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Year - 2013

Lessons from Hurricane Sandy for Port Resilience

New York Harbor was directly in the path of the most damaging part of Super Storm Sandy causing significant impact on many of the facilities of the Port of New York and New Jersey. The U.S. Coast Guard closed the entire Port before the storm hit on October 28, 2013. It was not fully reopened to vessel traffic until November 4th. Even though the waterways were open, numerous terminals and facilities did not resume their operations for several weeks.

Prediction Of Impact On Transportation System Due To Coastal Flooding Under Climate Change Conditions

Global warming and climate change are reshaping our world in many ways. One of their most obvious evidences is sea level rise due to melting of polar glaciers and arctic ice. It is estimated that global sea level rise is at an alarming rate of 0.18cm/yr during 1961-2003, it is even higher at 0.3cm/yr during 1993- 2003, and research estimates that sea level could range from 0.8 to 2 m by 2100 under glaciological conditions.

Finite Element Model Updating and Damage Detection for Bridges Using Vibration Measurements

The continued functionality of a nation’s infrastructure systems, e.g. bridges, is a necessary pre-requisite to her continued social and economic development. However, in about 15 years, 50 percent of our bridges will be over 50 years old, inducing an unprecedented commitment of both financial and human resources. Hence, a successful Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) strategy, providing reliable, economic and easy to conduct inspections, is essential to engineers and government authorities responsible for the up-keeping of such systems.

Traveler Oriented Traffic Performance Metrics Using Real Time Traffic Data from the Midtownin- Motion (MIM) Project in Manhattan, NY

In a congested urban street network the average traffic speed is an inadequate metric for measuring speed changes that drivers can perceive from changes in traffic control strategies.

A driver – oriented metric is needed. Stop frequency distributions were developed for avenue segments in Manhattan, NYC, from known vehicle travel times for the am, midday, and pm peak hours.

Field Methods for Determining Lead Content in Bridge Paint Removal Waste

The removal of paint from bridges and other structures is a significant issue facing transportation agencies because of the presence and potential for release of lead and other contaminants upon disposal. A large percentage of the bridges are reaching a critical level of deterioration, resulting in management issues for paint waste. The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) applies a conservative approach by assuming all waste generated from bridges previously painted with lead-based paint (LBP) is hazardous.

Developing Self-cleaning and Air Purifying Transportation Infrastructure Components to Minimize Environmental Impact of Transportation

Creating transportation infrastructure, which can clean up itself and contaminated air surrounding it, can be a groundbreaking approach in addressing environmental challenges of our time. This project has explored a possibility of depositing coatings on the existing materials to address a feasibility of this approach. More specifically, we have quantified the rates of removal of pollutants from the air by a new generation of coatings, which can be applied on any architectural elements and transportation infrastructure.

Lessons from Hurricane Sandy for Port Resilience

New York Harbor was directly in the path of the most damaging part of Hurricane Sandy causing significant impact on many of the facilities of the Port of New York and New Jersey. The U.S. Coast Guard closed the entire Port to all traffic before the storm hit on October 28th. It was not fully reopened to vessel traffic until November 4th. Then, even though the waterways were open, numerous port terminals and maritime facilities did not resume their operations for several more weeks because of power failures and damages to the facilities and equipment.

A Decision Support Model to Understand Route Choice Decisions and Siting of Facilities in Emergency Evacuation

In this research, we present the results of a behavior model to capture different routing strategies executed by evacuees during hurricane evacuation by using a random‐parameter logit‐based modeling approach. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to model evacuees’ strategic behavior for evacuation routing decisions using a random‐parameter model. A probabilistic model incorporating the demographic characteristics of evacuees and evacuation related characteristics would predict the routing behavior of evacuees’ in a better way.

Corrosion Damage Assessment of Post-Tensioned Concrete Structures

Detecting corrosion in the tendons of post-tensioned (PT) concrete structures is technically challenging. The general inaccessibility of the tendons makes evaluation difficult, costly and often inconclusive. This study had two objectives. The first objective was to design, implement and validate the use of an innovative monitoring system based on embedded arrays of low profile piezoelectric transducers to generate and receive guided ultrasonic waves (GUW) over the length of a pre-stressing tendon.

Characterization of Fatigue Properties of Binders and Mastics at Intermediate Temperatures using Dynamic Shear Rheometer

The paper compares the fatigue life of neat and modified PAV-aged binders and mastics and determines the influence of dust on fatigue life using the Linear Amplitude Sweep (LAS) method. It will also compare these results with results from the DER and 50% Drop Methods as reported in previous research. The binders used were PG 58-28, PG 64-22, PG 70-22, PG 76-28 and PG 82- 22. The dust content for the mastic binder was 0%, 5%, and 15% dust to binder by mass.

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