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"Booth, Colin (Colin A.)"
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Environmental management systems in the architectural, engineering and construction sectors: a roadmap to aid the delivery of the sustainable development goals
Realisation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) will provide improvements to people's lives and longevity of the planet. The architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) sectors have a potentially huge role in aiding the delivery of many SDGs; however, there appears to be a lack of research into the engagement within this sector. The leading environmental management system (EMS), ISO 14001, can enable organisations in the AEC sectors to improve their business operations, whilst minimising their impacts on the environment and improving society. Therefore, the study sets out to use institutional theory to determine the usefulness of ISO 14001 as a tool within the AEC sector and to demonstrate how the organisational benefits could facilitate the delivery of the SDGs. A stepwise PRISMA review process facilitated the compiling of academic articles and professional reports (
n
= 44), which enabled the creation of an inventory of the perceived benefits (
n
= 85) and the recognised barriers (
n
= 63) to implementing ISO 14001 across the AEC sectors. These barriers and benefits were confirmed by environmental practitioners as being relevant to the incorporation of an EMS. The most widely reported benefits within the AEC sectors were improving environmental performance and compliance with legislation. Lack of government pressure and lack of expertise were the most widely reported barriers, followed by cost to AEC organisations utilising an EMS. Following on from this inventory of benefits, it was possible to develop of a conceptual roadmap, which illustrates where linkages exist with the SDGs. SDG 4, 8, 12 and 13 are shown as exhibiting the most associations with the benefits. This roadmap was reviewed by AEC sector professionals who confirmed its usefulness. Therefore, it is surmised that the roadmap could aid strategic organisational sustainable planning or for organisations to demonstrate the delivery of their corporate social responsibilities.
Journal Article
Immersive technology for road safety: a systematic review of empirical studies
Traffic accidents, claiming approximately 1.2 million lives and over 50 million injuries annually worldwide, are largely due to driver error, necessitating innovative driving safety solutions. This systematic review assesses the role of immersive technologies, specifically Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, in enhancing road safety through improved driver training and assistance. Analyzing 74 empirical studies from 2015 to 2024 sourced from Scopus and IEEE Xplore, the review highlights how these technologies boost situational awareness, reduce cognitive workload, and enhance driver performance. For example, Augmented Reality head-up displays can cut reaction times by up to 20%, while Virtual Reality training lowers risky behaviours in young drivers by 15%. Despite these benefits, gaps remain: limited evidence on design requirements and user preferences, inadequate focus on overseas drivers adapting to unfamiliar systems, challenges in translating theory to practice, and under-representation of diverse demographics amid growing global mobility. The review offers practical design insights, such as an optimal transparency threshold of 0.75 for Augmented Reality heads-up displays, guiding researchers and designers toward safer, inclusive solutions. Future research must address these gaps to ensure immersive technologies effectively support diverse drivers in complex traffic settings.
Journal Article
Flood Susceptibility Assessment for Improving the Resilience Capacity of Railway Infrastructure Networks
Floods often cause significant damage to transportation infrastructure such as roads, railways, and bridges. This study identifies several topographic, environmental, and hydrological factors (slope, elevation, rainfall, land use and cover, distance from rivers, geology, topographic wetness index, and drainage density) influencing the safety of the railway infrastructure and uses multi-criteria analysis (MCA) alongside an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to produce flood susceptibility maps within a geographic information system (GIS). The proposed methodology was applied to the catchment area of a railway track in southern Italy that was heavily affected by a destructive flood that occurred in the autumn of 2015. Two susceptibility maps were obtained, one based on static geophysical factors and another including triggering rainfall (dynamic). The results showed that large portions of the railway line are in a very highly susceptible zone. The flood susceptibility maps were found to be in good agreement with the post-disaster flood-induced infrastructural damage recorded along the railway, whilst the official inundation maps from competent authorities fail to supply information about flooding occurring along secondary tributaries and from direct rainfall. The reliable identification of sites susceptible to floods and damage may provide railway and environmental authorities with useful information for preparing disaster management action plans, risk analysis, and targeted infrastructure maintenance/monitoring programs, improving the resilience capacity of the railway network. The proposed approach may offer railway authorities a cost-effective strategy for rapidly screening flood susceptibility at regional/national levels and could also be applied to other types of linear transport infrastructures.
