The Breadth of Engineering Standards

2019 ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Thomas J. DiNovo ◽  
David V. MacCollum
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Standards

scholarly journals Tailings facility disclosures reveal stability risks

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Franks ◽  
Martin Stringer ◽  
Luis A. Torres-Cruz ◽  
Elaine Baker ◽  
Rick Valenta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Disclosure ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
Construction Method ◽  
Facility Management ◽  
Alternative Technologies ◽  
Construction Methods ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
Engineering Standards ◽  
The Right ◽  
Stability Issues

AbstractTailings facility failures represent a significant risk to the environment and communities globally, but until now little data was available on the global distribution of risks and characteristics of facilities to ensure proper governance. We conducted a survey and compiled a database with information on tailings facilities disclosed by extractive companies at the request of institutional investors. Despite limitations in the data, this information disclosure request represents the most comprehensive survey of tailings facilities ever undertaken. The compiled dataset includes 1743 tailings facilities and provides insights into a range of topics including construction method, stability, consequence of failure, stored volume, and the rate of uptake of alternative technologies to dewater tailings and reduce geotechnical risk. Our analysis reveals that 10 per cent of tailings facilities reported notable stability concerns or failure to be confirmed or certified as stable at some point in their history, with distinct trends according to construction method, governance, age, height, volume and seismic hazard. Controversy has surrounded the safety of tailings facilities, most notably upstream facilities, for many years but in the absence of definitive empirical data differentiating the risks of different facility types, upstream facilities have continued to be used widely by the industry and a consensus has emerged that upstream facilities can theoretically be built safely under the right circumstances. Our findings reveal that in practice active upstream facilities report a higher incidence of stability issues (18.3%) than other facility types, and that this elevated risk persists even when these facilities are built in high governance settings. In-pit/natural landform and dry-stack facilities report lower incidence of stability issues, though the rate of stability issues is significant by engineering standards (> 2 per cent) across all construction methods, highlighting the universal importance of careful facility management and governance. The insights reported here can assist the global governance of tailings facility stability risks.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative with ASEAN Countries: Examining the Trade Cooperation and Impact of Coronavirus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Haniff Jedin ◽  
Zhang Meng Di
Keyword(s):  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Total Import ◽  
Export Volume ◽  
Engineering Standards ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Import And Export ◽  
Trade War ◽  
Asean Countries ◽  
Building Program ◽  
The Belt And Road

The rising US–China tension in the global trade war increased the trade cooperation between China and the ASEAN. Consequently, China’s total import and export volume with ASEAN increased tremendously to 684.60 billion USD in 2020, up by 6.7% year on year. This trend is part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which promotes China’s infrastructure building program in the neighboring ASEAN countries and exports China’s technical know-how and engineering standards. However, the recent coronavirus outbreak that stormed China and the rest of the world caused delays to many BRI projects. Subsequently, this outbreak also hit the ASEAN countries and halted many of their mega-projects under the BRI framework. Thus, this study attempts to highlight the trade cooperation and project developments of BRI in the ASEAN countries. In addition, the study features the landscape of BRI projects that were affected by the coronavirus amongst the ASEAN countries.

scholarly journals Impacts of Spatial Heterogeneity and Temporal Non-Stationarity on Intensity-Duration-Frequency Estimates—A Case Study in a Mountainous California-Nevada Watershed

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huiying Ren ◽  
Z. Jason Hou ◽  
Mark Wigmosta ◽  
Ying Liu ◽  
L. Ruby Leung
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Spatial Heterogeneity ◽  
Time Windows ◽  
Exceedance Probability ◽  
Extreme Precipitation Events ◽  
Climate Simulations ◽  
Engineering Standards ◽  
Intensity Duration Frequency ◽  
Using Data

