Creating better learning environments by cross-disciplinary collaboration : a civil engineering and surveying linkage

Many of the teaching elements in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Spatial Science/Surveying are strongly related to multidisciplinary real-world situations. Professionals in each discipline commonly work collaboratively, knowing each other’s professional and technical limitations and requirements. Replication of such real-world situations allows students to gain an insight and acquire knowledge of professional practice for both civil engineering and spatial science disciplines. However, replication of an authentic design project is not always possible in a single unit basis where empirical project situations are often created with controlled sets of constraints, inputs and outputs. A cross-disciplinary design-based project that is designed to promote active student learning, engagement and professional integration would be the preferred option. The central aim of this collaborative project was to create positive and inclusive environments to promote engaging learning opportunities that cater for a range of learning styles with a two-way linkage involving third-year civil engineering and spatial science (surveying) students. This paper describes the cross-disciplinary project developed and delivered in 2010 and 2011. A survey was conducted at completion of the project to assess the degree of improvement in student engagement and their learning experiences. Improvements were assessed in a range of dimensions including student motivation, learning by cross-disciplinary collaboration and learning by authentic design project experiences. In this specific cross-disciplinary linkage project, the study findings showed that teaching approaches utilised have been effective in promoting active student learning and increasing engagement.

Why publish?

Anybody who has attempted to publish some aspect of their work in an academic journal will know that it isn’t as easy as it may seem. The amount of preparation required of a manuscript can be quite daunting. Besides actually writing the manuscript, the authors are faced with a number of technical requirements. Each journal has their own formatting requirements, relating not only to section headings and text layout, but also to very small details such as placement of commas in reference lists. Then, if presenting data in the form of figures, this must be formatted so that it can be understood by the readership, and most journals still require that the data be in a format which can be read when printed in black-and-white. Most daunting (and important) of all, for the article to be scientifically valid it must be absolutely true in the representation of the work reported (i.e. all data must be shown unless a strong justification exists for removing data points), and this might cause angst in the mind of the authors when the results aren’t clear or possibly contradict the expected or desired result.

A human factors investigation into the unavailability of active warnings at railway level crossings

This paper discusses human factors issues of low cost railway level crossings in Australia. Several issues are discussed in this paper including safety at passive level railway crossings, human factors considerations associated with unavailability of a warning device, and a conceptual model for how safety could be compromised at railway level crossings following prolonged or frequent unavailability. The research plans to quantify safety risk to motorists at level crossings using a Human Reliability Assessment (HRA) method, supported by data collected using an advanced driving simulator. This method aims to identify human error within tasks and task units identified as part of the task analysis process. It is anticipated that by modelling driver behaviour the current study will be able to quantify meaningful task variability including temporal parameters, between participants and within participants. The process of complex tasks such as driving through a level crossing is fundamentally context-bound. Therefore this study also aims to quantify those performance-shaping factors that contribute to vehicle train collisions by highlighting changes in the task units and driver physiology. Finally we will also consider a number of variables germane to ensuring external validity of our results. Without this inclusion, such an analysis could seriously underestimate risk.

Influences on student learning in engineering : some results from case study fieldwork

This paper closely examines factors affecting students’ progression in their engineering programs through fieldwork conducted at three Australian universities. To extract clues on how specific teaching methods can be used to maximize learning, the investigation considered factors such as understanding how students take in, process and present information. A number of focus groups were conducted with students and the data gathered was combined with survey results of students’ and academics’ learning styles. The paper reports on the process followed, and provides some analysis of the gathered data, as part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council, ALTC, Associate Fellowship program.

The Remnant Emergency Artlab

The REMNANT/EMERGENCY Artlab was funded by the Australia Council InterArts ArtLab Program in 2010 and involves 22 months of rigorous research and experimentation in several countries. The process will be developed between a core transdisciplinary team of practicing media artists, designers and engineers where possible working in consultation and collaboration with local creatives at each venue. Our team asserts that today’s environmental crisis is underpinned by a deep cultural crisis - and so to get our ‘house in order’ we urgently need to create better and more powerful ‘images’ of what a ‘citizen-led’, sustainable world might be. This ArtLab’s core aim is therefore to begin to understand how to develop and create such ‘powerful images’.