Journal Article
Water resources in the built environment : management issues and solutions
\"Water management is a key environmental issue in controlling of floods and reducing droughts. This book provides analysis of the main issues, offering solutions and describing good practice.Water Resources for the Built Environment: management issues and solutions develops an appreciation of the diverse, complex and current themes of the water resources debate across the built environment, urban development and management continuum. The integration of physical and environmental sciences, combined with social, economic and political sciences, provide a unique resource, useful to policy experts, scientists, engineers and subject enthusiasts. By taking an interdisciplinary approach, water resources issues and impacts on the built environment are presented in the inventive and strategic setting of considering the constraints of delivering potable water to an ever-demanding society who, at the same time, are increasingly aware of living in an urban landscape where excessive surface water creates a flood threatened environment - hence, the need to portray a balance between 'too little vs. too much'.This unique approach to the water resources debate presents a multifaceted collection of chapters that address the contemporary concomitant issues of water shortage and urban flooding and proffers solutions specifically for the built environment.The book is structured into three parts: the first part (Sections 2, 3 and 4) addresses management issues and solutions to minimise water shortages and provide water security for society; whilst the second part of the book (Sections 5 and 6) addresses management issues and solutions to control excessive rainfall and minimise flooding impacts. The third part (Section 7) contextualises the issues of the earlier sections within international case studies from the developing world\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Sustainable Surface Water Management
Sustainable Surface Water Management: a handbook for SUDS addresses issues as diverse as flooding, water quality, amenity and biodiversity but also mitigation of, and adaptation to, global climate change, human health benefits and reduction in energy use. Chapters are included to cover issues from around the world, but they also address particular designs associated with the implementation of SUDS in tropical areas, problems with retrofitting SUDS devices, SUDS modelling, water harvesting in drought-stricken countries using SUDS and the inclusion of SUDS in the climate change strategies of such cities as Tokyo, New York and Strasbourg.
eBook
Strength Predictive Modelling of Soils Treated with Calcium-Based Additives Blended with Eco-Friendly Pozzolans—A Machine Learning Approach
The unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of a stabilised soil is a major mechanical parameter in understanding and developing geomechanical models, and it can be estimated directly by either lab testing of retrieved core samples or remoulded samples. However, due to the effort, high cost and time associated with these methods, there is a need to develop a new technique for predicting UCS values in real time. An artificial intelligence paradigm of machine learning (ML) using the gradient boosting (GB) technique is applied in this study to model the unconfined compressive strength of soils stabilised by cementitious additive-enriched agro-based pozzolans. Both ML regression and multinomial classification of the UCS of the stabilised mix are investigated. Rigorous sensitivity-driven diagnostic testing is also performed to validate and provide an understanding of the intricacies of the decisions made by the algorithm. Results indicate that the well-tuned and optimised GB algorithm has a very high capacity to distinguish between positive and negative UCS categories (‘firm’, ‘very stiff’ and ‘hard’). An overall accuracy of 0.920, weighted recall rates and precision scores of 0.920 and 0.938, respectively, were produced by the GB model. Multiclass prediction in this regard shows that only 12.5% of misclassified instances was achieved. When applied to a regression problem, a coefficient of determination of approximately 0.900 and a mean error of about 0.335 were obtained, thus lending further credence to the high performance of the GB algorithm used. Finally, among the eight input features utilised as independent variables, the additives seemed to exhibit the strongest influence on the ML predictive modelling.
Journal Article
Optimisation of Embodied Carbon and Compressive Strength in Low Carbon Concrete
To improve the prediction of compressive strength and embodied carbon of low carbon concrete using a program algorithm developed in MATLAB, 84 datasets of concrete mix raw materials were used. The influence of water, silica fume and ground granular base slag was found to have a significant impact on the extent of low carbon concrete behaviour in terms of compressive strength and embodied carbon. While the concrete compressive strength for normal concrete increases with reducing water content, it is observed that the low carbon concrete using lightweight aggregate material increases in compressive strength with an increase in embodied carbon. From the result of the analysis, a function was developed that was able to predict the associated embodied carbon of a concrete mix for a given water-to-cement ratio. The use of an alkaline solution is observed to increase the compressive strength of low carbon concrete when used in combination with ground granular base slag and silica fume. It is further shown that ground granular base slag contributes significantly to an increase in the compressive strength of Low carbon concrete when compared with pulverised fly ash. The optimised mix design program resulted in a 26% reduction in embodied carbon and an R2 value of 0.9 between the measured compressive strength and the optimised compressive strength.
Journal Article