Civil engineering articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Building renovation is an urgent requirement to reduce the environmental impact associated with the building stock. In this paper, authors identify strategies for robust renovation considering uncertainties on the future and provide recommendations for the residential buildings in Switzerland.

    • Alina Galimshina
    • , Maliki Moustapha
    •  & Guillaume Habert
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Without relying on any infrastructure-based vehicle detectors, the authors present a scalable traffic signal re-timing system that uses a small percentage of connected vehicle trajectories as the only input. Real-world tests demonstrate that the system decreases both delays and number of stops.

    • Xingmin Wang
    • , Zachary Jerome
    •  & Henry X. Liu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drones are an effective and flexible tool for safety assessment of aging infrastructure, especially in locations with challenging accessibility. Here, authors demonstrate a phase-based sampling moiré technique with a drone for measurement of millimeter-scale infrastructural displacement in bridges.

    • Shien Ri
    • , Jiaxing Ye
    •  & Norihiko Ogura
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ambiguity in human-oriented traffic laws poses a significant challenge to the regulation of self-driving vehicles. Here, the authors present a trigger-based hierarchical online compliance monitor for self-assessment of self-driving vehicles using ambiguous compliance threshold selection principles.

    • Wenhao Yu
    • , Chengxiang Zhao
    •  & Ding Zhao
  • Article
    | Open Access

    14% of the world’s coastlines are muddy and the majority of them are eroding at rates exceeding 1 m per year over the last three decades, according to an automated classification method that identifies global coastlines.

    • Romy Hulskamp
    • , Arjen Luijendijk
    •  & Stefan Aarninkhof
  • Article
    | Open Access

    A resilient battery electric bus transit system design and configuration is proposed. The model is robust against simultaneous charging disruptions without interrupting daily operation. Indeed, additional marginal cost is required, yet it prevents significant service reductions.

    • Ahmed Foda
    • , Moataz Mohamed
    •  & Ehab El-Saadany
  • Article
    | Open Access

    This work demonstrates a wind-powered device for cooling permafrost in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region. Composed of a windmill, mechanical clutch, and a heat exchanger with a phase change material, pilot experiments show soil temperature reduction with superior efficiency compared to traditional thermosyphons.

    • Yinghong Qin
    • , Tianyu Wang
    •  & Weixin Yuan
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rapid adoption of zero-emission vehicles with a concurrent transition to clean electricity is essential to achieve U.S. transportation decarbonization goals. Managing travel demand can ease this transition by reducing the need for clean electricity supply. @cghoehne, @nrel, #NRELMobility

    • Christopher Hoehne
    • , Matteo Muratori
    •  & Ookie Ma
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Groundwater recharge feeds aquifers supplying fresh-water to a population over 80 million in Iran. The authors here show a significant decline of around −3.8 mm/yr in the nationwide groundwater recharge.

    • Roohollah Noori
    • , Mohsen Maghrebi
    •  & Amir AghaKouchak
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil-liquefaction is a catastrophic seismic hazard, usually attributed to poor drainage. Here the authors show that liquefaction driven by fluid drainage explains puzzling triggering far from the earthquake source, where shaking is less energetic

    • Shahar Ben-Zeev
    • , Liran Goren
    •  & Einat Aharonov
  • Article
    | Open Access

    This work quantifies the climate benefits of efficiently utilizing concrete through improved material and structural design, and it shows that over 75% of CO2 emissions from global concrete production could be cut with already implementable measures

    • Josefine A. Olsson
    • , Sabbie A. Miller
    •  & Mark G. Alexander
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite widely used in the construction sector, Portland cement’s high brittleness and low toughness still pose challenges in some applications. Here, authors apply an ice-templating method to fabricate a cement-hydrogel composite with alternating layered microstructure resulting in significantly increased toughness.

    • Yuan Chen
    • , Yangzezhi Zheng
    •  & Changwen Miao
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fingering patterns form spontaneously when a non-wetting viscous liquid displaces a dry granular mixture in a confined flow cell. The authors show how these patterns are controlled by the balance between viscous, capillary, and frictional forces.

