Fuzzy cluster approach for area FWD representative basin from deflection measurement spatial variability

The design of new buildings using Progressive Collapse criteria has become better understood since the nation's largest landlord, the General Services Administration (GSA), incorporated progressive collapse design criteria into their standard design requirements. Other institutions, such as the Department of Defense (DoD), also have incorporated progressive collapse design criteria into their design requirements for both new and existing structures. The DoD presents their progressive collapse requirements in the Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) document UFC 4-023-03 (25 January 2005), Design of Buildings to Resist Progressive Collapse. While there are numerous similarities between the UFC progressive collapse criteria and the GSA Progressive Collapse Guidelines, there are several key differences which can increase the time and cost of the design process, as well as the final construction cost of the project.

Comparative study on using static and dynamic finite element models to develop FWD measurement on flexible pavement structures

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) conducted two pilot Building Information Modeling (BIM) designs in 2005, published their BIM Roadmap in 2006, and hopes to be “fully BIM capable” by 2012, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) has only recently (Fall 2008) embarked on their BIM journey. Indeed, the USAF was much later than the USACE in promulgating their support of BIM, but their delay has the benefit of increased industry BIM knowledge and awareness. Consequently, the USAF initiative has the possibility of greater immediate Return on Investment (ROI) than the Army’s BIM initiative. This research assessed BIM’s impact on the design and construction phase of the two Army Corps of Engineers pilot construction projects and compared that to the USAF BIM approach based on Dynamic Prototyping. By establishing baseline data according to the Unified Facility Criteria (UFC) standard use category codes used across the Department of Defense, these BIM-based projects were evaluated for statistically significant performance differences compared to recent projects of similar use according to three metrics. These three metrics were cost growth, schedule growth, and construction timeline growth. After evaluating the data it was determined that all the BIM-based projects analyzed experienced statistically significant differences in their productivity metrics compared to recently constructed projects of the same type that have similar use. However, there was no significant trend in either positive or negative performance in the construction phase.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are responsive beneficial actions that promote a sustainable management of the ecosystems using nature (IUCN, 2016). Solutions include the restoration, modification, adaptability, and integration of natural ecosystems to address a problem. This concept has been applied globally following trackable standards adopted by non-government organizations (NGOs), federal governments, and the scientific community (IUCN, 2020). Erosion is highly associated to climate changes (precipitation patterns, sea level rise, wave actions). Coastal areas are affected directly by climate change causing loss and modifications of natural and man-made infrastructure (DoD, 2021) due to coastal erosion. The expected sea-level rise under the projected intermediate scenario for 2050 in the Caribbean region is 0.28 m with extreme expected social and economic impacts. Hurricanes María and Irma impacts over the Caribbean in 2017 evidenced the erosion challenges and urgency for using NbS. Barreto et al. (2021) demonstrated the impacts of sediment dynamics over coastal municipalities. In efforts to mitigate the potential impacts, available NbS best practices can be implemented. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) fund allocation towards coral reef restoration and the United States Department of Defense (DoD) investment in natural and hybrid infrastructure at their installations (DoD, 2021; Bridges et al., 2014) are good examples of government agencies‘ investments in NbS. The project presented herein focuses on identifying current solutions for coastal erosion problems applying nature-based practices by means of compiling existing best practices and tools to address coastal erosion problems. A systematic survey of peer-reviewed NbS was conducted by means of two primary mechanisms, namely (1) identifying solutions in prior literature reviews and compiling referenced material, and (2) searching standard bibliographic resources (i.e., Google Scholar) with relevant keyword searches such as “nature solutions + erosion”, “mimic nature + coastal erosion”, and “coastal erosion + ecosystems approach”. This project is expected to provide a set of criteria for assessing actions relative to ecological units (e.g., mangroves, wetlands, coral reefs), physical mechanisms promoting advantages (e.g., reducing wave action, retention of sediments, vegetation growth), level or degree of efficacy (e.g., low, medium, high) and actions functionality (e.g., is useful for tropical or island environments).

The electronics industry and the Department of Defense (DoD), has thousands of obsolete legacy automated test systems (ATS). There are many systems, with different hardware and software architectures, that cannot be upgraded. The inability to reliably test products, diagnose faults, and collect historical data is having an effect on mission readiness. This paper describes a test and diagnostic system model that provides a means to use historical test and repair data from all levels of operation. The process reduces rework costs and decreases maintenance and repair costs through earlier and more accurate fault isolation. This work recoups the efforts of the original developer and captures test and diagnostic knowledge for the future. Consequently, the concept has been proposed for implementation within the Army ATS/TPS centers for use at the Army maintenance depots. Additional benefits from this work: development of a reliability database for system, subsystem, component by test type and ATS; tracking system reliability and mission performance data for use in developing requirements for new or upgrade system procurement specifications; and for pushing diagnostic knowledge and support from the sustainment level to the field and vice versa. The work presented will change the process of developing, maintaining and migrating diagnostic test now and into the future.

