Maintenance Budget Research Articles

Revisiting Two Robust Techniques for Contaminant Removal from Road Runoff

Treatment of road runoff is a requisite for any environmentally sound infrastructure design. However, investment and maintenance budget is often a limiting factor during the planning and the operation phase of such projects. In order to cost-efficiently decrease the loads of a wide range of contaminants that are usually present in road runoff (posing a long-term threat to the aquatic and soil environments), simple and robust techniques are sought for. The paper deals with the re-evaluation of two such processes, sedimentation and filtration, putting emphasis on using authentic runoff samples during the tests in order to properly characterize the performance of these easy-to-manage solutions in this specific field of application. The results presented in this paper are aimed to aid the proper design of low-cost, low-maintenance road runoff treatment facilities, serving with background information that can be used to ensure that the expectations for the degree of pollutant removal are surely met.

ANALYSIS OF THE SALAMDARMA IRRIGATION AREA PERFORMANCE

Salamdarma weir is located right in the border area of Indramayu and Subang, belongs to administrative area of Anjatan District, Indramayu Regency. Managed by PT JasaTirta II Section of Patrol. This irrigation netwoork has a total service area of 35871 Ha, the service area includes Subang District and Indramayu District. The existence of Salamdarma irrigation network has an important role for the farmers especially during dry season to support the crops’ growth. In this research to analyze the performance used parameter from Permen No 11/PRT/M/2015 and calculated using Hydrology regulation from KP 01 Irrigation 2013. The analysis result of this research show that 80,9% of structures and 95,1% of canals are in damaged condition with different various level of damage. Based on the calculation and comparison between potential discharge and water requirement, the potential discharge has fulfilled the irrigation water requirement and the comparison. The water requirement is 29890 lt/s and the potential discharge is 64074 lt/s. The human resources in Salamdarma irrigation there is only deficient in the head of branch position of 12%. For POB, PPA, PPS Personel amount has fulfilled the required amount of personel. The Operation and Maintenance budget in Salamdarma Irrigation is increased at 30,112% between 2016 to 2017.  Keyword : Irrigation, Salamdarma, Performance, Irrigation water requirement.

Carbon reduction and planning strategies for urban parks in Seoul

This study quantified carbon storage and uptake for urban parks in Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea. A total of 38 study parks were selected using a systematic random sampling method and all the trees in the parks were field-inventoried. Carbon storage and uptake by the park trees were estimated applying a quantitative model for urban open-grown trees of each species. Mean carbon storage per unit of park area, basal area, and crown cover by the trees was 38.5 ± 3.0 t/ha, 27.3 ± 0.8 kg/100 cm2, and 7.4 ± 0.4 kg/m2, respectively. Annual carbon uptake per unit area and cover by the trees averaged 3.5 ± 0.2 t/ha/yr, 2.5 ± 0.1 kg/100 cm2/yr, and 0.7 ± 0.0 kg/m2/yr, respectively. The major determinants of the levels of carbon storage and uptake were species, density, sizes, and layering structures of the planted trees. The trees across all urban parks in Seoul were estimated to store 222.3 kt of carbon and to annually sequester 20.2 kt of carbon. The trees in these parks played an important role in annually offsetting carbon emissions from gasoline consumption by approximately 2.3% of the total population of the city. The economic value of the annual carbon uptake, which was $7.1million/yr, equaled 15.1% of the annual maintenance budget of the parks in the city. However, the role of study parks as a source of carbon uptake was limited due to the distribution of large grass and impervious areas, the single-layered structures, and the dominance of small trees. Planning strategies were explored to enhance carbon reduction effects of the parks. They included the expansion of tree planting spaces through the minimization of unnecessary grass and paving areas, the active tree planting in the potential planting spaces, the multi-layered planting grouped with larger trees, and the planting of tree species having satisfactory growth rates. This study puts an emphasis on finding out the present carbon offset levels of urban parks on which information is limited and suggesting a future direction of park planning based on a detailed actual survey.

The use of micro and nano-sized particles in increasing concrete durability

The main objective of this research is to increase the concrete durability by reducing deleterious alkali-silica reactivity (ASR) which results in a substantial damage to concrete members due to induced internal stresses. ASR reaction is initiated when the silica content of the aggregate reacts with Alkali Hydroxide in the mix in the presence of relatively high moisture content. The expansive ASR reaction results in the formation of an expansive gel-like material which induces destructive internal stresses within hardened concrete. In this research, micro and nano-sized supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) are used in producing concrete with potential ASR reactivity. The micro and nano-sized particles resulted in a reduced air content and smaller void ratio of the produced concrete. The reduced concrete voids resulted in a lower permeability; hence, reduced water content, for the produced concrete, which resulted in a substantial reduction in ASR reaction. Results showed that the reduced ASR reaction is directly correlated to the fineness of the incorporated particles. The outcomes of this research will help to maintain the conditions of ASR prone highway construction projects and reduce the maintenance, repair, and replacement budgets required for the highways network.

