Land Surface Temperature (LST) is a key phenomenon in worldwide climate change. The knowledge of surface temperature is important to a range of issues and themes in earth sciences, central to urban climatology, global environmental change, and human-environment interactions. In this study, LST for Kushtia District, Khulna division, Bangladesh, is derived using Arc-GIS software version from the images of Landsat 8 Optical Land Imager (OLI) of 30 m resolution and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIR) data of 100 m resolution, Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) with opto-mechanical sensor and Spatial Resolution of 30 m (60 m – thermal, 15-m panchromatic) and Landsat-5 Thematic MAPPER (TM) satellites. A total time span of 20 years, starting from 1998 to 2018 is selected. At every 5 years interval starting from 1998, air temperature, LST, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) have been calculated. Using the equation from Landsat user’s handbook, the digital number of thermal infrared band is converted into spectral radiance. Plank’s Inverse Function is used to obtain the effective at-sensor brightness temperature from the spectral radiance. The surface emissivity based on NDVI classes is used to retrieve the final LST. The study reveals that LST is increasing with the passage of time. Maximum values of LST are found along the North-East and North-West regions of Kushtia district. NDVI is found to have positive correlation with LST. Also, it has been found that NDWI has little influence on LST. The reasons behind the rise and fall of LST in different years are explained from changes in total vegetation coverage and total abundance of water body coverage viewpoint. The spatial distribution figures of air temperature, LST, NDVI and NDWI could be used as a guideline for urban planning, strategies for quality improvement of urban environment and a smart solution to the reduction of LST.

This descriptive study aims to assess the knowledge and awareness of road safety among university students. The study was conducted among students in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia by means of questionnaire disseminated online via social media with shareable link to a Google form. The respondents were self-selected to participate in this study where their responses were self-administrated. Questionnaire consisted of 3 sections included demographic information, knowledge on road signs and road safety law, and road safety awareness. 371 students participated in this study, 66% of them age 23 to 27 years old, 61% were female, 92.5% of respondents have at least one type of license with majority agreed that occurrence of accidents resulted in an increase in road safety awareness. The study found that more than half of the participants could not recognise road sign like parking totally prohibited and speed limit ends here. While, 38% of them correctly identified posted speed limit for expressway. Overall, participants have fair understanding on road safety. Therefore, road safety programmes and education are still relevant to university students as young drivers on the road which is important to increase safety awareness.

This study provides the behaviour of university students using smartphone on daily basis and while driving, and exploring their perception towards the road safety of such habits. World Health Organisation states that distracted driving due to smartphone usage has been the uprising cause of road traffic injuries especially among young drivers. This study will provide knowledge in enforcing the right mitigation measures in preventing such behaviour from growing. The results from this study can also be integrated in intelligent transportation system in traffic accident prevention programme. This survey is conducted at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia with a sample size of 371 respondents with majority of them aged 21 to 25 (86.6%) who own smartphone (100%) and private vehicle (59.1%). Results found that university student are dependent of their smartphone on daily basis for alarm (94.3%), communication and socialisation (73.9%). They tend to use their smartphone while driving, at traffic light (68.4%) and during traffic congestion (61.0%), often for maps navigations (69.8%) and to make call (57.4%) in hands-free mode. Despite knowing the danger of this behaviour (97.3%), they ignored the risks and committed such offenses. Hence, the need for education and enforcement are significant and relevant among university students to prevent such behaviours from growing.

