• Pennsylvania's bridge structural deficiency rate is nearly double the national average

    There are 4,284 bridges in the 5-county Pittsburgh area, and 1,246 of them, or 29 percent, are rated structurally deficient; this means that at least one bridge element — its superstructure, substructure, or deck — was found by inspectors to be in poor or worse-than-poor condition; Pennsylvania’s 22 percent bridge structural deficiency rate is nearly double the national average

  • India tunnels under Himalayan peaks to keep up with China

    In the past decade, as China has furiously built up its military and civilian infrastructure on its side of the Himalayan border, but the Rohtang Pass on the Indian side has stood as silent testimony to India’s inability and unwillingness to master its far-flung and rugged outermost reaches; in June, India has began to change that by starting the ambitious project which will take five years and require boring five miles through the Pir Panjal range; several other tunnels, which would allow all-weather access to Ladakh, which abuts the Tibetan Plateau, are also in the works

  • Good business: Developers make buildings more disaster-secure than building code requires

    A Florida developer hopes to get more business by making his building hurricane-proof; with debris-resistant windows on all thirty-five of its stories, the developer says the building would withstand a Category 5 hurricane without significant damage; the extra hurricane proofing built into the Miami building shows that sometimes the private market can overtake the public sector when it comes to building design and safety standards; for example, in New York and Washington, D.C., some developers have put in anti-terrorism safeguards that exceed building codes

  • 150,000 U.S. bridges are rated "deficient"

    About 25 percent of the U.S. bridges remain “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete”; the deterioration of bridges in the United States is the direct result of a confluence of three developments: the system is aging; the costs of maintaining bridges is high; and traffic on these bridges is steadily increasing

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  • Brazil considers bulletproofing schools to protect students in "at-risk areas"

    Teachers call for more protection in drug-gang areas after stray bullet hits an 11-year old student in the heart during math lesson; city authorities are currently studying plans to introduce reinforced walls and bulletproof windows in order to protect an estimated 100,000 students and 5,000 teachers who study and work in “at-risk areas”

  • Preventing on-land spills by reducing pipeline accidents

    Three thousand companies operate more than 2.5 million miles of pipeline carrying flammable and dangerous fuels, such as natural gas and diesel, across the United States to U.S. homes and businesses; with tens of thousands of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico every day, lawmakers want to ensuring that what happened off the Gulf Coast does not occur somewhere inside the United States

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  • Oregon town plans first tsunami-resistant building on stilts

    Geological findings in recent years suggest there is a one-in-three chance that in the next half century a mega-earthquake will tear the seafloor apart off the Oregon Coast; huge waves would surge onto coastal communities in as little as fifteen minutes; an Oregon city plans tsunami-resistant buildings on stilts

  • Berkeley quake demonstration shows bridge safety ideas

    Researchers demonstrate new bridge design that can withstand powerful earthquakes; the design concept relies on building segmented bridges with seismic isolators between the segments; the design would be particularly useful for long stretches of elevated freeways and high-speed rail lines that often run on elevated tracks

  • Fiber polymer replaces steel bars in major building projects

    UAE University researchers have developed an inexpensive alternative to demolishing damaged buildings and rebuilding them: using FRP (fiber reinforced polymer); FRP can be used in strengthening and repair instead of concrete or steel jacketing, which are labor intensive; moreover, concrete and steel jacketing systems are also often vulnerable to the same deterioration mechanism that caused the problem in the first place

  • Worries about safety of California bridges with eyebar design

    Every so often the Bay Bridge closes because of widening eyebar crack; when the bridge opened seventy years ago, the design was considered safe, but structural engineers now say the eyebar design is an inherently unsafe; trouble is, dozens and dozens of California aging bridges use the flawed design

  • Researchers look for a better way to build bridges

    Canadian researchers look for ways to make bridges sturdier; one project looks at the use of advanced fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs) to protect critical concrete infrastructure against extreme shocks; the second study involves the use of ultra high-performance concrete (UHPC) to build long-life, lightweight and cost-effective bridges

  • Detecting a silent bridge-killer

    New York State failed to make ultrasonic test of concrete piers, which could have avoided Champlain Bridge closure; a $10,000 high-tech ultrasonic test of the piers could have provided an early warning of lurking rot and given time to make repairs to stabilize the piers before the bridge became unsafe