35%), Adaptability (24.21%), and Multifunctionality (12.55%). The findings of this research facilitate the implementation of Safe-to-Fail infrastructure systems to mitigate flood risks and support decision-makers in selecting resilient flood solution alternatives, particularly for coastal cities.

Multisector stakeholders (e.g., public, private, and the nonprofit sector) have different values on housing resilience, which may shift with extreme events. Despite emerging research on changing stakeholder values after hurricane events, there is limited knowledge on how stakeholders may modify their values on housing resilience after public health crises. An example of such crises is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has altered the home and work environment of many. To address this gap in the literature, this paper analyzes how COVID-19 has impacted multisector stakeholder values on housing resilience. It is mainly based on semi-structured interviews with 50 multisector stakeholders. The results indicate that COVID-19 has impacted stakeholder values on different aspects of housing resilience, such as comfort and health, recreation, design and use of open space, and connectivity. The study’s findings may inform multisector stakeholders (e.g., planners, architects, contractors, engineers, and NGO representatives) on how to better plan, design, and develop value-centered resilient housing systems that take into account the challenges faced in a public health crisis.

There has been an increasing demand for understanding the critical impacting factors that may affect bridge design, construction, and operation in the future. These factors could be from various areas, such as technology advancement (e.g., new construction materials and techniques), climate change, sea level rise, economic shifts, and evolving behaviors of travelers. This paper presents a study that aims to identify the critical impacting factors and analyze how they would impact the bridges in the future. The factors were first identified through a comprehensive literature review and expert interviews. They were then included in a survey to further solicit bridge experts’ opinions on their likelihood of impacts on bridges and trends. This paper focuses on discussing the survey design, implementation, results, and analysis. This research offers a theoretical and empirical understanding of the multifaceted factors that could affect the future of bridges; it could facilitate more proactive policy making by allowing policymakers to account for the impacts of these factors on bridges.

Interdependency between infrastructure increases the possibility of catastrophic events by amplifying the impact of small-scale initial failure, which has a significant effect on the resilience of the infrastructure system. While there has been a bunch of research trying to identify and simulate interdependency between or inside infrastructure systems, the effect of human behavior on system resilience has not received much attention until recent years. In this paper, a comprehensive literature review on interdependent infrastructure systems resilience analysis has been conducted from a socio-technical perspective. Results show while the interdependency between social and physical systems is not as clearly defined as that inside each system, there appear two types of interactions in terms of human’s role in the whole system: the service object and the decision-maker. As for methodology applied, most existing research still spends effort on building frameworks and indicators to discuss how to integrate social aspects into the resilience analysis process, while quantitative approaches are still few used. Detailed topics and methodology applied have been discussed, based on which we propose open issues and directions for future work along with human involved interdependent infrastructure system resilience analysis.

Social distancing policies (SDPs) implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to spatiotemporal variations in water demand. In contexts with limited availability of smart meter infrastructure, the lack of high-granular water demand data challenges utilities’ understanding of such demand variations that are needed to respond to potential operational and water quality issues. Founded on the water and wastewater infrastructure’s interdependencies, this study proposes the use of high-granular wastewater flow data as a proxy to understand the water demand variations during active SDPs. Enabled by a random-effects model of wastewater flow in an urban metropolitan city in Texas, we explore the impacts of various SDPs (e.g., stay home-work safe, reopening phases) using daily flow data gathered between March 19, 2019, and December 31, 2020. Results indicate an increase in residential flow that offset a decrease in nonresidential flow during the stay home-work safe period. Our results also show that the three reopening phases have statistically significant relationships to wastewater flow, although yielding marginal net effects at the system scale. These findings in regard to residential–nonresidential variations—explored through the wastewater flow—underscore behavioral changes in water demand at sub-system spatial scales. Our assessment can inform emergency response plans for pandemics in regard to water infrastructure planning, management, and operations, considering spatiotemporal changes in water demand.