Changes in extreme precipitation events may require revisions of civil engineering standards to prevent water infrastructures from performing below the designated guidelines. Climate change may invalidate the intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) computation that is based on the assumption of data stationarity. Efforts in evaluating non-stationarity in the annual maxima series are inadequate, mostly due to the lack of long data records and convenient methods for detecting trends in the higher moments. In this study, using downscaled high resolution climate simulations of the historical and future periods under different carbon emission scenarios, we tested two solutions to obtain reliable IDFs under non-stationarity: (1) identify quasi-stationary time windows from the time series of interest to compute the IDF curves using data for the corresponding time windows; (2) introduce a parameter representing the trend in the means of the extreme value distributions. Focusing on a mountainous site, the Walker Watershed, the spatial heterogeneity and variability of IDFs or extremes are evaluated, particularly in terms of the terrain and elevation impacts. We compared observations-based IDFs that use the stationarity assumption with the two approaches that consider non-stationarity. The IDFs directly estimated based on the traditional stationarity assumption may underestimate the 100-year 24-h events by 10% to 60% towards the end of the century at most grids, resulting in significant under-designing of the engineering infrastructure at the study site. Strong spatial heterogeneity and variability in the IDF estimates suggest a preference for using high resolution simulation data for the reliable estimation of exceedance probability over data from sparsely distributed weather stations. Discrepancies among the three IDFs analyses due to non-stationarity are comparable to the spatial variability of the IDFs, underscoring a need to use an ensemble of non-stationary approaches to achieve unbiased and comprehensive IDF estimates.

scholarly journals TECHNOLOGICAL LITERACY: TEACHERS’ PROGRESSIVE APPROACH USED FOR 21ST CENTURY STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC SUCCESS IN VIBRANT ENVIRONMENT

2020 ◽  
Vol 78 (5) ◽  
pp. 734-753
Author(s):  
Mehboob Ul Hassan ◽  
Rafaqat Ali Akbar
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Technological Literacy ◽  
Private Universities ◽  
Achievement Scores ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Engineering Standards ◽  
Data Collections

Technology plants concrete effects on the supremacy of humans' technological success that have been remaining awe-inspiring aspects for stakeholders; teachers and students since last eras. Teachers make students technologically literate, reshape their hidden potential, skill them through modern gadgets, help in understanding and evaluating their functions applying technological and engineering standards for goal achievements. Present research was conducted to explore the effect of teachers’ technological literacy on students’ academic success occurs in vibrant environment on conveniently selected sample of 200 teachers working in public and private universities of district Lahore. Researchers administered a self-developed survey to collect data from teachers. Content validity of questionnaire was ensured from experts and reliability was confirmed by calculating Cronbach’s Alpha Scores .821. Normality of the data was assured by calculating Shapiro-Wilk’s test, ¬ n < 2000, p > .05. Students’ academic success was measured through acquiring achievement scores, obtained from concerned university offices ensuring ethical considerations, as in data collections. Results of independent samples t-test and regression analysis ascertained no significant difference between usage of technological literacy by teachers’ gender and university type; male teachers working in public and private universities have same usage of technological literacy as compared to female teachers. Moreover, teachers’ technological literacy affect 43% on students’ academic success occurs in vibrant learning environment. On the basis of results, research recommends that universities may established digital lab ensuring vibrant environment and hire technologically literate staff providing fringe benefits to meet 21st century technological literacy demands for students’ success. Keywords: digital citizenship, students’ achievement scores, technological literacy, technological concepts, vibrant environment

A Study of the Causes of Man-Hour Variance of Naval Shipyard Work Standards

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (04) ◽  
pp. 268-275
Author(s):  
Howard M. Bunch
Keyword(s):  
Wide Range ◽  
Engineering Standards ◽  
The Relationship

This paper presents the results of a study conducted at a U.S. Navy shipyard during 1987 concerning the relationship between engineering standards and the variances that were occurring in production budget and charged man-hours. The ten engineering standards having the greatest man-hour variances were examined. These standards, as a group, accounted for about 62 percent of the man-hour variance that was reported during the first nine months of 1987. The study indicated that, with one exception, all of the standards were "generic" in their application, that is, they can be applied over a wide range of job orders. The study also concluded that engineered standards are only partially responsible for the production variance.

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