Abstract

Public consultation is an important decision-aiding process in environmental impact assessment (EIA) and aids in building up consensus between various stakeholders, primarily the local public. In this meta-analysis, proceedings of 100 public hearings (PHs) recorded in the Indian state of Gujarat were analysed for the views of local public between environmental issues and others while an industry is being set up across five sectors – bulk drug and drug intermediates, cement, highway projects, oil and gas exploration and thermal power plants. The analysis shows that environmental issues are only 33% of the total issues raised, while socio-economic, infrastructure, PH process, track record and other general issues cover 21%, 13%, 2%, 12% and 19%, respectively. This implies that irrespective of sector or project local socio-economic and developmental concerns outweigh environmental issues and the current PH process is not able to get the appropriate inputs and insights from the stakeholders in improving the environmental decision-making. In light of these, some alternatives for strengthening the EIA-PH process is proposed in the paper

Abstract

Road infrastructure in countries like India is expanding at a rapid pace and is becoming increasingly difficult for authorities to identify and fix the bad roads in time. Current Geographical Information Systems (GIS) lack information about on-road features like road surface type, speed breakers and dynamic attribute data like the road quality. Hence there is a need to build road monitoring systems capable of collecting such information periodically. Limitations of satellite imagery with respect to the resolution and availability, makes road monitoring primarily an on-field activity. Monitoring is currently performed using special vehicles that are fitted with expensive laser scanners and need skilled resource besides providing only very low coverage. Hence such systems are not suitable for continuous road monitoring. Cheaper alternative systems using sensors like accelerometer and GPS (Global Positioning System) exists but they are not equipped to achieve higher information levels. This paper presents a prototype system MAARGHA (MAARGHA in Sanskrit language means an eternal path to solution), which demonstrates that it can overcome the disadvantages of the existing systems by fusing multi-sensory data like camera image, accelerometer data and GPS trajectory at an information level, apart from providing additional road information like road surface type. MAARGHA has been tested across different road conditions and sensor data characteristics to assess its potential applications in real world scenarios. The developed system achieves higher information levels when compared to state of the art road condition estimation systems like Roadroid. The system performance in road surface type classification is dependent on the local environmental conditions at the time of imaging. In our study, the road surface type classification accuracy reached 100% for datasets with near ideal environmental conditions and dropped down to 60% for datasets with shadows and obstacles

Abstract

In the recent past there is increased interest in detection and extraction of buildings using object based approaches on given high to very high resolution imagery. In this paper, we introduce a new unsupervised approach to detect buildings from the very high resolution (VHR) multispectral satellite image. Independent component analysis (ICA) followed by Otsu thresholding is used for extraction of multicoloured buildings of diversified size and shape. QuickBird imageof Legaspi city has been used to analyze the technique and detection results obtained from three subset images indicate average detection percentage of 84.35 % along with 38.19 % branch factor value. Object-level evaluation results give 72.48% for fully detected buildings count

Abstract

Many countries have their own building codes-of-practice for earthquake resistant design of structures. These codes provide conventional approach to earthquake resistant design of buildings with sufficient strength, stiffness and inelastic deformation capacity to withstand a given level of earthquake generated force. Under a given earthquake, the level of damage to a structure is greatly influenced by nonlinear capacity of its members. Even when the nonlinear capacities are same, the overall damage is critically influenced by the structure’s shape, size and geometry.This paper presents the research on the influence of aspect ratio on overall damage of the structure subjected to earthquake loading. In this paper a numerical study is carried out for 3 benchmark structures, with an aspect ratio (height to widthratio) of 3, 1 and 0.3, to define failure pattern in nonlinear state. Nonlinear static pushover analysis is performed to understand the capacity of structure and expended energy based damage assessment is used to estimate the damage. The results are compared in terms of damage, displacement and plastic hinge pattern

Abstract

n present scenario buildings with floating columns are of typical feature in the modern multistorey construction practices in urban India. Such types of constructions are highly undesirable in building built in seismically active areas. This paper studies the analysis of a G+5 storey normal building and a G+5 storey floating column building for external lateral forces. The analysis is done by the use of SAP 2000. This paper also studies the variation of the both structures by applying the intensities of the past earthquakes i.e., applying the ground motions to the both structures, from that displacement time history values are compared. This study is to find whether the structure is safe or unsafe with floating column when built in seismically active areas and also to find floating column building is economical or uneconomical.