Recent studies have shown potential benefits of digital twin cities for smart urban management. However, a major challenge for full-scale implementation of this concept is data availability. A comprehensive digital twin model that represents urban systems, their functionality, and interdependencies requires a wide range of data. However, little is known about systematic approaches for large-scale urban data collection. This study aims to address these gaps in knowledge in two steps to provide a more accurate depiction of available data. First, we conduct a synthesis study using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) to identify current data collection methods in smart cities from technical articles. Second, we review publicly available databases to identify the types of available data that potentially can be used for digital twin cities models. This study identified and classified various types of available data including datasets related to infrastructure, healthcare, education, government, and environment.

Bridge inspection records are essential for engineers to diagnose structural conditions and make appropriate maintenance decisions. However, missing and conflicting data among multiple bridge inspection records documented at different times brings challenges to reliable condition assessments. Bridge engineers screen and validate the data from various inspection records and fuse validated data for condition assessments. Unfortunately, only experienced bridge engineers could achieve reliable information fusion. This paper presents an approach that automatically examines conflicting data from multiple inspection reports collected at different times. The proposed method uses finite element model simulations to identify how documented cracks could cause load redistributions across the structure and produce additional cracking areas. A “cracking location” voting strategy can help quantify the trustworthiness of the combinations of various crack locations for resolving data conflicts. The results indicate that the proposed method can fuse conflict bridge crack information from multiple inspection records into reliable bridge condition assessments.

Despite anecdotal evidence on the role of socioeconomic vulnerabilities, there remains a need to understand the effect of these vulnerabilities on decision time for reconstruction. To address this gap, this research asks: How do socioeconomic vulnerabilities affect decision time for reconstruction in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria? Data collection included household surveys (N = 305) in two communities in Puerto Rico in December 2018 and January 2019. Socioeconomic vulnerabilities considered in this study included gender, older adults, educational level, and annual income. Binary logistic regression models show that homeowners who have a yearly income level below $10,000 (low-income households) are less likely to decision time for reconstruction than the homeowners who have an income level above $10,000 (high-income household) after Hurricane Maria. In other words, lower-income households were likely to start housing reconstruction later compared to higher-income households. The government and policymakers may use the data in recovery efforts to focus on lower-income families in the reconstruction process.

The major objective of this research is to explore decentralized energy infrastructure scenarios using a multimethod modeling integrated with geographic information systems (GIS). Although extensive research has been conducted for applying decentralized energy and micro-grid systems, previous approaches have often been limited to downsizing traditional energy infrastructure systems. This research proposes a multimethod simulation integrated with GIS to identify impacts of infrastructure scenarios of applying the decentralized power generation and energy-sharing systems. The simulation model combines the system dynamics modeling with agent-based modeling. The simulation results can compare hourly electricity self-sufficiency, CO₂ emissions, and the distribution distance based on distribution systems, the rooftop PV application, and the reduction of fossil fuel reliance. The findings can be used to establish the future infrastructure scenarios for reducing electricity distribution losses or planning peak-load shifting. The research outcomes will enable civil engineers, community stakeholders, and developers to better understand the impacts of energy-sharing systems in communities, then to support more informed decisions about the future energy infrastructure.

The objective of this research is to find associations between the financial loss per capita caused by the Hurricane Harvey and multiple variables to examine which factors impact the financial loss generated by hurricanes. It is crucial to understand how the characteristics of our living environment are associated with the disaster loss to mitigate the potential damage. This research performs Kendall’s rank correlation analysis using empirical data to identify which variables impacted the financial loss caused by the Hurricane Harvey. To measure the financial loss, this research uses insurance claim payments generated by the Hurricane Harvey in 62 Texas counties. Explanatory variables are selected from multiple fields including hurricane, geological, social, economic, and housing variables to explain the complex nature of disaster financial loss generation. The analysis results suggest that the areas with following features would experience relatively higher financial loss due to hurricanes: being located at where severe storms pass through, experiencing higher rainfall amount, having higher percentage of old housings, having higher median income, being located at lower elevation, and having lower employment rates. This research identifies significant variables that affect the financial loss generated by hurricanes and the magnitudes of the significant variables’ effects. The major contributions of this research to the body of knowledge are finding factors that are associated with financial loss due to hurricanes and identifying places that are more vulnerable to hurricanes than the others.