A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Railway Turnouts Exposed to Climate Uncertainties

Turnouts are the critical components of modern railway tracks where the vehicle movement is transferred between two continuing tracks, inevitably resulting in high dynamic forces on the turnout system which eventually cause the turnout failures. Consequently, the turnouts have imposed operational restrictions such as operational limits for speed, axle load and headway, and high maintenance works on the system. Numerous studies have been carried out to find a mitigation method for turnout failures. Nonetheless, most of the studies consider the physical phenomena. Hence, it is believed that it would be beneficial to investigate the problem from the economic aspect. For this purpose, a life-cycle cost analysis is done for turnouts, particularly crossing nose in this study. Life-cycle cost analysis is a total cost estimate of a system or a component from acquisition to disposal, to find a cost-effective solution. It could be a simple analysis based on an expert’s judgement to evaluate the feasibility or complex analysis using statistical theories covering the uncertainties to decide the budget. In this study, the life-cycle cost analysis relies on the breakdown work structure based on the reports published by the biggest Infrastructure Manager in the United Kingdom. Additionally, the effects of extreme weathers are also concerned while calculating the life-cycle cost. The results indicate that crossing renewal and tamping activities have high costs similar to miscellaneous maintenance costs. Another interesting result is that maintenance costs could be as high as acquisition costs. Finally, crossing nose renewal and maintenance costs seem to occupy high shares in the maintenance budget.

Constraint Programming Approach for Optimizing Business Asset Maintenance Strategy

There are many buildings with various conditions in Indonesia and some of them are not in finest conditions that need maintenance treatment urgently. The absence of building maintenance decision-making tool and limited budget are among main factors that cause unmanageable maintenance program. Therefore, this study has been conducted to propose an optimization model that is capable to determine the most appropriate building maintenance treatment. This study applied Constraint Programming (CP) approach to select the most economical maintenance treatment for a certain building and to allocate annual maintenance budget. CP-based model in this study subjects to constraint of budget and targeted level of building condition. In this study, maintenance treatment options, budget, time period, building deterioration rates, and the minimum standard of building condition were set. The model was run in IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio since the software is very efficient and effective in processing the optimization model. Furthermore, a case study was carried out to run the model involving 41 buildings in a 10-year period, and two different scenarios were conducted to examine the optimization model. The results successfully validated that the model can be a decision-making tool in selecting and prioritizing effective maintenance treatment.

A new model for reliability-centered maintenance prioritisation of distribution feeders

Maintenance of distribution systems has become more important due to the need to increase energy availability, quality and safety, and also reduce operation cost. Accordingly, the maintenance strategy in distribution systems is one of the most important decision-making activities. One of the most important evaluations for deciding the adequate performance of power distribution system is the identification of the critical components. On the other hand, the budget for maintenance of components is limited, so the maintenance should only be performed on critical components. Identifying the critical components is used to achieve the objective of minimising the cost for maintenance actions. This paper presents a new weighted importance (WI) reliability index model and proposes an appropriate method in order to prioritise the elements of distribution system for reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) at two different levels. At the first level, the feeders of a sample distribution substation are prioritised for the RCM actions. The second level is more detailed than the first level. At the second level, the components of a sample feeder are prioritised for the RCM actions. The reliability of system can be increased to as much as required level while minimal maintenance to be done by the maintenance prioritisation of the system components and performing the maintenance actions on the critical components. Appropriate maintenance decision-making for the critical components of distribution system can lead to the improvement in the reliability of distribution system.

Effectiveness of Cape Seals on Asphalt Pavements

With the continuous limitations in budgets for pavement preservation and maintenance, Nevada road agencies expressed interest in learning about the performance of cape seal treatments with either a slurry seal or a micro surfacing, and their abilities to extend pavement life at the least cost. Accordingly, this study evaluated the long-term performance of cape seals that have been constructed in Northern Nevada during the past 15 years. Among the six factors that were evaluated (construction, materials, traffic, structure, environment, and pre-PCI), only the pre-PCI value (i.e., PCI value prior to the application of cape seal) had a significant impact on the long-term performance of the cape seals. Micro surfacing cape seals exhibited very consistent long-term performance regardless of the conditions of the existing pavement as expressed by the pre-PCI level.