    • Dawang Zhang
    • , James M. Campbell
    •  & Bjørnar Sandnes
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, the authors use near-field ptychographic nanotomography to visualize cement hydration in situ. They report hydration features with submicrometer detail including calcium silicate dissolution rates, etch-pit growth rates and water-to-air porosity evolution.

    • Shiva Shirani
    • , Ana Cuesta
    •  & Miguel A. G. Aranda
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Simulation of naturalistic driving environment for autonomous vehicle development is challenging due to its complexity and high dimensionality. The authors develop a deep learning-based framework to model driving behavior including safety-critical events for improved training of autonomous vehicles.

    • Xintao Yan
    • , Zhengxia Zou
    •  & Henry X. Liu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    While reflective pavement has been proposed and applied in pilot projects, its actual cooling performance remains unclear. Here, authors assessed the cooling potential of reflective pavement in Phoenix, AZ, using multiple heat metrics, reflectivity measures, and literature to provide a set of implementation guidelines.

    • Florian A. Schneider
    • , Johny Cordova Ortiz
    •  & Ariane Middel
  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study presents the first rapid seismic multi-hazard and impact estimation system integrating advanced causal inference and remote sensing techniques, which jointly estimates regional-scale and high-resolution maps of seismic multi-hazards and building damage from InSAR imageries.

    • Susu Xu
    • , Joshua Dimasaka
    •  & Hae Young Noh
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scaling up anisotropic freeze-casting processes can be challenging due to the temperature gradient farther from the cold source. Here, authors report an additive freeze-casting technique able to produce large-scale aerogel panels and demonstrate it towards practical passive cooling applications.

    • Kit-Ying Chan
    • , Xi Shen
    •  & Jang-Kyo Kim
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The study found that long-duration heatwaves are much more likely to follow power-damaging tropical cyclones in the future RCP8.5 climate, with the impact of longer-than-5-day tropical cyclone-blackout-heatwave compound hazard increasing by a factor of 23 over the 21st century.

    • Kairui Feng
    • , Min Ouyang
    •  & Ning Lin
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most porous systems comprise structures characterized by dead-end and transmitting pores. Here, authors show that macroscopic transport through such porous medium is controlled by structure-induced laminar vortices inside each dead-end pore, and such cannot be explained by diffusion alone.

    • Ankur Deep Bordoloi
    • , David Scheidweiler
    •  & Pietro de Anna
  • Article
    | Open Access

    A horizon scan was used to explore possible impacts of robotics and automated systems on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Positive effects are likely. Iterative regulatory processes and continued dialogue could help avoid environmental damages and increases in inequality.

    • Solène Guenat
    • , Phil Purnell
    •  & Martin Dallimer
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The integration of risk analysis and spatial CGE modeling frameworks allowed for measuring the direct and indirect consequences of extreme events via novel probabilistic risk indicators which incorporate elements of uncertainty and systemic effects

    • J. A. León
    • , M. Ordaz
    •  & I. F. Araújo
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The viability of earthquake early warning (EEW) in Europe is highly dependent on the magnitude of the ongoing earthquake and the ground-shaking threshold for alert issuance. The potential effectiveness of EEW is highest for Turkey, Italy, and Greece.

    • Gemma Cremen
    • , Carmine Galasso
    •  & Elisa Zuccolo
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tsunamis are devastating events. They are especially difficult to predict, when generated by landslides. In this paper, the authors overcome this issue by modelling the landslide and the tsunami in a unified framework in unprecedented detail.

    • Matthias Rauter
    • , Sylvain Viroulet
    •  & Finn Løvholt
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Building community resilience in the face of climate disasters is critical to achieving a sustainable future. Here, using the case study of community resilience during Hurricane Michael in 2018, the authors show that an overemphasis on recovery entrench ‘resilience traps’.

    • Benjamin Rachunok
    •  & Roshanak Nateghi
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The pedestrian-induced oscillation of the London Millennium Bridge is considered as an example of emerging synchronisation. Belykh et al. provide an alternative mechanism for emergence of coherent oscillatory bridge dynamics where synchrony is a consequence, not the cause, of the instability.