Roadside clayey slopes are prone to rainfall-induced instabilities due to clay’s high swelling and shrinkage potential. These shallow slope failures damage bridges, road surfaces, shoulders, guardrails, and roadside drains severely restricting the movement of commodities, workforce, and resources. Each year highway agencies spend millions of dollars on restoring services disrupted by slope failures. Identifying the critical segments in roadside slopes can facilitate proactive maintenance decisions, thereby reducing the need for emergency repair and minimizing the impact on flowing traffic. This research aims to explore the possibility of integrating publicly available data to identify segments of clayey soil slopes that are susceptible to rainfall-induced slope failure. A combination of hydrological and geotechnical models is used to integrate data on slope stability variables, such as soil properties, slope angles, and rainfall. The data integration approach helps assess the least duration of rainfall corresponding to 10-years return period rainfall event initiating failure in roadside slopes. The proposed data integration approach is demonstrated along the 308 miles of highway corridors in Texas, where roadside slopes are made of highly plastic clayey soils. Historic slope failures were used to validate the result of the proposed approach. The result showed that ninety percent of past roadside slope failures were in the areas that are susceptible to failure from a 10-year rainfall event with the duration of three days or less. The proposed approach for appraising failure susceptibility of roadside slope can help highway agencies to develop slope hazard maps, identify critical slopes, and perform proactive rehabilitation.

The United Nations (UN) has led the effort to promote sustainability and identified resilience as a key to catalyze the progress of the triple bottom line. UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were developed to provide an implementation guideline for societies through an integrated sustainable and resilient path. Comprehensive infrastructure rating systems like Envision, CEEQUAL, and IS (AGIC) provide a good sustainability and resilience assessment platform. This research paper proposes a sustainability and resilience monitoring scheme using SDGs for global adoption. It elaborately analyzes the credits under the three comprehensive rating systems using content analysis and connects the credits under Envision and CEEQUAL to the existing SDGs. Alignment with the global SDGs is essential to ensure that the infrastructure projects are following the pre-defined global goals. The outcome of this research can help to align the infrastructure projects with the global policies and SDGs and celebrate the exemplar projects, which have an elevated performance.

To reduce the spread of the COVID-19 disease, government mandated social distancing policies (SDPs) halted the operations of non-essential businesses and changed operations at essential businesses, including water utilities. This change was difficult for some utilities to adapt to as the SDPs impacted supply chain and altered workforce management, among other operational aspects. Here, we posit that SDPs have implications for water infrastructure resiliency and technical performance, and may impact the future design, construction, and operation of water infrastructure. However, there is a dearth of literature on this topic. Therefore, we complete a literature review of sources from gray and scholarly literature to understand the impact of pandemics on water infrastructure. We found that the literature focuses on contextualizing COVID-19 within water infrastructure, direct impacts to utilities, and recommendations for immediate and future mitigation. Our research points out a gap in the literature that examines pandemic impacts on specific types of water utilities (e.g., small, rural) and identifies future research opportunities (e.g., relating water utility pandemic impacts to population dynamics). Here, we point out potential water infrastructure resiliency problems that, without intervention, could negatively impact technical system operations and public health.

In recent years, the environmental issues that arise at the construction stage of projects have raised great concern. Despite good efforts, one of the major challenges for environmental sustainability of construction projects is how to govern the contractor greenwashing behaviors (GWBs), which are termed as the combinations of poor environmental performance along with positive environmental communications. Contractor GWBs pose a greater challenge for environmental governance in construction projects and are urgent to govern. Although previous research has underlined the mitigation mechanisms of GWBs from the external institutional perspective, the internal governance mechanisms toward project settings are ignored. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the heterogeneous and interactive roles of two common project governance mechanisms: formal contracts and trust in the context of temporary organizations (i.e., construction projects). This study contributes to gaining an understanding of GWBs and environmental sustainability in project settings, providing practical guidance for project practitioners.

