During emergency situations, society relies upon the efficient response time and effective services of emergency facilities that include fire departments, law enforcement, search and rescue, and emergency medical services (EMS). As such, it is imperative that emergency crews are outfitted with technologies that can cut response time and can also predict where such events may occur and prevent them from happening. The safety of first responders is also of paramount concern. New tools can be implemented to map areas of vulnerability for emergency responders, and new strategies can be devised in their training to ensure that they are conditioned to respond efficiently to an emergency and also conscious of best safety protocols. Improving the Safety and Efficiency of Emergency Services: Emerging Tools and Technologies for First Responders addresses the latest tools that can support first responders in their ultimate goal: delivering their patients to safety. It also explores how new techniques and devices can support first responders in their work by addressing their safety, alerting them to accidents in real time, connecting them with medical experts to improve the chances of survival of critical patients, predicting criminal and terrorist activity, locating missing persons, and allocating resources. Highlighting a range of topics such as crisis management, medical/fire emergency warning systems, and predictive policing technologies, this publication is an ideal reference source for law enforcement, emergency professionals, medical professionals, EMTs, fire departments, government officials, policymakers, IT consultants, technology developers, academicians, researchers, and students.

Now you can learn core concepts and applications of foundation analysis and design with Das/Sivakugan's best-selling PRINCIPLES OF FOUNDATION ENGINEERING, 9th Edition. Written specifically for undergraduate civil engineering students by renowned authors in the field of geotechnical engineering, this outstanding text provides an ideal balance between today's most current research and practical field applications. A wealth of worked-out examples and figures clearly illustrate the work of today's civil engineer, while timely information and insights help you develop the critical skills you need to properly apply theories and analysis as you evaluate soils and foundation design.

This book discusses vehicular communication systems, IoT, intelligent transportation systems and the Internet of Vehicles, and also introduces destination marketing in a structured manner. It is primarily intended for research students interested in emerging technologies for connected Internet of Vehicles and intelligent transportation system networks; academics in higher education institutions, including universities and vocational colleges; IT professionals; policy makers; and legislators. The book can also be used as a reference resource for both undergraduate and graduate studies. Written in plain and simple language, it describes new concepts so that they are accessible to readers without prior knowledge of the field.

New learner-focused resource, built specifically for candidates' needs: Fully aligned to the CAA Diploma covering all the content and learning outcomes, giving learners everything they need in a single textbook. Straightforward language and an attractive, accessible layout help learners to stay focused and get the information they need quickly and easily. Content is broken down into short easily-referenced segments so that learners get the content they need, presented in an engaging style, helping them to stay motivated. Packed with engaging in-book features that prepare learners for assessment, provide working life context and enrich and reinforce learning.

This book explores the planning knowledge that can be gleaned from the experiences of the urban poor, a group frequently affected by floods. Further, it examines the relationship between lifeworld analysis and adaptation planning through the sociology of knowledge, which plays a significant part in determining the adaptation pathway of the urban poor. The book brings together empirical data to translate self-reflective planning theory into the practical context, examines community planning, and enriches the discourse on urban adaptation. Lastly, it provides an adaptation-planning model that can benefit academics, practitioners and policymakers who wish to provide more socially accepted plans.

This book presents an in-depth overview of recent work related to the safety, security, and privacy of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). It brings together contributions from leading researchers in networked control systems and closely related fields to discuss overarching aspects of safety, security, and privacy; characterization of attacks; and solutions to detecting and mitigating such attacks. The book begins by providing an insightful taxonomy of problems, challenges and techniques related to safety, security, and privacy for CPSs. It then moves through a thorough discussion of various control-based solutions to these challenges, including cooperative fault-tolerant and resilient control and estimation, detection of attacks and security metrics, watermarking and encrypted control, privacy and a novel defense approach based on deception. The book concludes by discussing risk management and cyber-insurance challenges in CPSs, and by presenting the future outlook for this area of research as a whole. Its wide-ranging collection of varied works in the emerging fields of security and privacy in networked control systems makes this book a benefit to both academic researchers and advanced practitioners interested in implementing diverse applications in the fields of IoT, cooperative autonomous vehicles and the smart cities of the future.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to novel absorption heating technologies for improving the energy efficiency of heating systems. The proposed low-temperature heating systems, based on an air source absorption heat pump (ASAHP), significantly increase heating efficiency and reduce pollution emissions. As the performance of ASAHPs deteriorates at lower ambient/driving temperatures, a series of advanced cycles is used to extend their applicability, with the compression-assisted ASAHP being the most outstanding example. The book discusses the generator-absorber-heat-exchange ASAHP as a promising solution to make the best of high driving temperatures, an aspect that can be improved further via compression. Further, it addresses the ground source absorption heat pump (GSAHP), which eliminates the soil thermal imbalance of the conventional ground source electrical heat pump (GSEHP), and also reduces the number of boreholes . Various hybrid GSAHP systems are proposed to further enhance applicability, efficiency, and economy: these include a combined GSAHP and GSEHP system, as well as ASAHP and GSAHP systems that incorporate design optimizations. In closing, the book explores the merits of novel working fluids and highlights recent advances concerning waste heat and renewable energy utilization.