    • Igor Belykh
    • , Mateusz Bocian
    •  & Allan McRobie
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nearly one-third of the global coastline is vegetated. Incorporating these vegetation belts in coastal protection strategies would result in more sustainable and financially-attractive designs to mitigate the impacts of extreme coastal storms.

    • Vincent T. M. van Zelst
    • , Jasper T. Dijkstra
    •  & Mindert B. de Vries
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Estimating velocities in gas liquid flows is of importance in many engineering applications. Hohermuth et al. show that previous bubble velocities obtained from intrusive probes have been underestimated and provide a correction scheme for more accurate velocity measurements.

    • B. Hohermuth
    • , M. Kramer
    •  & D. Valero
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Predicting and controlling the (in)stability of thin shells are important tasks in many practical applications but hampered by the presence of imperfections. Here Yan et al. show that when the material composition is magnetic the conditions for collapse can simply be readjusted with external fields.

    • Dong Yan
    • , Matteo Pezzulla
    •  & Pedro M. Reis
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Infrastructure networks are characterized by fluctuations of flow demand between different points and temporal congestion or overload on flow pathways. Hamedmoghadam et al. identify congestion bottlenecks in networks relevant to communication, transportation, water supply, and power distribution.

    • Homayoun Hamedmoghadam
    • , Mahdi Jalili
    •  & Lewi Stone
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rare earth elements are used in electronics, but increase in demand could lead to low supply. Here the authors conduct experiments on the International Space Station and show microbes can extract rare elements from rocks at low gravity, a finding that could extend mining potential to other planets.

    • Charles S. Cockell
    • , Rosa Santomartino
    •  & René Demets
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chattering dust, or chemically reactive grains of sucrose containing pockets of pressurized carbon dioxide, are used in this experimental approach to study rock fractures. The chattering dust emits acoustic shocks that can be monitored and illuminates fracture geometry.

    • Laura J. Pyrak-Nolte
    • , William Braverman
    •  & David D. Nolte
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coastal restoration tends to be failure-prone and expensive. Temmink and colleagues improve seagrass and cordgrass transplant survival in field experiments using biodegradable structures which temporarily mimic self-facilitation occurring in mature vegetation stands, and combine onsite and laboratory measurements on sediment stability and stem movement to test the biophysical mechanisms.

    • Ralph J. M. Temmink
    • , Marjolijn J. A. Christianen
    •  & Tjisse van der Heide
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Predicting and controlling traffic congestion propagation is an ongoing challenge in most urban settings. Here, Seberi et al. apply a contagion model describing epidemic spread in population to model traffic jams, and verify its validity using large-scale data from six different cities around the world.

    • Meead Saberi
    • , Homayoun Hamedmoghadam
    •  & Marta C. González
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Granular materials are abundant in nature, but we haven’t fully understood their rheological properties as complex interactions between particles are involved. Here, Vo et al. show that granular flows can be described by a generalized dimensionless number based on stress additivity.

    • Thanh Trung Vo
    • , Saeid Nezamabadi
    •  & Farhang Radjai
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Economic estimates of flood damages rely on depth–damage functions that are inadequately verified. Here, the authors assessed flood vulnerability in the US and found that current depth–damage functions consist of disparate relationships that match poorly with observations which better follow a bimodal beta distribution.

    • Oliver E. J. Wing
    • , Nicholas Pinter
    •  & Carolyn Kousky
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Systematic methods to characterize human mobility can lead to more accurate forecasting of epidemic spreading and better urban planning. Here the authors present a methodology to analyse daily commuting data by representing it with an irrotational vector field and a corresponding scalar potential.

    • Mattia Mazzoli
    • , Alex Molas
    •  & José J. Ramasco
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The penetration dynamics of solid objects into granular media has been described by theories that are constrained to the use of phenomenological models or empirical parameters. Here, Kang et al. propose and test a parameter-free model for the dependence of the resistance force on penetration depth.

    • Wenting Kang
    • , Yajie Feng
    •  & Raphael Blumenfeld