Road Infrastructure Impacts on Transportation Safety (Case Study: Yazd Rural Roads)

Background: Statistics showed that road traffic fatalities is amongst the top ten cause of. Road infrastructure quality play a vital role in reducing traffic related accidents. There are different ways to inspect road infrastructures. In Iran however road safety inspections are mostly based on periodic field surveys. This study goaled to investigate the importance of road infrastructure quality on transportation yearly crash rate index based on 3 years (2015-2017) police reported crash data with the case study of Yazd province. Infrastructure quality data are collected from Yazd department of transportation and road maintenance for Yazd rural highways. The recorded qualities were based on 4 point scale road deficit (i.e. very low, low, medium and high). The influence of road infrastructure quality were examined based on both descriptive statistics and crash rate index modeling. It was tried to compare ten different modeling structure based on akaike information criterion (AIC) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC). The models encompasses: Poisson, negative binomial (NB2), zero-truncated-poisson (ZTP), zero-truncated-negative-binomial (ZTNB), zero-inflated-poisson (ZIP), zero-inflated-negative-binomial (ZINB), REPoisson, RENB2, FEPoisson and FENB. Regardless of the yearly recorded road infrastructure data, investigations demonstrated that nearly 75% of road infrastructure qualities are in medium condition for all years. Results: Results showed that the FENB model outperform the competing models. Results also showed the reduction in road traffic crash rate index when road infrastructure quality decreased by one level form very low to low and also from low to medium. But there seems that the index will increase when road infrastructure quality decreased one level from medium to high. Conclusion: The whole results claims that we are in critical condition for our road infrastructure maintenance budget assignment.

An optimal maintenance strategy for multi-state systems based on a system linear integral equation and dynamic programming

An optimal preventive maintenance strategy for multi-state systems based on an integral equation and dynamic programming is described herein. Unlike traditional preventive maintenance strategies, this maintenance strategy is formulated using an integral equation, which can capture the system dynamics and avoid the curse of dimensionality arising from complex semi-Markov processes. The linear integral equation of the system is constructed based on the system kernel. A numerical technique is applied to solve this integral equation and obtain all of the mean elapsed times from each reliable state to each unreliable state. An analytical approach to the optimal preventive maintenance strategy is proposed that maximizes the expected operational time of the system subject to the total maintenance budget based on dynamic programming in which both backward and forward search techniques are used to search for the local optimal solution. Finally, numerical examples concerning two different scales of systems are presented to demonstrate the performance of the strategy in terms of accuracy and efficiency. Moreover a sensitivity analysis is provided to evaluate the robustness of the proposed strategy.

ANALISIS KUALITAS PELAYANAN RUSUNAWA GUNUNG SARI SURABAYA

The paper disccuses an analysis study on the service quality of Rusunawa Gunungsari in terms of occupants satisfacion, condition of current management body of rusunawa, and management recommendation to improve the service quality of Rusunawa Gunungsari. The analysis is performed by using Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) for occupants satisfaction and 7s Mc Kinsey model as a framework to identify the current condition of management body of Rusunawa Gunungsari, then the results of these two analysis are used as inputs for management improvement recommendation. The results shows that the comparison between perception and expectation of occupant (Total Compliance Level) for Rusunawa Gunung Sari is equal to 74.18%, the absence of maintenance regulation or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), lack of occupant rules enforcement, insufficient rusunawa management budget, and lack of cleaners are management conditions that contribute to management low performance.The recommendation for improving management performance based on two analysis before are the management body should compile and implement the Standard Operating Procedure of rusunawa maintenance,enforce the occupants rules,add numbers of cleaners, and conduct an management evaluation as a maintenance budget reference.

The restored mausoleum of Abu'l-Walid in Herat: Challenges in heritage restoration in Afghanistan

This is an account of the contemporary reconstruction of Abu'l-Walid complex (mosque and mausoleum) in Herat, the burial-place of a widely-respected-Muslim scholar of the third/ninth century. This structure was destroyed by aerial bombardment in 1985. Part of the complex was restored as a post-war measure to rehabilitate social and educational space for the inhabitants and children of the nearby village. The project also trained young architects and masons of Herat in the conservation of historic buildings. The mausoleum remained in ruins until the Department of Herat Monuments (DoHM) with support of local resources and pious endowments (waqf), reconstructed it between 2004 and 2007. Restoration of heritage buildings is a challenge in Afghanistan today. Absence of public awareness of the value of cultural heritages, government's limited technical capacity combined with scarcity of funds for preservation, and lack of budget for post-conservation maintenance, exacerbates the challenges of safeguarding historic sites and monuments.