Starting from December 2019, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rapidly spreading throughout the world, disrupting individuals’ lives and the function of the whole human society. At the frontlines of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple aspects of healthcare facilities have been significantly affected. To fill the information gap in the scientific literature, a small pilot study was conducted in this paper to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on service utilization and energy consumption in healthcare facilities. Monthly services utilization data including number of outpatients and emergency patients (NOEP), number of inpatients (NIP), and monthly total energy consumption (TEC) data of five Shanghai large-scale municipal hospitals have been utilized. The impacts were modeled using the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model with the normal period (January 2015–December 2019) and compared with COVID-19 period (January 2020–December 2020). The empirical results show that the impacts of COVID-19 on services utilization were significantly greater than those on energy consumption. In addition, the magnitude of the impact has varied significantly according to the type of service and healthcare facilities. This study provides insights for healthcare facilities in assessing services utilization and energy demand during times of public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reuse/recycling is a major component of a management system for disaster-generated debris. Prior studies have identified several factors that affect the feasibility of post-disaster recycling programs, such as the amount of debris, potential health hazards, community priorities, economics, and disaster-specific funding policies and regulations. In order to better assess each of these factors for sustainable debris planning, there is a need to collect post-disaster data that become available at different points in time after disaster events. However, such data are rarely captured in a timely manner. The SUstainable Material Management Extreme Events Reconnaissance (SUMMEER) organization was formed with funding from the National Science Foundation to develop solutions to post-disaster materials management by investigating the impact of extreme events with a focus on the reuse and recycling of disaster materials. In this study, we introduce the roles and mission of SUMMEER to the construction research community. We propose a three-phase post-disaster reconnaissance framework that facilitates the collection of time-sensitive data from disaster sites that are critical for sustainable debris management research: (1) response, (2) short-term recovery, and (3) long-term recovery phases. This framework provides guidance on effective, coordinated field reconnaissance for sustainable debris management research.

Megaprojects are major investments in technology or infrastructure, typically costing one billion dollars or more, involving high levels of complexity, and having significant impacts to society. By their very nature, megaprojects are fraught with a wide range of risks, including technical, societal, financial, and organizational risks, among others. This study seeks to contribute to the understanding of risks in the context of megaprojects by analyzing a case study of a complex international setting. This study also aims to contribute to the body of knowledge by examining a case from the defense infrastructure sector, which has not commonly been the source of megaproject case studies. Research methods included content analysis of project documents mapped against risks and strategies prevalent in literature. The results highlight the importance of management risks, in particular, and the need to ensure specific management and organizational risks are examined in future analyses of megaprojects. The findings lay the groundwork for a larger analysis of risks of megaprojects in other countries, while providing insight to both researchers and practitioners working in a complex international setting.

Natural hazard disaster events such as hurricanes are increasing in frequency and intensity across US coastal states and territories, serving as mega-disruptions of residential construction industry labor and material supply chains. Hurricanes create sudden competition for the limited post-disaster residential construction resources available within the construction supply chain, affecting labor wages and material prices. However, few quantitative studies have examined how disaster mega-disruptions affect post-disaster construction supply chains. Utilizing supply chain management theory and data from the 2017–2018 US hurricane season, this study addresses the question: How do disaster mega-disruptions influence post-disaster residential construction labor and material supply chains? Specifically, this study assesses how Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, Irma, and Florence collectively served as a supply chain mega-disruption by causing billions in residential housing damages across Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico from 2017 to 2018. First, data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were used to measure housing damages caused by the mega-disruption in the four hurricane affected states and territories. Second, increased post-disaster demand for construction was calculated by comparing disaster damages against the volume of housing typically built by the residential construction industry according to the US Census. Finally, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) were utilized to measure how hurricane housing damages affected residential contractor labor wages and building material prices. Results indicate that the 2017–2018 hurricanes generated pricing surges, creating a mega-disruption to both residential construction labor and material supply chains.

