The Quadrangles Av-11 and Av-12 on Vesta are located at the northern rim of the giant Rheasilvia south polar impact basin. The primary geologic units in Av-11 and Av-12 include material from the Rheasilvia impact basin formation, smooth material and different types of impact crater structures (such as bimodal craters, dark and bright crater ray material and dark ejecta material). Av-11 and Av-12 exhibit almost the full range of mass wasting features observed on Vesta, such as slump blocks, spur-and-gully morphologies and landslides within craters. Processes of collapse, slope instability and seismically triggered events force material to slump down crater walls or scarps and produce landslides or rotational slump blocks. The spur-and-gully morphology that is known to form on Mars is also observed on Vesta; however, on Vesta this morphology formed under dry conditions.

Oppia Quadrangle Av-10 (288–360°E, ±22°) is a junction of key geologic features that preserve a rough history of Asteroid (4) Vesta and serves as a case study of using geologic mapping to define a relative geologic timescale. Clear filter images, stereo-derived topography, slope maps, and multispectral color-ratio images from the Framing Camera on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft served as basemaps to create a geologic map and investigate the spatial and temporal relationships of the local stratigraphy. Geologic mapping reveals the oldest map unit within Av-10 is the cratered highlands terrain which possibly represents original crustal material on Vesta that was then excavated by one or more impacts to form the basin Feralia Planitia. Saturnalia Fossae and Divalia Fossae ridge and trough terrains intersect the wall of Feralia Planitia indicating that this impact basin is older than both the Veneneia and Rheasilvia impact structures, representing Pre-Veneneian crustal material. Two of the youngest geologic features in Av-10 are Lepida (∼45 km diameter) and Oppia (∼40 km diameter) impact craters that formed on the northern and southern wall of Feralia Planitia and each cross-cuts a trough terrain. The ejecta blanket of Oppia is mapped as ‘dark mantle’ material because it appears dark orange in the Framing Camera ‘Clementine-type’ color-ratio image and has a diffuse, gradational contact distributed to the south across the rim of Rheasilvia. Mapping of surface material that appears light orange in color in the Framing Camera ‘Clementine-type’ color-ratio image as ‘light mantle material’ supports previous interpretations of an impact ejecta origin. Some light mantle deposits are easily traced to nearby source craters, but other deposits may represent distal ejecta deposits (emplaced >5 crater radii away) in a microgravity environment.

The Dawn Framing Camera (FC) has imaged the northern hemisphere of the Asteroid (4) Vesta at high spatial resolution and coverage. This study represents the first investigation of the overall geology of the northern hemisphere (22–90°N, quadrangles Av-1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) using these unique Dawn mission observations. We have compiled a morphologic map and performed crater size–frequency distribution (CSFD) measurements to date the geologic units. The hemisphere is characterized by a heavily cratered surface with a few highly subdued basins up to ∼200 km in diameter. The most widespread unit is a plateau (cratered highland unit), similar to, although of lower elevation than the equatorial Vestalia Terra plateau. Large-scale troughs and ridges have regionally affected the surface. Between ∼180°E and ∼270°E, these tectonic features are well developed and related to the south pole Veneneia impact (Saturnalia Fossae trough unit), elsewhere on the hemisphere they are rare and subdued (Saturnalia Fossae cratered unit). In these pre-Rheasilvia units we observed an unexpectedly high frequency of impact craters up to ∼10 km in diameter, whose formation could in part be related to the Rheasilvia basin-forming event. The Rheasilvia impact has potentially affected the northern hemisphere also with S–N small-scale lineations, but without covering it with an ejecta blanket. Post-Rheasilvia impact craters are small (<60 km in diameter) and show a wide range of degradation states due to impact gardening and mass wasting processes. Where fresh, they display an ejecta blanket, bright rays and slope movements on walls. In places, crater rims have dark material ejecta and some crater floors are covered by ponded material interpreted as impact melt.

Previous studies in building energy assessment clearly state that to meet sustainable energy goals, existing buildings, as well as new buildings, will need to improve their energy efficiency. Thus, meeting energy goals relies on retrofitting existing buildings. Most building energy models are bottom-up engineering models, meaning these models calculate energy demand of individual buildings through their physical properties and energy use for specific end uses (e.g., lighting, appliances, and water heating). Researchers then scale up these model results to represent the building stock of the region studied.

Studies reveal that there is a lack of information about the building stock and associated modeling tools and this lack of knowledge affects the assessment of building energy efficiency strategies. Literature suggests that the level of complexity of energy models needs to be limited. Accuracy of these energy models can be elevated by reducing the input parameters, alleviating the need for users to make many assumptions about building construction and occupancy, among other factors. To mitigate the need for assumptions and the resulting model inaccuracies, the authors argue buildings should be described in a regional stock model with a restricted number of input parameters. One commonly-accepted method of identifying critical input parameters is sensitivity analysis, which requires a large number of runs that are both time consuming and may require high processing capacity.