Evaluation of Rheological Behavior of Bitumen Modified with Nano Copper Oxide

Nowadays, one of the most challenging problems facing civil and transportation engineers, which consumes plenty of budgets (causes large amount of cost) for maintenance of asphalt roads, is asphalt destructions. Lots of efforts are done in order to increase the resistance and life span of asphalt, including development of bitumen properties. Bitumen is used broadly in road construction due to its appropriate properties; however, it has some major deficiencies which may lead to destructions of asphalt pavements. Therefore different bitumen modifications are implemented to achieve desired properties for different objectives, including (Such as) using rubber powder, waste materials, various polymers, etc. Recently, researchers are turning to nanotechnology to improve bitumen properties. Conducted studies on this topic (conducted research in this field) show that using modified bitumen by nanomaterial, increases the capacity of the pavement’s load bearing and decreases probable cracks due to fatigue during the operation life of the pavement. In this study, Nano Copper Oxide is used to develop rheological properties of bitumen. Nanoparticles have been added to bitumen with amount of 2.5, 3 and 5 percent and then Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR) and Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR) experiments have been conducted to investigate the effects of using nanoparticles in pure bitumen. Results show that adding Copper Oxide nanoparticles to bitumen improves the performance of base bitumen, especially at middle and low temperatures.

Fractal analysis as an innovative approach for evaluating the condition of railway tracks

The deterioration of ballast and the consequences of weak subsoil increase the need for track maintenance. These problems reduce the service life of tracks, and a higher maintenance budget is required. This paper introduces an innovative method for evaluating the condition of the ballast and the subsoil. Fractal analysis of the vertical track geometry enables infrastructure managers to determine the root cause of track irregularities by quantifying the wavelength characteristics of the common track geometry data. This methodology determines whether the ballast or the substructure condition is the cause of poor track quality. Fractal analysis has been carried out to date on the main network of the Austrian Federal Railways, which comprises some 4000 km of track, as well as within the network of Suisse Federal Railways (∼5000 km). Additionally, several lines in the United States (Amtrak), Belgium (InfraBel), and Denmark (BaneDanmark) have been evaluated. A detailed validation process has been carried out to investigate different characteristics and their correlation to the in situ behavior of the track. This research is now showing promising results after being cross-checked with historical data and compared to the implemented maintenance measures. On-site inspections have confirmed the evaluated component-specific condition.

The Reuse Process of OSS Components

In recent years, OSS has been expanding globally, with the advantage of being able to avoid adverse consequences of proprietary software monopolies, and to reduce the budget and procedures for maintenance and upgrades. This can serve as a good opportunity to prevent the monopoly of large corporations and establish a balanced industrial structure through fair competition. despite the many advantages of OSS, we are having difficulties in using OSS due to several reasons. To meet the functionality of the required software, leveraging open source is seen as an effective way to reduce costs and ensure quality. However, in the actual development process, it is difficult to select open source with proper function and quality, to analyze it, to change it, and to integrate it into the target system. In order to solve these problems, this study proposed the procedures and methods for identifying and selecting open source, and the efficient improvement and integration method through minimal modification.

Influence of evaporative cooling by urban forests on cooling demand in cities

Trees provide important ecosystem services to urban human society. Their absence can lead to more pronounced environmental and social consequences, for example the urban heat island effect. Evapotranspiration (Et) from trees reduces air temperature in the urban microclimate by converting sensible heat to latent heat. Quantification and valuation of the ecosystem services provided by urban trees is important for improving cost-benefit evaluations in support of protecting tree planting and maintenance budgets and, thus, for building climate change resilience into cities. Inclusion of Et cooling could improve ecosystem service valuation models by producing a more complete picture of the benefits that urban trees provide to society.This study explores two approaches for evaluating climate regulation as an ecosystem service of urban trees. Firstly, an enthalpy-based approach was adopted to valuate latent heat of evaporation from tree transpiration (in three case study urban forests) by equating it to an equivalent service from an active direct evaporative cooling system. Secondly, energy savings to air-conditioned buildings was modelled using TRNSYS and TRNFLOW simulation programs with and without air precooled and humidified by urban trees.Trees are shown to provide substantial urban cooling with an annual valuation of £84 m estimated using the enthalpy-based approach, or ranging from £2.1 m to £22 m using TRNSYS and TRNFLOW dynamic simulation programs; both for inner London case study. The latter savings arose from a modelled 1.28–13.4% reduction in air-conditioning unit energy consumption. Challenges around assumptions of homogeneity in both built form and urban forest canopy effects are discussed.The case study examples highlighted differences in Et cooling between tree species, with Castanea sativa, Prunus avium, Quercus petraea, Platanus hybrida and Fagus sylvatica typically providing more Et cooling than any of the other tree species commonly found in urban forests. The research highlighted a shortage of published Et data, particularly for urban environments.