As global warming impacts the climate, severe cases of droughts, abnormalities in precipitations, unusual patterns of hurricanes, and excessive heat are becoming more frequent. Excessive heat and droughts in US have made dehydration a problem on construction job sites. Despite the studies about the efficient use of water in buildings post occupancy, little has been explored about water consumption during the construction phase. Given this lack of focus, this study investigates drinking water consumption by construction personnel during construction of a new academic building located in Fort Myers, Florida. Daily potable water consumption data on a jobsite have been recorded during construction through daily interviews with site personnel. Regression analysis is used to examine the existence of correlations between daily humidity, temperature and precipitation data, and daily drinking water consumption by each construction worker. An artificial neural network model is also deployed to examine the existence of such a link.

Unpleasant indoor environmental quality (IEQ) can negatively affect occupant satisfaction and then increase the frequency of sick building syndrome. Office environments have been widely explored to improve IEQ and occupant satisfaction. However, the pandemic has changed work environments from regular offices to home-based work environments. IEQ factors could affect occupant satisfaction differently at home because home environments are mainly designed for living purposes other than working purposes. In addition, occupants with different genders and ages reported different requirements on IEQ to ensure satisfaction. The home-based work environments can be improved by evaluating how satisfaction changes when people work from home. Therefore, a survey was developed with a comprehensive list of indicators measuring IEQ factors’ impact on occupant satisfaction between different work environments. The demographic analysis, analysis of means, and t-test were used to evaluate how IEQ factors affect working experience differently. The findings show that both female and male participants reported an increased satisfaction regarding the visual, thermal, acoustic, layout, and air quality of home-based work environment.

Intermittent water supply (IWS) systems serve millions of people around the world. In many IWS systems, water supply through the piped network is rationed among sub-zones in the network following different scheduling schemes. When defining supply zones and developing their supply scheduling, utilities often aim to maximize users’ demand satisfaction while minimizing operating costs, with little attention given to the issue of water loss due to leakages. In this paper, we study the relationship of network zoning (and supply scheduling) with water losses through leakages in the network. A hydraulic model is developed to simulate the performance of IWS networks with the consideration of network leakages. The model is used to explore different variations of network zoning and/or supply scheduling for zones, subject to the operational feasibility of zones’ isolation valves. The model is demonstrated in a real network of a city in the Middle East. The results of the study show how changing network zones and/or their supply scheduling affects leakage rates, demand satisfaction, and supply efficiency. It was found that changing the supply schedule could save up to 22% of the leaked water while maintaining the same level of household demand satisfaction. The developed model can assist water utilities in reducing the non-revenue water due to leakages resulting in improved financial efficiency.

Wind energy is widely deployed and plays a key role in reducing the world’s dependency on fossil fuels. The first generation of wind turbines is now coming to the end of their service lives, and there are limited options for the reuse or recycling of the composite materials in the wind turbine blades. Wind turbine blades are composed of glass or glass and carbon fibers in a thermosetting polymer matrix, along with core materials including polymer foams and balsa. The nature of the composite materials and the monocoque construction of wind blades make it highly energy intensive to separate the materials and the parts for reuse. Most decommissioned wind blades are either landfilled or incinerated, due to the low cost of these processes. This paper reports on a novel case study to remanufacture decommissioned wind turbine blades and redeploy the blades as the primary load-carrying elements for high-voltage electrical transmission line structures. This research focuses on the development of an information framework for the material, environmental, and cost analyses for the successful repurposing of decommissioned construction elements. The framework utilizes material flow analysis to assess the amount of material used at each stage of the process and its environmental and cost implications.