The major assumption of the analysis of plates with large deflection is that the middle surface displacements are not zeros. The determination of the middle surface displacements, u0 and v0 along x- and y- axes respectively is the major challenge encountered in large deflection analysis of plate. Getting a closed-form solution to the long standing von Karman large deflection equations derived in 1910 have proven difficult over the years. The present work is aimed at deriving a new general linear and nonlinear free vibration equation for the analysis of thin rectangular plates. An elastic analysis approach is used. The new nonlinear strain displacement equations were substituted into the total potential energy functional equation of free vibration. This equation is minimized to obtain a new general equation for analyzing linear and nonlinear resonating frequencies of rectangular plates. This approach eliminates the use of Airy’s stress functions and the difficulties of solving von Karman's large deflection equations. A case study of a plate simply supported all-round (SSSS) is used to demonstrate the applicability of this equation. Both trigonometric and polynomial displacement shape functions were used to obtained specific equations for the SSSS plate. The numerical results for the coefficient of linear and nonlinear resonating frequencies obtained for these boundary conditions were 19.739 and 19.748 for trigonometric and polynomial displacement functions respectively. These values indicated a maximum percentage difference of 0.051% with those in the literature. It is observed that the resonating frequency increases as the ratio of out–of–plane displacement to the thickness of plate (w/t) increases. The conclusion is that this new approach is simple and the derived equation is adequate for predicting the linear and nonlinear resonating frequencies of a thin rectangular plate for various boundary conditions.

As the construction industry continues to evolve globally, there is a need to develop best practices geared towards achieving sustainable construction. Asphalt concrete’s demand has been increasing steadily with an estimated global demand of 122.5 million tons in 2019. This is driven primarily by the growth in construction activities in developing countries as each country works towards enhancing its transportation facilities to cater to the ever-expanding population. Hence, there are needs to develop newer and more efficient means of asphalt consumption. One of such is identifying cheaper or waste materials for use in Asphalt production. This study, therefore, examined the viability of waste marble dust (WMD), an industrial waste produced during the shaping and polishing of marble blocks and also during its extraction from the mines, as a mineral filler in Hot-mix asphalt (HMA) concrete. Engineering properties such as Marshall stability and flow, Void characteristics, Indirect tensile strength and Tensile strength ratio properties were examined. It was observed that the addition of WMD steadily increased the Marshall Stability and indirect tensile strength values and lowered the voids percentages. The study’s major finding is that waste marble dust is highly suitable as a mineral filler in HMA and a 3% by volume addition of WMD in HMA at 4.5% binder content produced the most optimal mix for use in road pavements.

Construction projects are getting progressively complex and their scales are getting sophisticated. Along these lines, it is getting more problematic to finish the projects inside planned cost limits. In Oromia public building construction projects these problems were raised as a typical challenge. Hence, evaluation of factors affecting the accuracy of cost estimation in public projects was the aim of this study. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized for information assortment. Relative Importance Index (RII) was utilized for information investigation. Totally sixty -two variables were investigated and the best five most significant were selected by this assessment based on the average view of respondents. These significant factors are; Material price/accessibility /source /quality /imports, Experience and ability of the consultant, Variability in the Economy of the country, and financial conditions of client. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients (rho) investigation was conducted by the assistance of SPSS 20 version for a testing level of connections among respondents on the positioning of the factors affecting the accuracy of cost estimation. Spearman’s rank correlation results were 0.823 among Clients and Consultants, 0.813 among clients and contractors, and 0.802 among Consultants and Contractors. The outcome shows that the rate of the rank correlations was a high positive number, which implies there is a positive connection between them on the ranking of factors disturbing the accurateness of cost estimation in public building construction projects in western Oromia.

The footbridges in rural areas have been crucial as the only mean to overcome the rural isolation and allow breaking the cycle of poverty by providing access to such development facilities like education opportunities, markets, medical clinics and other basic services. In Rwanda, under collaboration with Engineers without Borders from German, and International Non-Government Organization Bridge to Prosperity (B2P, some footbridges are already built. In line with the agreement with B2P around 355 bridges are also planned in 5 years. The key challenge is to optimally allocate resources in order to maintain this number of bridges, especially under the current financial constraints. The purpose of this paper was to investigate and propose a pedestrian footbridge management system for Rwanda (PFBMS) which should allow the efficient bridge management, through the analysis of condition data, determination of the ranking and priority of bridge maintenance activities, as well as evaluation of the alternatives of preservation or replacement. The methodology comprises of the use of interview and discussions with district engineers in charge of bridge management, local community using the constructed footbridges as well as bridge builders from B2P. Microsoft Excel analysis tool has been used to developing the deterioration model, and therefore the PFBM was proposed. It is concluded that this system can accurately predict optimal maintenance planning as well as bridge rating.