Electricity Distribution System Maintenance Budgeting: A Reliability-Centered Approach

Maintenance management—as a part of the asset management policies—plays a vital role in enhancing the reliability of the electricity distribution system (EDS). The electric utility companies devote a considerable effort to allocate their financial resources to critical parts of the system, to achieve higher efficiencies. In this paper, a practical method is proposed for reliability-centered maintenance budgeting. The proposed method determines the optimal maintenance actions and their execution times in EDS feeders. The objective is to minimize the total reliability cost, including: the total customer interruption cost and total energy not supplied cost. Moreover, four cases are considered to explore the performance of the proposed maintenance method, including: the conventional EDS, the EDS equipped with remote-controlled switches (RCSs), maintenance budgeting and time allocation for the conventional EDS, and maintenance budgeting and time allocation for the EDS equipped with RCSs. The proposed reliability improvement approaches are applied to bus number two of the Roy Billinton test system, as well as a real scale distribution network followed by discussions on the obtained results.

Impact of a Lower Conservation Budget on Road Safety Indices

Over the past few years, several countries, including Spain, have been experiencing a period of economic recession. As a result, these governments have reduced their budgets for transport infrastructures (both construction and maintenance operations). The main objective of this study is to analyze whether these budget reductions have an effect on increased accident rates and to perform an assessment of their real economic benefit. Thus, we analyze whether significant changes over recent years are perceptible in the road safety indexes in Spain, in terms of risk, accident fatality, and accident severity. The relation between lower budgets and higher road safety indices is analyzed through linear regression techniques. The results show a strong relation between the Risk Index and the maintenance budget, measured as an average of the last years. In addition, a final economic assessment demonstrates that this reduction in investment had no real economic benefits, especially as the costs of the accidents exceeded the savings in the conservation plans.

Business attitudes towards funding ecosystem services provided by urban forests

Urban trees and woodlands provide a wide range of ecosystem services (ES) to society, for example, flood risk reduction, air purification, and moderation of urban heat islands. Despite this, local government budgets for tree planting and maintenance have declined in many cities throughout the world. Thus far, the academic literature has largely ignored whether businesses are willing to help fund urban forests and the ES they provide. Business financing via payments for ecosystem services (PES) within the urban realm is also under-researched and lacking in practice. This study aims to address these research gaps. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 30 businesses of varying sizes and sectors, operating in Southampton, UK. Respondents thought a public-private partnership would be feasible, with a focus on voluntary payments towards enhancing air quality, reducing flood risk, and improving aesthetics. Respondents would prefer to choose from a list of location-specific, cost-effective, monitored projects to fund directly, for marketing and/or corporate social responsibility purposes. To facilitate business funding of urban forest-based ES, clear communication of the expected environmental benefits and a strong business case are required, drawing on the experience of similar initiatives. From our findings, we recommend the piloting and analysis of such PES schemes.

Asphalt pavement classification using smartphone accelerometer and Complexity Invariant Distance

Most modern smartphones have a variety of built-in sensors, as an accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, proximity and a magnetic sensor. The large variety of sensors makes these devices powerful measurement tools, allowing the emergence of new systems and applications. In this paper, is presented a real data stream application related to asphalt pavement evaluation using acceleration data gathered by the accelerometer sensor of smartphones. The quality of the pavement has a significant influence on the final price of goods and services, the safety of drivers, pedestrians and passengers, and driver’s comfort. Thus, it is essential the use of tools, as proposed in this work, that allows the constant monitoring of pavement conditions by the Government authorities or private entities for more precise interventions in the maintenance planning with fewer expenses. This task is mainly important in developing countries where there is a lack of technology and a reduced budget for maintenance. Due to the popularity of smartphones, this tool can make possible that different users help to monitor the pavement quality ubiquitously during driving periods without effort. The application of asphalt evaluation is modeled in this work as a multi-dimensional time series classification problem, where the time series are the data from the three-axis accelerometer sensor. Given the characteristics of the data, we discuss and propose the combination of some classical distance measure for time series as Dynamic Time Warping or Longest Common Subsequence Similarity with the Complexity Invariant Distance. A comprehensive experimental evaluation was performed on three datasets that represent different scenarios of asphalt pavement classification. The proposed approach reaches a classification accuracy of 80% to 98% in the three evaluated problems and we experimentally show that the complexity invariance substantially improves the results achieved by classical distance measures given our classification tasks.