Unit-1
Introduction to Course and Overview
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewerage systems, pipelines, structural components of buildings and railways.
Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is considered the second oldest engineering discipline after military engineering and it is defined to distinguish non military engineering from military engineering. Civil engineering takes place in the public sector from municipal through to national governments, and in the private sector from individual homeowners through to international companies.
Pre industrial society refers to social attributes and forms of political and cultural organization that were prevalent before the advent of the industrial revolution, which occured from 1750 to 1850. The industrial revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes. It brought some radical changes to the world. It began in England and later spread to france, germany, austro hungary and other nations.
The transition included going from hand production methods to machines,new chemical manufacturing and iron production, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system.
ATTRIBUTES OF PRE INUSTRIAL SOCIETY WAS
Limited production
Extreme agriculture economy: farming was the main occupation of majority of people. About 80-90% of human population was doing farming.
Parochialism: communications were limited between communities in pre industrial societies.
Limited division of labour
Limited variation of social classes
Subsistence level of living
Population depend on peasants for food
Social structures and working conditions: Harsh working conditions were prevalent long before the industrial revolution took place. Pre industrial society was very static and often cruel –child labour, dirty living conditions, and long working hours were equally as prevalent before the industrial revolution.
The agricultural revolution refers to the significant changes in agriculture when there are inventions, discoveries or new technologies implemented. These revolutions change the ways of production and increase the production rate.
The transformation of industry and the economy in Britain between the 1780s and 1850s is called the ‘first industrial revolution. This phase of industrial development in Britain is strongly associated with new machinery and technologies. These made it possible to produce goods on a massive scale compared to handicraft and handloom industries.
Steam, a new source of power, began to be used on a wide scale in British industries. Its use led to faster forms of transportation, by ships and railways. Industrialisation led to greater prosperity for some, but in the initial stages it was linked with poor living and working conditions of millions of people, including women and children. This sparked off protests, which forced the government to enact laws for regulating conditions of work. There was remarkable economic growth from the 1780s to 1820 in the cotton and iron industries, in coal mining, in the building of roads and canals and in foreign trade.
COAL AND IRON
England was fortunate in that coal and iron ore, the staple materials for mechanisation, were plentifully available, as were other minerals – lead, copper and tin – that were used in industry. However, until the eighteenth century, there was a scarcity of usable iron. Iron is drawn out from ore as pure liquid metal by a process called smelting. For centuries, charcoal (from burnt timber) was used for the smelting process. This had several problems: charcoal was too fragile to transport across long distances; its impurities produced poor-quality iron; it was in short supply because forests had been destroyed for timber; and it could not generate high temperatures. The solution to this problem had been sought for years before it was solved by a family of ironmasters, the Darbys of Shropshire. In the course of half a century, three generations of this family – grandfather, father and son, all called Abraham Darby – brought about a revolution in the metallurgical industry. It began with an invention in 1709 by the first Abraham Darby (1677-1717). This was a blast furnace that would use coke, which could generate high temperatures; coke was derived from coal by removing the sulphur and impurities. This invention meant that furnaces no longer had to depend on charcoal. The melted iron that emerged from these furnaces permitted finer and larger castings than before.
The second Darby (1711-68) developed wrought-iron (which was less brittle) from pig-iron. Henry Cort (1740-1823) designed the puddling furnace (in which molten iron could be rid of impurities) and the rolling mill, which used steam power to roll purified iron into bars. It now became possible to produce a broader range of iron products. The durability of iron made it a better material than wood for everyday items and for machinery. Unlike wood, which could burn or splinter, the physical and chemical properties of iron could be controlled. In the 1770s, John Wilkinson (1728-1808) made the first iron chairs, vats for breweries and distilleries, and iron pipes of all sizes. In 1779, the third Darby (1750-91) built the first iron bridge in the world.
The British iron industry quadrupled its output between 1800 and 1830, and its product was the cheapest in Europe. In 1820, a ton of pig iron needed 8 tons of coal to make it, but by 1850 it could be produced by using only 2 tons. By 1848, Britain was smelting more iron than the rest of the world put together.
COTTON SPINNING AND WEAVING
The British had always woven cloth out of wool and flax (to make linen). Till the early eighteenth century, spinning had been so slow and laborious that 10 spinners (mostly women, hence the word ‘spinster’) were required to supply sufficient yarn to keep a single weaver busy. Therefore, while spinners were occupied all day, weavers waited idly to receive yarn. But a series of technological inventions successfully closed the gap between the speed in spinning raw cotton into yarn or thread, and of weaving the yarn into fabric. To make it even more efficient, production gradually shifted from the homes of spinners and weavers to factories
STEAM POWER
Steam power provided pressure at high temperatures that enabled the use of a broad range of machinery. This meant that steam power was the only source of energy that was reliable and inexpensive enough to manufacture machinery itself. Steam power was first used in mining industries. As the demand for coal and metals expanded, efforts to obtain them from ever-deeper mines intensified.