This book proposes the concept of urban multiple habitats and then analyzes its corresponding classification, function and potential supply capability. It provides an analysis framework for studying the relationship between urban biodiversity and built environment, and for considering the loss of urban habitats caused by high-density development. It argues that urban biodiversity is a key indicator for assessing urban ecosystem services. On this basis, the book then presents a case study mainly focusing on wild birds in Shanghai, as urban wild birds and their species could be viewed as an essential indicator for evaluating healthy ecosystem of contemporary cities. Based on the empirical findings, the book proposes an assessment model for urban biodiversity performance and a range of principles, strategies and key indicators regarding the optimization of urban planning and design practice to enhance urban biodiversity performance.

This book presents a new approach to building renovation, combining aspects of various professional disciplines, integrating green building design, structural stability, and energy efficiency. It draws attention to several often-overlooked qualities of buildings that should be comprehensively integrated into the context of building renovation. The book presents an overview of the most important renovation approaches according to their scope, intensity, and priorities. Combining basic theoretical knowledge and the authors' scientific research it emphasizes the importance of simultaneous consideration of energy efficiency and structural stability in building renovation processes. It simultaneously analyses the effects of various renovation steps related to the required level of energy efficiency, while it also proposes the options of building extension with timber-glass upgrade modules as the solution to a shortage of usable floor areas occurring in large cities. This book offers building designers and decision makers a tool for predicting energy savings in building renovation processes and provides useful guidelines for architects, city developers and students studying architecture and civil engineering. Additionally, it demonstrates how specific innovations, e.g., building extensions with timber-glass modules, can assist building industry companies in the planning and development of their future production. The main aim of the current book is to expose various approaches to the renovation of existing buildings and to combine practical experience with existing research, in order to disseminate knowledge and raise awareness on the importance of integrative and interdisciplinary solutions.

This book focuses on modelling and simulation, control and optimization, signal processing, and forecasting in selected nonlinear dynamical systems, presenting both literature reviews and novel concepts. It develops analytical or numerical approaches, which are simple to use, robust, stable, flexible and universally applicable to the analysis of complex nonlinear dynamical systems. As such it addresses key challenges are addressed, e.g. efficient handling of time-varying dynamics, efficient design, faster numerical computations, robustness, stability and convergence of algorithms. The book provides a series of contributions discussing either the design or analysis of complex systems in sciences and engineering, and the concepts developed involve nonlinear dynamics, synchronization, optimization, machine learning, and forecasting. Both theoretical and practical aspects of diverse areas are investigated, specifically neurocomputing, transportation engineering, theoretical electrical engineering, signal processing, communications engineering, and computational intelligence. It is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in nonlinear dynamics and synchronization with applications in selected areas.

This book focuses on the generalization of map features, providing descriptions and classifying groups of map objects into six categories: point clusters, groups of contours, road networks, river networks, continuous areal features and discrete areal features. Discussing the methods and algorithms in map generalization in equal measure, it also describes the approaches for describing map features. The book is a valuable reference for graduates and researchers who are interested in cartography and geographic information science/systems, especially those in automated map generalization and spatial databases construction.

This book gathers peer-reviewed contributions presented at the 3rd National Conference on Structural Engineering and Construction Management (SECON'19), held in Angamaly, Kerala, India, on 15-16 May 2019. The meeting served as a fertile platform for discussion, sharing sound knowledge and introducing novel ideas on issues related to sustainable construction and design for the future. The respective contributions address various aspects of numerical modeling and simulation in structural engineering, structural dynamics and earthquake engineering, advanced analysis and design of foundations, BIM, building energy management, and technical project management. Accordingly, the book offers a valuable, up-to-date tool and essential overview of the subject for scientists and practitioners alike, and will inspire further investigations and research.

This book presents the selected peer-reviewed papers from the national conference Futuristic Approaches in Civil Engineering (FACE) 2019. This volume focuses on latest research and challenges in the field of geotechnical, transportation, environmental and water resources engineering. The first part focuses on alternative and sustainable pavement materials, maintenance and rehabilitation of roads, transportation planning, traffic engineering, hybrid vehicles, safety management, and intelligent transport systems. In the second part of the book, basic and advanced research in geotechnical engineering which can provide sustainable solutions to practical problems in foundations, retaining structures, soil dynamics, site characterization, slope stability, dams, rock engineering, environmental geotechnics, and geosynthetics are covered. The third part of the book includes current research in environment, and water resources engineering. The contents of this book will be useful for students, researchers as well as industry professionals.

