Influence of institutional arrangements on on-site recycling and reuse practices of C&D waste

Construction and demolition activities generate a large quantity of C&D waste. It is estimated that almost 70% of the buildings that are expected to stand in India by 2030 are yet to be built. Hence, C&D waste generation is expected to grow larger in the coming years and managing it would play a vital role in the conservation of natural...

The French National Project Recybéton, to bring the concrete world into circular economy

France is currently producing about 17 Mt/year of demolished concrete, most of this material being used in road subbase courses or embankments. However, this flow should increase in the near future, although less and less new roads are to be built. Another 20 Mt of mixed demolition materials, a good part of it being concrete or natural rock is...

Innovative waste management practices on construction sites in Brussels: Lessons learned from pilots

In recent years, waste prevention and management have gained importance due to the economic and environmental impact of waste on construction sites. Although some innovative practices have already been experimentally put in practice, it remains difficult to apply them in densely built regions due to lack of space and time, and lack of knowledge...

Quantifying Statistical Uncertainty in Site Investigation

Due to limited information in site investigation, it is not possible to obtain the actual values for the mean, standard deviation, and scale of fluctuation of a soil property of interest. The deviation between the estimated values and actual values is called the statistical uncertainty. There are two schools of thoughts on how to model the...

Probabilistic Characterization of a Soft Scandinavian Clay Supporting a Light Quay Structure

A full geotechnical risk analysis includes site investigation, model simplification and analysis. The site characterization forms the basis for the choice of the soil parameters used in the subsequent analysis, but the soil data is normally analyzed with crude methods that do not include the effect of the soil variability. A case study is here...

Determination of Spatial Variability in d70 Grain Size Values Using High Density Site Measurements

Research to the failure mechanism piping (internal, backward erosion) in the Netherlands shows that the dikes require costly berms to meet the required safety standards. According to the Sellmeijer piping-formula, the d70 (70%-quantile of the grain size distribution by weight) is an important parameter in the resistance against piping. Therefore...

Accounting for Uncertainty and Variability in Geotechnical Characterization of Offshore Sites

This paper presents an overview on how uncertainty and variability of mechanical soil properties are dealt with in offshore site investigation and presents some ideas for utilizing the reliability tools in a more optimal manner for this purpose. Two types of problems are addressed. First, how to extract the maximum amount of information from...

Ambient Terrain: The generation of large-scale landscape site data for design applications

‘Ambient Terrain’ explores the application of large-scale, sensor-based site analysis. The research develops various techniques dealing with the logging, storage, retrieval, analysis, and representation of sensor and image-based data. These techniques could be utilized in concert with traditional site preparation and site information gathering...