The steam engine had been used only in coal mines until James Watt (1736-1819) developed his machine in 1769. Watt’s invention converted the steam engine from being a mere pump into a ‘prime mover’ capable of providing energy to power machines in factories.
After 1800, steam engine technology was further developed with the use of lighter, stronger metals, the manufacture of more accurate machine tools and the spread of better scientific knowledge. In 1840, British steam engines were generating more than 70 per cent of all European horsepower.
CANALS AND RAILWAYS
Canals were initially built to transport coal to cities. This was because the bulk and weight of coal made its transport by road much slower and more expensive than by barges on canals. . From 1760 to 1790, twenty-five new canal-building projects were begun. In the period known as the ‘canal-mania’, from 1788 to 1796, there were another 46 new projects and over the next 60 years more than 4,000 miles of canal were built.
Railways emerged as a new means of transportation that was available throughout the year, both cheap and fast, to carry passengers and goods. They combined two inventions, the iron track which replaced the wooden track in the 1760s, and haulage along it by steam engine. The invention of the railways took the entire process of industrialisation to a second stage.
About 6,000 miles of railway was opened in Britain between 1830 and 1850, most of it in two short bursts. During the ‘little railway mania’ of 1833-37, 1400 miles of line was built, and during the bigger ‘mania’ of 1844-47, another 9,500 miles of line was sanctioned. Most of England had been connected by railway by 1850.
IT Revolution brings together technology leaders and practitioners through publishing, special events and research. Its goal is to elevate the state of technology work, quantify the economic and human costs associated with suboptimal IT performance, and to improve the lives of technology professionals.
The founder of IT Revolution, Gene Kim, is a pioneer of techniques used in intrusion detection and other areas of the IT field. Through IT Revolution, Kim's mission is to bridge the divide between the front lines of organizational digital transformation and the agents of change that help deliver better value through software faster and more safely. It specializes in topics that promote cooperation between dev and ops as well as IT and the business. It also strengthens the IT community and elevates the state of IT practice.
IT Revolution aims to make available to the industry those thought leaders with in-depth knowledge the technology and business community needs most.
SELF HEALING CONCRETE
Cracks in concrete are a common phenomenon due to the relatively low tensile strength. Durability of concrete is impaired by these cracks since they provide an easy path for the transportation of liquids and gases that potentially contain harmful substances.
Since the costs involved for maintenance and repair of concrete structures are usually high, this research focuses on the development of self healing concrete.
Self healing of cracks in concrete would contribute to a longer service life of concrete structures and would make the material not only more durable but also more sustainable.
THERMAL INSULATION
Efficient insulation material is becoming increasingly important throughout the construction industry. Heat transmission through walls tends to be passed directly through the building envelope be it masonary, block or stud frame to the internal fascia such as drywall. This process is known as thermal bridging.
Aerogel a technology developed by NASA for cryogenic insulation, is considered one of the most effective thermal insulation material. this can be used to insulate studs, which can reportedly increase overall wall R-value (an industry measure of thermal resistance)by more than 40 percent.
PHOTOVOLTAIC GLAZE
Building integrated photovoltaic glaze can help by turning the whole building into a solar panel. Companies such as polysolar provide transparent photovoltaic glass as a structural building material forming windows, facades and roofs. polysolar’s technology is efficient at producing energy even on north facing vertical walls and its high performance at raised temperature means it can be double glazed or insulated directly. As well as saving on energy bills and earning feed in tariff revenues, its cost is only marginal over traditional glass.
KINETIC ROADS
Cars are a huge source of air pollution, but in future they could also become a source of clean energy.
That is thanks to technology called LYBRA a special, tyre like rubber paving that converts the kinetic energy produced by moving vehicles into electric energy.
The idea and the project are the brainchild of an Italian start-up called underground power.
MODULAR CONSTRUCTION
Modular construction is a process in which a building is constructed off-site, under controlled plant conditions, using the same materials and designing to the same codes and standards as conventionally built facilities but in about half the time. Buildings are produced in modules that when put together on site reflect the identical design intent and specifications of the most sophisticated site-built facility without compromise.
Everything of ‘Present, Past, and Future’ has a common element in it: Civil Engineering. It is not just brick, cement and mortar; it incorporates the simplest to the most complex engineering marvels around us. World-known endeavors such as the TajMahal, Hoover Dam, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Burj Khalifa, Great Wall of China and London Bridge are tokens of the hard work and expertise of civil engineers.
It is a rapidly advancing industry, constantly evolving to contemporary developments and concerns, such as pollution, water shortages and sustainable energies.