This book gathers 23 papers by top experts from 11 countries, presented at the 3rd Houston International Forum: Concrete Structures in Earthquake. Designing infrastructures to resist earthquakes has always been the focus and mission of scientists and engineers located in tectonically active regions, especially around the "Pacific Rim of Fire" including China, Japan, and the USA. The pace of research and innovation has accelerated in the past three decades, reflecting the need to mitigate the risk of severe damage to interconnected infrastructures, and to facilitate the incorporation of high-speed computers and the internet. The respective papers focus on the design and analysis of concrete structures subjected to earthquakes, advance the state of knowledge in disaster mitigation, and address the safety of infrastructures in general.

This book reflects the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the field of electrical and information technologies for rail transportation, which covers abundant state-of-the-art research theories and ideas. As a vital field of research that is highly relevant to current developments in a number of technological domains, the subjects it covered include intelligent computing, information processing, Communication Technology, Automatic Control, etc. The objective of the proceedings is to provide a major interdisciplinary forum for researchers, engineers, academicians as well as industrial professionals to present the most innovative research and development in the field of rail transportation electrical and information technologies. Engineers and researchers in academia, industry, and the government will also explore an insight view of the solutions that combine ideas from multiple disciplines in this field. The volumes serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on rail transportation, electrical and information technologies.

This is the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Strain-Hardening Cement-Based Composites (SHCC4), that was held at the Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany from 18 to 20 September 2017. The conference focused on advanced fiber-reinforced concrete materials such as strain-hardening cement-based composites (SHCC), textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) and high-performance fiber-reinforced cement-based composites (HPFRCC). All these new materials exhibit pseudo-ductile behavior resulting from the formation of multiple, fine cracks when subject to tensile loading. The use of such types of fiber-reinforced concrete could revolutionize the planning, development, dimensioning, structural and architectural design, construction of new and strengthening and repair of existing buildings and structures in many areas of application. The SHCC4 Conference was the follow-up of three previous successful international events in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2011, and Dordrecht, The Netherlands in 2014.

This book presents the latest findings on train operation theories and methods in the context of emergencies. It examines and assesses a range of aspects-including the definition of a railway emergency, transport organization modes in emergencies, calculating railway transport capacity in emergencies, line planning in emergencies, train re-pathing in emergencies and train re-scheduling in emergencies-that are urgently needed in the railway transportation field, which faces the serious challenge of dealing with emergencies worldwide. The book highlights the latest research results in an integrated and systematic way, and the methodology presented is oriented on real-world problems, allowing it to be used not only directly in railway operational management, but also as the point of departure for further applications or theoretical research. As such, the book will be of considerable interest to graduate students and researchers in the field of traffic and transportation engineering.>

This guidebook is a practical and essential tool providing everything necessary for structural design engineers to create detailed and accurate calculations. Basic information is provided for steel, concrete and geotechnical design in accordance with Australian and international standards. Detailed design items are also provided, especially relevant to the mining and oil and gas industries. Examples include pipe supports, lifting analysis and dynamic machine foundation design. Steel theory is presented with information on fabrication, transportation and costing, along with member, connection, and anchor design. Concrete design includes information on construction costs, as well as detailed calculations ranging from a simple beam design to the manual production of circular column interaction diagrams. For geotechnics, simple guidance is given on the manual production and code compliance of calculations for items such as pad footings, piles, retaining walls, and slabs. Each chapter also includes recommended drafting details to aid in the creation of design drawings. More generally, highly useful aids for design engineers include section calculations and force diagrams. Capacity tables cover real-world items such as various slab thicknesses with a range of reinforcing options, commonly used steel sections, and lifting lug capacities. Calculations are given for wind, seismic, vehicular, piping, and other loads. User guides are included for Space Gass and Strand7, including a non-linear analysis example for lifting lug design. Users are also directed to popular vendor catalogues to acquire commonly used items, such as steel sections, handrails, grating, grouts and lifting devices. This guidebook supports practicing engineers in the development of detailed designs and refinement of their engineering skill and knowledge.

In spite of the increasing use and demand for lightweight aggregate concrete (LWAC), there is still a lack of adequate explanations to understand the mechanisms responsible for the strength and durability properties of LWAC. This book is written to give an overall picture of LWAC, from the historical background, aggregate production, proportioning and production of concrete, to applications in structures. Physical properties and chemical durability are described in detail. The physical properties include density, strength, shrinkage, and elasticity. Chemical durability includes resistance to acids, chloride ingress, carbonation, and freeze-thaw resistance. Fire resistance is also included, which is seldom considered, but is a very important aspect of the safety of the structure. Microstructure development and its relation to the durability properties of LWAC generally are not highlighted in the literature. The development of bonds, the microstructure with different binder systems, and different types of lightweight aggregates are explained. They show how lightweight aggregate concrete differs from normal weight concrete. The chapters on chloride ingress and freeze-thaw resistance are detailed because of the use of LWAC in offshore construction. The economical aspects of using LWAC are also reviewed. Emphasis is placed on the fact that although the cost of LWAC is high, the total cost of construction has to be considered, including the cost of transport, reinforcement, etc. When these are considered then LWAC becomes cheaper and attractive. The life cycle cost of the concrete is another consideration for calculating long-term savings on maintenance costs.