A community’s overall resilience depends on the resilience of its infrastructure as well as its social and economic institutions. Each of these institutions are typically evaluated and modeled as separate entities and assessed individually to illustrate a community’s resilience to extreme events. While there has been work dedicated to how vulnerable populations are disproportionally impacted by extreme weather events, very little has been done to model how infrastructure systems and their day-to-day failures impact the socioeconomically vulnerable, and to what extent. Power utility construction planning, not only in terms of generation expansion and resiliency, but also in terms of public welfare, offer great opportunities for investigation and improvement. It has been theorized that energy justice can offer a decision-making tool that can assist energy planners and consumers in making more informed energy choices. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of an ongoing study that aims to understand how the socioeconomically vulnerable are impacted by power infrastructure failure in North Carolina. This paper describes an ongoing study that aims to identify (1) location specific trends of failed power infrastructure and (2) the North Carolina counties and associated socioeconomic factors that are disproportionally affected by failure events in terms of the duration of failure events.

Water-energy nexus (WEN) refers to the close interdependencies between water and energy resources and infrastructure. Despite the existing efforts on studying WEN from the technological, economic, and policy dimensions, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of the human dimension and the role it plays in WEN. To fill the knowledge gap, the objective of this study is to provide an overview of the human dimension in WEN. Key information regarding human aspects in WEN was extracted from 58 publications including journal articles and conference papers. According to the literature review, humans in WEN can be classified into three categories: end-users, operators, and decision-makers. Most of the current studies focused on end-users and decision-makers. Few studies have investigated operators’ behaviors and their impacts on WEN. Different methods, including interview, case study, data analysis, and simulation have been used to assess the human dimension in the literature. However, most of them fail to capture the dynamic human-WEN interactions in uncertain environments. Finally, different interventions on humans, such as policy initiatives, fiscal measures, and marketing strategies, were identified in the literature. The literature review provided an overview of how human dimension is currently considered in WEN and identified several important knowledge gaps, such as inadequacy of incorporating operators’ behaviors, dynamic behaviors, and interactions of humans under uncertain environments, and the effects of multifaceted interventions of human aspects into consideration. Identifying and addressing these knowledge gaps could facilitate a more integrated framework for studying WEN.

Energy-efficient technologies provide the means for improving energy performance and reducing the operating costs of buildings. In this study, energy-efficient technologies include smart thermostats, LED lighting, weatherization, and EnergyStar-rated appliances. While there is significant evidence regarding the benefits of energy-efficient technologies, not all homeowners decide to invest in such technologies. Motivations behind the adoption of energy-efficient technologies have been widely studied among homeowners, but previous research has primarily focused on urban and suburban areas. Limited literature exists on homeowners’ motivations to invest in energy-efficient technologies in rural areas of the US. Rural housing is generally older and less energy-efficient. Generally, households have a lower average income. This suggests that while housing may be in greater need of efficiency upgrades, financing such upgrades may be less attainable for some households. This study adopted a qualitative approach in six rural communities in Iowa (Boone, Nevada, Pella, Solon, Swisher, and Williamsburg), focusing on owner-occupied homes, hereafter referred to as homeowners. The interviews included twenty-five (N = 25) small-town rural homeowners. Through narrative analysis, results show that the motivation to invest in energy-efficient technologies was primarily related to renovation factors, financial factors, and behavioral factors. The qualitative data obtained from the interviews provide a more detailed description of rural homeowners’ motivation to invest in energy-efficient technologies, which can guide policymakers and designers in providing more accurate programs that consider rural homeowners’ motivations.

Resilient and sustainable development of urban areas under climate change requires strategies to compensate for the effects of the urban heat island (UHI). Currently, there are various urban heat island mitigation strategies (UHIMSs) used to alleviate the impact of the ever-rising temperatures. However, the effectiveness of such strategies should be assessed with respect to a multitude of parameters to ensure their resilience and sustainability. The review of the literature reveals there is lack of comprehensive models and clear performance measures that can aid practitioners in selecting the most appropriate mitigation method(s). This study presents a framework of a comprehensive model that incorporates the most common sustainable and resilience attributes and criteria. This work represents the skeleton needed to further develop an interactive computer-based decision support system (DSS) for selecting the most efficient UHIMS with respect to the preset criteria based on the resilience and strategy of the UHIMS considered.