Abstract

The 7.8 M earthquake occurred in south east Iran on 16 April 2013 at 10: 44: 20 UTC. This earthquake was the most massive earthquake in last 50 years, with tremors felt across Pakistan, Oman and UAE. According to BHRC (Iranian Building and Housing Research Center) report, this event was recorded by 33 digital accelerographs in Iran Strong Ground Motion Network. The peak acceleration was recorded in Sabz Gazz seismic station. This study presents simulation of near-field ground motions of the 2013 Iran earthquake. For this purpose, five seismic stations are selected to simulate ground motions using semi-empirical approach. Hamzehloo and Mahood (2012) attenuation relationship for south east Iran is used to obtain acceleration waveformenvelope function. Acomparison is done on characteristics of observed and simulated ground motions. The simulated results are satisfactory at many of the seismic stations. It is concluded that higher frequencies (2-10 Hz) of simulated ground motions match with observed ground motions.

Abstract

The term natural hazard implies a natural phenomenon which may cause direct damage, injury, or harm to those in its path (Selby, 1993). In India, natural disasters majorly relates to its climatic conditions. For example disasters like droughts, flash floods, cyclones, avalanches, landslides by rains etc are the cause of massive loss of life and property. On the other side earthquakes also causes a major threat to the nation, where seismically triggered landslides are one among the many types of hazards. This hazard has greatly increased because of the expansion of commercial and residential development in to earthquake-prone slope side locations. Most moderate and large earthquakes produce ground motions that can trip Landslides, which poses a double threat to those living in these risk areas. This study mainly focuses on the threat assessment of buildings located on slopes prevalent to earthquake hazard and to develop a Slope Hazard Zonation Map for an area of interest. Keywords: Natural hazards, Earthquake risk, Landslides, Threat map.

Abstract

Capture the mechanical behaviour of RC frame systems subjected to Lateral loading and estimating the damage state of structure are still changing tasks in civil engineering

Abstract

Crustal deformation in vertical direction is higher at convergent plate marg other plate margins. Even though there are three types of convergent plate mar continental-continental plate, oceanic-continental plate and oceani considers only the interaction between oceanic plate and continental plate lithospheric mantle to understand the topography effect on continental plate. T element models are developed and analyzed using commercially availabl Contact properties are defined between plates so that effect of friction is calc an elasto-visco rheology and analysis is carried for 30000 years. The mo nclination angles leading to subduction or collision effects the length of vertic Also, increasing the coefficient of friction decreases the vertical deforma amount of subsidence. This study concludes inclination angle and coefficient role for the development of higher topographic regions at convergent plate mar asupuleti and Pradeep Kumar Ramancharla. This is an open access article distributed un use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properl evolved to be one of the most aining the behaviour of rigid the earth’s surface leading to Convergent, Divergent and dynamic evolution of the, 1965). One of the nteraction leading to different re found where tectonic plates te boundaries comprise both At subduction zones geological suggest that convergence is plate (oceanic plate) r oceanic plate). At collisional plates are both continental in the other carries a magmatic. In simple the continental ion) normally follows the convergent forces of lateral Turcotte and Schubert, bservations show that vertical surface near convergent …

Abstract

Improperly designed brick masonry walls cause undesirable effects under seismic loading in both brick masonry in-filled reinforced concrete (RC) frames and masonry load bearing wall structures. Doors and windows (openings) are unavoidable components in brick masonry in-filled RC structures and masonry load bearing wall structures because of its functional and ventilation requirements. The presence of openings in brick masonry walls reduces the lateral stiffness and strength of the wall in both RC and load bearing structures, which changes the actual behavior of structure. If these openings are located in the restricted zones like areas within middle two thirds of a wall wall, then the wall needs to be strengthened by providing necessary horizontal/vertical (bands) structural elements such as lintel or lintel bands around them. Lack of such structural elements may cause the structure to undergo severe damage during the earthquake event. In this paper, two case studies,(a) the presence of openings in infill wall with or without lintel and lintel band (b) the presence of openings in load bearing wall with or without lintel and lintel band is studied, to know the nonlinear response of brick masonry in-filled RC frame and load bearing wall under seismic loading. To understand the behaviour of the infilled frames and load bearing wall, a two dimensional (2D) infilled frame and load bearing wall is modeled and analyzed using a tool based on Applied Element Method (AEM). Nonlinear static pushover (SPO) is performed to estimate capacity of the models.