An exploration of feature detector performance in the thermal-infrared modality

Thermal-infrared images have superior statistical properties compared with visible-spectrum images in many low-light or no-light scenarios. However, a detailed understanding of feature detector performance in the thermal modality lags behind that of the visible modality. To address this, the first comprehensive study on feature detector performance on thermal-infrared images is conducted. A dataset is presented which explores a total of ten different environments with a range of statistical properties. An investigation is conducted into the effects of several digital and physical image transformations on detector repeatability in these environments. The effect of non-uniformity noise, unique to the thermal modality, is analyzed. The accumulation of sensor non-uniformities beyond the minimum possible level was found to have only a small negative effect. A limiting of feature counts was found to improve the repeatability performance of several detectors. Most other image transformations had predictable effects on feature stability. The best-performing detector varied considerably depending on the nature of the scene and the test.

Graph rigidity for near-coplanar structure from motion

Recent algorithms for monocular motion capture (MoCap) estimate weak-perspective camera matrices between images using a small subset of approximately-rigid points on the human body (i.e. the torso and hip). A problem with this approach, however, is that these points are often close to coplanar, causing canonical linear factorisation algorithms for rigid structure from motion (SFM) to become extremely sensitive to noise. In this paper, we propose an alternative solution to weak-perspective SFM based on a convex relaxation of graph rigidity. We demonstrate the success of our algorithm on both synthetic and real world data, allowing for much improved solutions to marker less MoCap problems on human bodies. Finally, we propose an approach to solve the two-fold ambiguity over bone direction using a k-nearest neighbour kernel density estimator.

Face recognition across pose on video using eigen light-fields

We propose an approach to employ eigen light-fields for face recognition across pose on video. Faces of a subject are collected from video frames and combined based on the pose to obtain a set of probe light-fields. These probe data are then projected to the principal subspace of the eigen light-fields within which the classification takes place. We modify the original light-field projection and found that it is more robust in the proposed system. Evaluation on VidTIMIT dataset has demonstrated that the eigen light-fields method is able to take advantage of multiple observations contained in the video.

Performance testing of road bridge deck containing flat rail wagons

A road bridge containing disused flatbed rail wagons as the primary deck superstructure was performance tested in a low volume, high axle load traffic road in Queensland, Australia; some key results are presented in this paper. A fully laden truck of total weight 28.88 % of the serviceability design load prescribed in the Australian bridge code was used; its wheel positions were accurately captured using a high speed camera and synchronised with the real‐time deflections and strains measured at the critical members of the flat rail wagons. The strains remained well below the yield and narrated the existence of composite action between the reinforced concrete slab pavement and the wagon deck. A three dimensional grillage model was developed and calibrated using the test data, which established the structural adequacy of the rail wagons and the positive contribution of the reinforced concrete slab pavement to resist high axle traffic loads on a single lane bridge in the low volume roads network.

Determining the appropriate proportion of owner-provided design in design-build contracts - a content analysis approach

The Request For Proposal (RFP) with the design‐build (DB) procurement arrangement is a document in which an owner develops his requirements and conveys the project scope to DB contractors. Owners should provide an appropriate level of design in DB RFPs to adequately describe their requirements without compromising the prospects for innovation. This paper examines and compares the different levels of owner‐provided design in DB RFPs by the content analysis of 84 requests for RFPs for public DB projects advertised between 2000 and 2010 with an aggregate contract value of over $5.4 billion. A statistical analysis was also conducted in order to explore the relationship between the proportion of owner‐provided design and other project information, including project type, advertisement time, project size, contractor selection method, procurement process and contract type. The results show that the majority (64.8%) of the RFPs provide less than 10% of the owner‐provided design. The owner‐provided design proportion has a significant association with project type, project size, contractor selection method and contract type. In addition, owners are generally providing less design in recent years than hitherto. The research findings also provide owners with perspectives to determine the appropriate level of owner‐provided design in DB RFPs.

Greener and leaner : unleashing capacity of railroad concrete ties via limit states concept

New knowledge has raised a concern about the cost-ineffective design methods and the true performance of railroad prestressed concrete ties. Because of previous knowledge deficiencies, railway civil and track engineers have been aware of the conservative design methods for structural components in any railway track that rely on allowable stresses and material strength reductions. In particular, railway sleeper (or railroad tie) is an important component of railway tracks and is commonly made of prestressed concrete. The existing code for designing such components makes use of the permissible stress design concept, whereas the fiber stresses over cross sections at initial and final stages are limited by some empirical values. It is believed that the concrete ties complying with the permissible stress concept possess unduly untapped fracture toughness, based on a number of proven experiments and field data. Collaborative research run by the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Railway Engineering and Technologies (Rail CRC) was initiated to ascertain the reserved capacity of Australian railway prestressed concrete ties that were designed using the existing design code. The findings have led to the development of a new limit-states design concept. This paper highlights the conventional and the new limit-states design philosophies and their implication to both the railway community and the public. © 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.