Libya use a volumetric analysis in designing asphalt mixtures, which can also be upgraded in hot weather. However, the condition of some roads was further down than the required level. Rutting is one of the major defects that occur in asphalt pavements in the southern desert of Libya and severely influence the drive-ability. A questionnaire surveys and laboratory experiments were performed for a few mixes under representative temperature and traffic load. In laboratory, rutting test conducted on two different asphalt mixtures. The first mix used an asphalt binder B (60/70) at optimum bitumen content, another mixture developed using the Superpave design procedure with the same materials and performance asphalt binder grade PG (70-10). The questionnaire survey was distributed to 55 engineers and specialists in the field. The interview was conducted to a few others and the factors that leading to poor performance of asphalt roads were listed. Considering and improving of these factors will play an important role to improve the pavement performances, longer service life and lower maintenance costs. Asphalt concrete pavements (ACP) should use asphalt binder which is less affected by pavement temperature change and traffic load. The properties of the mixture, in turn, affect the pavement performance.
 
 Keywords - asphalt mixtures, consistency, performance, (PG), construction.

This paper examined the foamed concrete (FC) for permeability of total and capillary water absorption, at 28 days of air sealed curing. The microstructure of 15 selected FC specimens was investigated to determine permeability in relation to porosity and density using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images. The FC specimens of the densities (1100, 1600, and 1800) kg/m3 were made using fine sand and brick aggregates with toner and MK inclusion as additives. The microstructural investigation of the FC revealed, porosity measure as a percentage ratio of the area under investigation to be in the range of (39.65 to 77.7) %. The pore size is in the range of (0.01 to 70) µm, depending on the type of additive, for the mixes containing toner and MK, it is in a fine range of (0.01 to 10.0) µm. For the FC specimens, the finer the pore size, the less permeable and the stronger it is. Permeability is porosity and strength dependent, whereby high porosity leads to high permeability and low compressive strength for FC mixes made with sand or brick only with no additive inclusion. Meanwhile, the FC mixes made with the inclusion of additives, such as the toner and MK20 mixes, showed an evenly spread net of independent air voids with a regular shape within their matrix, which is beneficial in decreasing permeability. Therefore, besides the porosity and strength, the fineness of the pore matrix and the shape factor of the pores are two other key factors in controlling permeability. Toner and MK20 inclusion can enhance the capillary water absorption to reach almost water tight. Besides, MK30 and MK50 inclusion displayed adverse effect on permeability. Depending on the type of filler, the additive, and the percentage ratio of the porosity of the FC matrix at (1600 and 1800) kg/m3 densities, it is possible to produce FC with compressive strength between (55.1 and 30) N/mm2.

Design of retaining walls under seismic conditions is based on the calculation of seismic earth pressurebehind the wall. To calculate the seismic active earth pressure behind the vertical retaining wall, many researchers reportanalytical solutions using the pseudo-static approach for both cohesionless and cohesive soil backfill. Design charts havebeen presented for the calculation of seismic active earth pressure behind vertical retaining walls in the non-dimensionalform. For inclined retaining walls, the analytical solutions for the calculation of seismic active earth pressure as well as thedesign charts (in non-dimensional form) have been reported in few studies for c-ϕ soil backfill. One analytical solution forthe calculation of seismic active earth pressure behind inclined retaining walls by Shukla (2015) is used in the present studyto obtain the design charts in non-dimensional form. Different field parameters related with wall geometry, seismic loadings,tension cracks, soil backfill properties, surcharge and wall friction are used in the present analysis. The present study hasquantified the effect of negative and positive wall inclination as well as the effect of soil cohesion (c), angle of shearingresistance (ϕ), surcharge loading (q) and the horizontal and vertical seismic coefficient (kh and kv) on seismic active earthpressure with the help of design charts for c-ϕ soil backfill. The design charts presented here in non-dimensional form aresimple to use and can be implemented by field engineers for design of inclined retaining walls under seismic conditions. Theactive earth pressure coefficients for cohesionless soil backfill achieved from the present study are validated with studiesreported in the literature.