As former U.S. Army Surgeon General Horoho points out, a large fraction of what determines the health and readiness of our military families does not occur during appointments with professionals, but rather within the "Lifespace-where health really happens...." Indeed, when children of military families experience psychosocial difficulties, such stress impacts the service members' personal well-being and ability to focus at work, impairing their capacity to attend to the mission. As such, the Department of Defense (DoD) has instituted a family readiness system to bolster resiliency within military families, including children, e.g., by linking families with support networks. Bolstering military family resiliency, including the prevention of and effective intervention for child psychosocial problems, is an important issue at all levels of the DoD. Service members, leaders, and policy makers have a vested interest in promoting mission readiness and a healthy force. Research can play an important role in shaping decision-making by consolidating what is currently known and not known about a particular expertise area. To date, there has been no consolidation of research regarding outcomes associated with military community support and the programs that currently exist to bolster child and family resiliency. Given the importance of military families to mission readiness, a review of the relevant research is warranted. This commentary article reviews the literature on community support for military children, provides an overview of currently available resources, discusses concerns with the current provision of support services to military families, and offers recommendations for future research, policy, and implementation of military community support programs. Although there is a dearth of research on available support programs, there appears to be no lack of services available to military families. However, several steps could be taken to make these resources into a more supportive system. Family members must be able to identify what support services exist, distinguish which service is most suitable for their needs, and be able to readily access these services in a resource-conserving manner. Considerable overlap in support services seems to suggest limited coordination between organizations and service providers, particularly in regard to the government/civilian interface, which inherently lies outside of DoD control. This overlap suggests a redundancy, which may not be efficient economically or in regard to accessing support. There also may be some confusion over which support service is most suitable for the consumer's need. Although some overlap is useful, such as the provision of different services to different populations (e.g., having separate programs for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine subcultures), limited organization and parsimonious provision of services makes it particularly difficult for spouses and family members to navigate resources. Initial attempts are being made to organize and consolidate resources in both the government and civilian sectors. However, it is clear that these initiatives have not completely solved problems related to resource access, redundancy, and lack of research-supported efficacy.

Every year, the Department of Defense (DoD) invests billions of dollars on the development of major defense acquisition programs. In return, many of these weapon systems have been plagued with cost overruns and schedule delays during the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase. Under conflicting guidance, DoD and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggest that weapon systems should contain subsystems with relatively mature technologies (based on the Technology Readiness Level of critical technologies) and design mature (based on the percentage of releasable design drawings) during system development. However, there has been no published research to date on the relationship between technology and design maturity guidance and the resulting cost change and schedule change of DoD weapon systems. The research presented in this paper confirms that the GAO guidance for design maturity can lead to a reduction of cost growth and schedule slippage of DoD weapon systems. In contrast, the research indicates that technology maturity guidance only impacts the schedule change of weapon systems, and not the potential cost change. With the quantitative results from the research, DoD and GAO officials can provide additional guidance to the planning and execution of the EMD phase, such as allocation of research and development funds to maturity achievement efforts.

Concrete Slabs are warped by the temperature differences within slabs, and there are possibility that the contact between slabs and base course is lost. The deflection mesurements by the FWD test operated under such conditions are influenced by the contact condition. Consequently, the backcaluculation moduli of the same concrete pavement differs according to the time of test. In this paper, from the results of the FWD test on the controlled test pavement operated continuously in the period of 24 hours, the relationship among the slab temperature difference, the deflection measurement, the effect of load transfer, backcalculated k-value were investigationed. As the results, the backcalculated k-value were able to correct accorging to the slab temperature gradient.

Recent studies have concluded that measured surface deflections can be used as a low-cost pavement monitoring and condition assessment tool to determine remaining structural life and pavement performance. Moving load devices are being used more often to measure continuous surface deflections. They are considered a faster alternative to falling weight deflectometer–based structural condition evaluation applications. The objective of the study was to compare the analytical dynamic simulation of slow-moving deflection measurements with field data. The surface pavement deflections and the pavement structural responses generated by the Euroconsult Curviametro loading at the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s MnROAD facility near Maplewood, Minnesota, were used in the evaluations. Four geophones were embedded near the pavement surface to measure surface deflections during field trials at each of three tested MnROAD cells. In addition, numerous other sensors, such as strain gauges and thermocouple trees, were available at the MnROAD facility. The 3D-Move program was used in the simulations because it can accommodate moving loads and the viscoelastic properties of pavement layers and produce continuous deflection basins. The viscoelastic properties of pavement layers were estimated on the basis of the actual temperatures at the time of the field trials and the appropriate loading frequency of the Curviametro. The proposed dynamic analytical model provided a good match with a variety of independent pavement responses, which included surface deflection basins (measured by embedded geophone sensors) as well as horizontal strains at the bottom of the asphalt concrete layers (measured by MnROAD sensors).