The development of a conceptual framework for a district 4-Year Pavement Management Plan, implementation of network-level project screening process

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is concerned about the widening gap between preservation needs and available funding. Funding levels are not adequate to meet the preservation needs of the roadway network; therefore projects listed in the 4-Year Pavement Management Plan must be ranked to determine which projects should be funded now and which can be postponed until a later year. Currently, each district uses locally developed methods to prioritize projects. These ranking methods have relied on less formal qualitative assessments based on engineers��� subjective judgment. It is important for TxDOT to have a 4-Year Pavement Management Plan that uses a transparent, rational project ranking process. The objective of this study is to develop a conceptual framework that describes the development of the 4-Year Pavement Management Plan. It can be largely divided into three Steps; 1) Network-Level project screening process, 2) Project-Level project ranking process, and 3) Economic Analysis. A rational pavement management procedure and a project ranking method accepted by districts and the TxDOT administration will maximize efficiency in budget allocations and will potentially help improve pavement condition. As a part of the implementation of the 4-Year Pavement Management Plan, the Network-Level Project Screening (NLPS) tool including the candidate project identification algorithm and the preliminary project ranking matrix was developed. The NLPS has been used by the Austin District Pavement Engineer (DPE) to evaluate PMIS (Pavement Management Information System) data and to prepare a preliminary list of candidate projects for further evaluation.

Planning most-likely paths from overhead imagery

This paper is about planning paths from overhead imagery, the novelty of which is taking explicit account of uncertainty in terrain classification and spatial variation in terrain cost. The image is first classified using a multi-class Gaussian Process Classifier which provides probabilities of class membership at each location in the image. The probability of class membership at a particular grid location is then combined with a terrain cost evaluated at that location using a spatial Gaussian process. The resulting cost function is, in turn, passed to a planner. This allows both the uncertainty in terrain classification and spatial variations in terrain costs to be incorporated into the planned path. Because the cost of traversing a grid cell is now a probability density rather than a single scalar value, we can produce not only the most-likely shortest path between points on the map, but also sample from the cost map to produce a distribution of paths between the points. Results are shown in the form of planned paths over aerial maps, these paths are shown to vary in response to local variations in terrain cost.

Structural damage identification with noise polluted Frequency Response Functions (FRFs)

Damage detection in structures has become increasingly important in recent years. While a number of damage detection and localization methods have been proposed, very few attempts have been made to explore the structure damage with noise polluted data which is unavoidable effect in real world. The measurement data are contaminated by noise because of test environment as well as electronic devices and this noise tend to give error results with structural damage identification methods. Therefore it is important to investigate a method which can perform better with noise polluted data. This paper introduces a new damage index using principal component analysis (PCA) for damage detection of building structures being able to accept noise polluted frequency response functions (FRFs) as input. The FRF data are obtained from the function datagen of MATLAB program which is available on the web site of the IASC-ASCE (International Association for Structural Control– American Society of Civil Engineers) Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) Task Group. The proposed method involves a five-stage process: calculation of FRFs, calculation of damage index values using proposed algorithm, development of the artificial neural networks and introducing damage indices as input parameters and damage detection of the structure. This paper briefly describes the methodology and the results obtained in detecting damage in all six cases of the benchmark study with different noise levels. The proposed method is applied to a benchmark problem sponsored by the IASC-ASCE Task Group on Structural Health Monitoring, which was developed in order to facilitate the comparison of various damage identification methods. The illustrated results show that the PCA-based algorithm is effective for structural health monitoring with noise polluted FRFs which is of common occurrence when dealing with industrial structures.

Analysis of selection criteria for design-builders through the analysis of Request for Proposals (RFPs)

Selecting an appropriate design-builder is critical to the success of DB projects. The objective of this study is to identify selection criteria for design-builders and compare their relative importance by means of a robust content analysis of 94 Request For Proposals (RFPs) for public DB projects. These DB projects had an aggregate contract value of over US$3.5 billion and were advertised between 2000 and 2010. This study summarized twenty-six selection criteria and classified into ten categories, i.e.: price, experience, technical approach, management approach, qualification, schedule, past performance, financial capability, responsiveness to the RFP, and legal status in descending order of their relative importance. The results showed that even though price still remains as the most important selection category, its relative importance declines significantly in the last decade. The categories of qualification, experience, past performance, by contrast, have been becoming more important to DB owners for selecting design-builders. Finally, it is found that the importance weighting of price in large projects is significantly higher than that in small projects. This study provides a useful reference for owners in selecting their preferred design-builders.