ABSTRACT Temporary traffic management (TTM) is transitioning from prescriptive standards to risk-informed approaches in New Zealand and other jurisdictions. Whether practices adopted under the ‘risk-based’ label align with established risk analysis and uncertainty characterisation literature has not been evaluated. This study addresses that gap through a systems-level documentary analysis. Regulatory, guidance, training, procurement, and academic documents are coded across a five-stage decision cycle and mapped against two benchmarks: Paté-Cornell’s uncertainty treatment levels and Aven’s risk description framework (A′, C′, Q, K). The resulting maturity profile places New Zealand’s TTM system at Levels 1–2 across all five stages. Hazards are identified from generic lists, consequences described with fixed categories, no explicit uncertainty measure accompanies any stage, and background knowledge is disconnected from risk descriptions. The system uses the language of risk-informed decision-making without producing the risk descriptions the benchmarks require. Improvement requires explicit risk descriptions proportionate to site exposure, complexity, and consequence – not necessarily advanced probabilistic methods. The benchmarking method is replicable and can be applied by other jurisdictions to their own TTM systems.

ABSTRACT International transportation projects (ITPs) play an important role in eliminating cross-border and regional transportation bottlenecks, and the development of global trade. The ITPs face high uncertainties due to the dynamic external environment and the complexity of international stakeholders, hence are more often experiencing suspensions and cancellations during the whole project lifecycle from development and design to construction and operation. However, there is currently a lack of systematic analysis regarding the discontinuation of ITP lifecycle. This study adopts a case data mining method to analyze the discontinuation of ITPs and the impact factors from a systematic view of whole life cycle (WLC) perspective. The results reveal the dynamics of the impact factors for project suspension and cancellation. The project type and regional analysis reveal distinguished distributions of the key impact factors. The cognitive mapping of stakeholders discovers that the local government is the primary initiator of suspension and cancellation, and the foreign policy banks and host government institutions are the recipients of the negative consequences. Suggestions are provided to practitioners in civil engineering and researchers in ITPs to help better understand and systematically eliminate the discontinuation of the projects.

ABSTRACT Earthquakes can damage enterprise housing and infrastructure, resulting in production shutdown and potential losses, especially in the urban consumer service industry. Therefore, in this study, we propose a method to assess the seismic resilience of the urban consumer service industry based on existing resilience frameworks. This method evaluates the impact of earthquakes and its recovery characteristics in terms of the ground motion intensity, damage state of industry premises , industry type, and regional characteristics, considering both time and financial loss dimensions. Based on field investigationsas well as expert experience, we presented a method to calculate the recovery time of hotel and catering enterprises. Based on the statistical results, the seismic resilience grading standards were developed for the enterprises, and eight resilience enhancement measures and their effects were provided. Based on this framework, the seismic resilience of the enterprises in Moxi Town was evaluated under the Luding earthquake scenario. The proposed calculation method yielded results that were in good agreement with the actual values, which can reflect the seismic resilience of urban consumer service enterprises and facilitate the government and enterprises in reducing the impact of earthquakes by pre-earthquake planning and post-earthquake emergency responses.

ABSTRACT To shed light on the mechanism of long-term pitting evolution for commercial AA5005-H34 aluminium (Al) alloy applied in marine environments, this study conducted continuous immersion experiments in 30°C stagnant natural seawater for as long as 17 months. The test alloy exhibited excellent overall corrosion resistance. Pitting of AA5005-H34 Al alloys in the 30°C stagnant natural seawater, irrespective of whether corrosion is expressed as mass loss, maximum pit depths or the average of the 15 deepest pits, shows a non-linear (piecewise) trend as a function of exposure period. The data trends are similar to a power-law trend. Alternatively, they can also be interpreted as similar to the early part of a bi-modal model. The uncertainty of the 15 deepest pits was analysed by Gumbel extreme value distribution and the deepest pits on each data set showed a various degree of scatter against the Gumbel lines. This deviation is attributed to the non-homogeneous nature of the pit populations, which may include individual hemispherical pits, pits with daughter pits at the bottom, pits developed over the surface defects and coalesced hemispherical pits.