Global health engagement (GHE) is an integral part of the cooperation efforts of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the geographic combatant commands (GCCs) with partner nations and provides support in training and preparing their military and civilian health systems. These activities encompass a wide spectrum of engagements-military-to-military, military-to-civilian, and multilateral-and support joint missions of humanitarian aid and disaster response, deterrence, access and presence, counterterrorism, and homeland defense. Global health engagements and activities require extensive planning, funding, and resource allocation within the GCCs and component commands. For a continuously growing breadth of GHE and the need to support joint exercises with partner military and civilian medical professionals for partner capacity-building, GHE also requires a robust information technology infrastructure. In this study, the authors assess the technology and process requirements to support the life cycle of GHE activities and assessments-from planning to evaluation-and the information- and knowledge-sharing needs of the GHE community. To do so, they conducted a literature review related to GHE activities, funding sources, and stakeholders; the evolution of technology solutions to support GHE; systems in use by GHE practitioners; and technology solutions in the market, focusing particularly on cloud infrastructure and services and cloud service providers. They held discussions with GHE subject-matter experts to document and analyze GHE technology platform requirements. And they assessed the available and planned platforms according to their features, enhancements, support and maintenance, data integration, interoperability, and future road maps.

FWD testing and backcalculation have been conducted on pavement evaluation for many years. However, none of the existing backcalculation procedure is guaranteed to give reasonable moduli values for every deflection basin measured. To increase the precision of the backcalculation moduli, a new backcalculation procedure based on Extended Bayesian Method (EBM) was described in this paper. The advantage of EBM is to utilize prior information of pavement layers, as well as deflection for backcalculation of pavement. The practical backcalculation of FWD common test measurements indicates that the layer moduli of pavement can be estimated properly by this procedure, and the results are stable and reasonable. Finally, the influence of prior information on backcalculated results is also discussed.

Food-web models use the effect size of trophic interactions to predict consumer-resource dynamics. These models anticipate that strong effects of consumers increase spatial and temporal variability in abundance of species, whereas weak effects dampen fluctuations. Empirical evidence indicates that opposite patterns may occur in natural assemblages. Here I show that spatial variance in the distribution of resource populations is sensitive to changes in the variance of the trophic interaction, in addition to the mean effect of consumers, relative to other causes of spatial variability. Simulations indicate that both strong and weak direct effects of consumers can promote spatial variability in abundance of resources, but only trophic interactions with a large mean effect size can reduce variation. Predictions of the model agree with the results of repeated field experiments and are consistent with data from published consumer-resource interactions, proving to be robust across widely varying environmental conditions and species' life histories. Thus, food-web models that embody variance in trophic interactions may have increased capacity to explain the wide range of effects of consumers documented in empirical studies.

The purpose of this study was to relate the temporal and spatial variability of corn ( Zea mays L.) grain yield on a Typic Fragiochrept soil on a hillslope to soil properties and topographic features. Corn grain yields were sampled from a field that measured 280 by 150 m using a grid and five transects. One‐hundred forty yield measurements were taken on the grid (1983–1985) and 190 measurements on the transects (1984 and 1985) from plots 5.3 m long and two corn rows wide. Measurements of soil surface elevation, soil organic matter (OM), P, and K contents were also taken at the grid plot locations. These data were analyzed using the methods of spectral analysis. Yield spatial and temporal variability was strongly related to surface undulations and the value of surface curvature was found to be a useful parameter to quantify variations in topography. The intra‐annual differences in weather had the largest effect on grain yield at locations where the magnitude of curvature was large. Where the magnitude of curvature was small, the correlations of yield for the wet (1984) and dry (1985) years were highly significant. Yields correlated with soil P, K, and OM only in the dry year, 1985. Yields in the relatively dry years (1983 and 1985) correlated with depth to fragipan. Elevation data helped us interpret the spatial and temporal variability of grain yield by separation of areas with convex curvature from areas with concave curvature.

In 1966, Dr Douglas H. Cato began his investigation of ambient noise in Australian waters as part of the Royal Australian Navy Research Laboratory’s Project BARRABOOL. His research involved identifying and understanding the various ambient noise mechanisms that limit the performance of operational sonar systems in Australian waters. He is responsible for the “Cato Curves” of ocean noise, which have been used extensively for predicting sonar performance. Similarly, his understanding of the ocean environment and the spatial and temporal variability of ambient undersea noise is exploited by the Royal Australian Navy to ensure effective sonar and submarine performance. Dr Cato is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and his research achievements are published in international peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and as book chapters in reference texts in underwater acoustics. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Minister’s Achievement Award in Defence Science for his outstanding contributions in underwater acoustics and the effect of sound on marine mammals. This presentation provides examples of Doug’s achievements in defence science and their significance to the Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Defence.

The Department of Defense and the Navy have adopted policies to implement Environmental Management Systems (EMS) in accordance with Executive Order 13148 by December 31, 2005. The Navy has published a draft guidance document identifying the content of a compliant EMS structured around five major components and 16 elements within those components. However, the full benefit of an EMS in motivating behaviors that go beyond compliance and directly show environmental contributions to mission accomplishment and readiness will not be achievable with a conventional EMS solely oriented toward management of the four environmental program pillars. We recommend that the EMS interconnect both the compliance and voluntary activities of environmental management with the business cycle (the set of iterative activities an organization uses to develop, deliver, and support its products and services) and the measures of success that characterize both types of processes within the enterprise. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.