The frequency and severity of natural disasters have increased significantly over the last two decades, and the length of time that the recovery requires is strongly dependent on the resiliency of critical infrastructure, particularly the drinking water and wastewater infrastructure. The goal of this research is to evaluate, analyze, and explore approaches to increase the resilience of water infrastructure. For this purpose, this study identified and investigated the challenges and risks imposed on the drinking and wastewater infrastructure by disasters, then proposed eight practical strategies for improving their resiliency. Eighty-seven articles from the existing literature were reviewed in detail, and 26 challenges and risks were identified and classified into four social, economic, environmental, and organizational categories. The results revealed that the speed and scale of the response needed in the affected communities are the two main organizational challenges, and salinity and vulnerability to flooding and heavy rains are the environmental challenges. Perception of communities and population growth are the social challenges, and low income and insufficient funding are the economic challenges. The results of this study revealed a need for policies that provide sufficient funding for the affected communities. The outcomes of this study will significantly help decision-makers to timely identify the challenges and adopt effective strategies to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters on the drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.

Preparing construction firms for an upcoming disaster is as important as community planning. While the latter has so much study and research go into it, the former is not given much importance as shown in the literature review. Resilience frameworks are designed to measure resilience of a community, a city, or state quantitatively or qualitatively. There are numerous frameworks based on state, disaster type input variables, and outcome from a framework. Indicators play a key role in any of the above-mentioned resilience frameworks. For each resilience framework designed in the past, there are several indicators that vary based on the type of disaster. The indicators also depend on whether the framework is designed for pre-disaster preparedness or post-disaster recovery. In this study, the resilience indicators used in the frameworks previously are identified and listed that could be used for a construction resilience framework. The authors of this study will address construction firms as one of the important firms to respond in case of a disaster occurrence. The objective is to identify indicators from the literature that are related to the construction industry. The methodology of this paper utilizes an existing tool that is used to develop resilience indicators. Conclusions include the identified resilience indicators and also discusses the scope of research that is currently being done by the authors.

In the United States, the residential sector accounts for 21% of all energy use. The adoption of energy efficient appliances can, in part, help reduce energy consumption in the residential sector. In turn, such reduction will lead to lower monthly utility bills, as well as lessening the carbon footprint formed as a result of residential energy use. The literature, as well as green building guidelines, such as LEED V4 for homes, recommend the use of energy-efficient appliances. However, the initial cost of these appliances can be significant. As such, there is a need to assess the economy of replacing traditional appliances with energy-efficient ones to ensure the financial feasibility of such approach. This paper presents a preliminary framework that defines and describes the interrelationship between the main parameters needed to calculate life-cycle costs in accordance with life-cycle cost analysis guidelines. Using this output, the financial feasibility of investing in energy-efficient home appliances can be determined. This paper should prove useful for promoting the use of green and energy efficient appliances at homes.

The accumulation of snow on roads during cold seasons can lead to a dramatic increase in road accidents. To mitigate the impacts of snow accumulation on roads, a sustainable and environment-friendly solution is crucial to increase the safety on the roads, the traffic flow capacity, and economic prosperity. Several studies have been conducted to explore possible alternatives for melting the snow accumulating on the surface of the pavement. Although many of them have succeeded in achieving this objective, they remain impractical from a sustainability point of view due to their high construction, operation, and maintenance cost. Hence, there is a need for more sustainable technological advancement that efficiently remove snow from the pavement surface at lower cost of construction and maintenance, impacts on the environment, and disturbance to the society. This paper proposes a more sustainable construction method to melt snow using electrically conductive pavement systems. The new construction method is comprised of using electrically conductive coatings applied to the surface of rigid pavement. The study findings ensure the effectiveness and the applicability of the proposed approach in terms of heating pavement surface adequately, and consequently melting the snow. Also, the new composite developed for coating the surface is made of relatively inexpensive and environment friendly materials to ensure the economic and environmental sustainability.