ABSTRACT Starting from a resilience assessment of Harare's water supply, the system interactions of the city’s water management arrangements are explored through a series of causal loop diagrams. These are based on economic, physical, commercial, environmental, and social subsystems and the reinforcing and balancing loops that influence key variables of interest in each are identified. The analysis identifies a series of shortcomings including a weak provider-customer relationship, limited governance capacity, inadequate coordination and integration between key players, shortfalls in physical supply and critical infrastructure, environmental degradation, and a lack of disaster response and recovery measures. A series of strategies are proposed as intervention actions that target the areas of potential leverage identified in the causal loop analysis, including improving customer-provider relationships; increasing coordination, collaboration, and integration; developing physical and informational infrastructure and enhancing environmental protection and rehabilitation. The impacts of these strategies are highlighted as strengthening key elements of the causal loop diagrams and addressing the resilience gaps identified. The systems mapping approach reveals that key issues are large-scale, cross-sectoral, and compounding. Remediation strategies must therefore also be multi-faceted and holistic in scope.

ABSTRACT We are in the Systems Age of development and facing a number of related critical issues at a range of temporal and physical scales. These now threaten the world’s environment and the human race’s place in it. This paper discusses the array of problems involved and the need to tackle them at the systems level, to identify sustainable solutions and resilience measures to avoid large scale undesirable outcomes. There is a need to avoid the usual conclusion after such events that ‘lessons must be learned’.

ABSTRACT The paper presents a simplified vulnerability assessment method for unreinforced masonry buildings based on the evaluation of a few structural parameters, which can be determined from visual inspection and a geometry survey. The authors proposed an empirical approach with the aim to assess the in-plane vulnerability quickly by predicting the damage failure of bearing masonry walls. Field observations reveal different behaviours: out-of-plane and in-plane seismic responses. Several simplified assessments focus on out-of-plane behaviour. Few studies deal with in-plane seismic behaviour, which is also the expected response for more masonry buildings. The proposed seismic method provides a vulnerability index, which is evaluated as the weighted sum of 10 parameters markedly affecting the in-plane seismic performance. The reliability of the method is investigated through an application on buildings located in Central Italy, damaged by the 2016 earthquake. The mean damage and damage probability distributions were predicted for each building using the proposed method. Then, fragility functions were estimated from the results of non-linear static analysis, and the damage probability distributions were derived. The capability of the simplified method to foresee the damage probabilities was confirmed by a comparison between different approaches, confirming the reliability of the method in large-scale seismic assessment.

ABSTRACT The author’s reply to David Elms welcomes the supportive comments and offers a visualisation of the body of knowledge required of a systems engineer, building on the ‘T-shaped' person construct. The systems engineer requires a series of pillars of deep domain knowledge, acquired throughout a lifetime of experience, with serial capstones representing the synthesis and integration of that knowledge. Many of the capstones should be from the distant territories of ‘liberal arts' – leading to ‘Stonehenge-shaped people'.

ABSTRACT This study aims to present a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for comprehensive performance evaluation of the alternative design of timber–concrete composite (TCC) floor system. Considered objectives are serviceability and sustainability performance with associated criterion as (1) comfort class regarding springiness and vibrations, (2) architectural quality with associated criterion as open spaces, (3) environmental aspect with associated criterion as CO2 emissions and (4) cost aspect with associated criterion as the total costs. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) as the methods in the multi-criteria analysis have been combined for (1) determining the weighting of criteria based on the survey results, (2) verifying the consistency ratio of decision matrix made by experts and (3) for ranking and selecting the optimal concept design among design candidates. According to the results, the TCC floor with the span length of 7.3 m belonging to comfort class A has got the highest ranking. However, sensitivity analysis indicates that the TCC floor with a 9.0 m span length belonging to comfort class A shall be selected as the optimal concept design. The study contributes by developing a complete concept design tool for TCC floor systems using AHP combined COPRAS methods to handle both beneficial and non-beneficial criteria.