This paper utilizes the Energy, Carbon and Cost Assessment for Buildings Stocks (ECCABS) model, which calculates the net energy demand of buildings and presents aggregated and individual- building-level, demand for specific end uses, e.g., heating, cooling, lighting, hot water and appliances. The model has already been validated using the Swedish, Spanish, and UK building stock data. This paper discusses potential improvements to this model by assessing the feasibility of using stepwise regression to identify the most important input parameters using the data from UK residential sector. The paper presents results of stepwise regression and compares these to sensitivity analysis; finally, the paper documents the advantages and challenges associated with each method.

Construction waste management has become extremely important due to stricter disposal and landfill regulations, and a lesser number of available landfills. There are extensive works done on waste treatment and management of the construction industry. Concepts like deconstruction, recyclability, and Design for Disassembly (DfD) are examples of better construction waste management methods. Although some authors and organizations have published rich guides addressing the DfD's principles, there are only a few buildings already developed in this area. This study aims to find the challenges in the current practice of deconstruction activities and the gaps between its theory and implementation. Furthermore, it aims to provide insights about how DfD can create opportunities to turn these concepts into strategies that can be largely adopted by the construction industry stakeholders in the near future.

To date, little research has been performed regarding the planning and management of “small” projects – those projects typically differentiated from “large” projects due to having lower costs. In 2013, The Construction Industry Institute (CII) set out to develop a front end planning tool that will provide practitioners with a standardized process for planning small projects in the industrial sector. The research team determined that data should be sought from industry regarding small industrial projects to ensure applicability, effectiveness and validity of the new tool. The team developed and administered a survey to determine (1) the prevalence of small projects, (2) the planning processes currently in use for small projects, and (3) current metrics used by industry to differentiate between small and large projects. The survey data showed that small projects make up a majority of projects completed in the industrial sector, planning of these projects varies greatly across the industry, and the metrics posed in the survey were mostly not appropriate for use in differentiating between small and large projects. This study contributes to knowledge through adding to the limited research surrounding small projects, and suggesting future research regarding using measures of project complexity to differentiate between small and large projects.

For the past three decades, the Saudi construction industry (SCI) has exhibited poor performance. Many research efforts have tried to identify the problem and the potential causes but there have been few publications identifying ways to mitigate the problem and describing testing to validate the proposed solution. This paper examines the research and development (R&D) approach in the SCI. A literature research was performed identifying the impact that R&D has had on the SCI. A questionnaire was also created for surveying industry professionals and researchers. The results show evidence that the SCI practice and the academic research work exist in separate silos. This study recommends a change of mindset in both the public and private sector on their views on R&D since cooperation is required to create collaboration between the two sectors and improve the competitiveness of the country's economy.

The principles of a new project management model have been tested for the past 20 years. This project management model utilizes expertise instead of the traditional management, direction, and control (MDC). This new project management model is a leadership-based model instead of a management model. The practice of the new model requires a change in paradigm and project management structure. Some of the practices of this new paradigm include minimizing the flow of information and communications to and from the project manager [including meetings, emails and documents], eliminating technical communications, reducing client management, direction, and control of the vendor, and the hiring of vendors or personnel to do specific tasks. A vendors is hired only after they have clearly shown that they know what they are doing by showing past performance on similar projects, that they clearly understand how to create transparency to minimize risk that they do not control, and that they can clearly outline their project plan using a detailed milestone schedule including time, cost, and tasks all communicated in the language of metrics.

Load associated fatigue cracking is one of the major distress types occurring in flexible pavements. Flexural bending beam fatigue laboratory test has been used for several decades and is considered an integral part of the Superpave advanced characterization procedure. One of the most significant solutions to sustain the fatigue life for an asphaltic mixture is to add sustainable materials such as rubber or polymers to the asphalt mixture. A laboratory testing program was performed on three gap-graded mixtures: unmodified, Asphalt Rubber (AR) and polymer-modified. Strain controlled fatigue tests were conducted according to the AASHTO T321 procedure. The results from the beam fatigue tests indicated that the AR and polymer-modified gap graded mixtures would have much longer fatigue lives compared to the reference (unmodified) mixture. In addition, a mechanistic analysis using 3D-Move software coupled with a cost-effectiveness analysis study based on the fatigue performance on the three mixtures were performed. Overall, the analysis showed that the AR and polymer-modified asphalt mixtures exhibited significantly higher cost-effectiveness compared to unmodified HMA mixture. Although AR and polymer-modification increases the cost of the material, the analysis showed that they are more cost effective than the unmodified mixture.