With the ever-growing population and changing climatic conditions, Civil engineers play a pivotal role in the development of the society by refashioning the infrastructure to meet its demand which is ever progressing with the innovation of new technologies. Civil Engineers ensure structure’s stability, safety during operations and ability to withstand aging and environmental conditions. During emergencies like warfare, natural disasters like floods, droughts etc, civil engineers play a significant role by facilitating those affected, help in recreating their living environment and the infrastructure required for their basic needs.
Employment of civil engineers is projected to grow by 11 percent over the next ten years, faster than the average for all occupations. It has been predicted that there will be a demand-supply gap of 44 million crores civil engineering professionals in India. As India is a developing country, the current infrastructure suffers obsolescence, and civil engineers will be needed to manage projects to rebuild, repair, and upgrade bridges, roads, railways, dams, airports, buildings, and other structures. Government jobs include SDO’s in PWD, railways, irrigation, State development authorities, electricity board and in defence forces.
An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system.
Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, parent material which forms the soil and topography, control the overall structure of an ecosystem but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. Unlike external factors, internal factors are controlled, for example, decomposition, root competition, shading, disturbance, succession, and the types of species present.
Ecosystems are dynamic entities—they are subject to periodic disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can end up doing things very differently simply because they have different pools of species present.
The major types of ecosystems are forests, grasslands, desert, tundra, freshwater and marine. Human societies derive many essential goods from natural ecosystems, including seafood, game animals, fodder, fuel wood, timber, and pharmaceutical products.
Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Soil erosion continues to be a major threat in many regions of the world despite decades of focused scientific research and societal concern. In the 2015 Status of the World’s Soil Resources Report (FAO and ITPS, 2015), soil erosion was judged to be the number one threat to soil functions in five of seven regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America, Near East and North Africa, and North America); in the first four of those regions, the trend for erosion was deteriorating. Only in Europe, North America and the Southwest Pacific was the trend in erosion deemed to be improving.
Water, wind, and tillage are the three main types of erosion. Each involves distinct processes that detach and transport soil; hence each also requires different approaches to decrease associated rates of erosion.
“Global warming is a gradual increase in the earth’s temperature generally due to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants. This change has disturbed the climatic pattern of the earth
There are several causes of global warming, which have a negative effect on humans, plants and animals. These causes may be natural or might be the outcome of human activities. In order to curb the issues, it is very important to understand the negative impacts of global warming.
CAUSES OF GLOBAL WARMING
Deforestation
Plants are the main source of oxygen. They take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen thereby maintaining environmental balance. Forests are being depleted for many domestic and commercial purposes. This has led to an environmental imbalance, thereby giving rise to global warming.
Use of Vehicles
The use of vehicles, even for a very short distance results in various gaseous emission. Vehicles burn fossil fuels which emit a large amount of carbon dioxide and other toxins into the atmosphere resulting in a temperature increase.
Chlorofluorocarbon
With the excessive use of air conditioners and refrigerators, humans have been adding CFCs into the environment which affects the atmospheric ozone layer. The ozone layer protects the earth surface from the harmful ultraviolet rays emitted by the sun. The CFCs has led to ozone layer depletion making way for the ultraviolet rays, thereby increasing the temperature of the earth.
Industrial Development
With the advent of industrialization, the temperature of the earth has been increasing rapidly. The harmful emissions from the factories add to the increasing temperature of the earth.
In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change reported that the increase in the global temperature between 1880 and 2012 has been 0.9 degrees Celsius. The increase is 1.1 degrees Celsius when compared to the pre-industrial mean temperature.
Agriculture
Various farming activities produce carbon dioxide and methane gas. These add to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and increase the temperature of the earth.
Overpopulation
Increase in population means more people breathing. This leads to an increase in the level of carbon dioxide, the primary gas causing global warming, in the atmosphere.
Volcanoes
Volcanoes are one of the largest natural contributors to global warming. The ash and smoke emitted during volcanic eruptions goes out into the atmosphere and affects the climate.
Water Vapour
Water vapour is a kind of greenhouse gas. Due to the increase in the earth’s temperature more water gets evaporated from the water bodies and stays in the atmosphere adding to global warming.
Melting Permafrost
Permafrost is there where glaciers are present. It is a frozen soil that has environmental gases trapped in it for several years. As the permafrost melts, it releases the gases back into the atmosphere increasing the earth’s temperature.
Forest Blazes
Forest blazes or forest fires emit a large amount of carbon-containing smoke. These gases are released into the atmosphere and increase the earth’s temperature resulting in global warming.
Following are the major effects of global warming:
Global warming has led to an incredible increase in earth’s temperature. Since 1880, the earth’s temperature has increased by ~1 degrees. This has resulted in an increase in the melting of glaciers, which have led to an increase in the sea level. This could have devastating effects on coastal regions.
Global warming has affected the coral reefs that can lead to a loss of plant and animal lives. Increase in global temperatures has made the fragility of coral reefs even worse.
Global warming has led to a change in climatic conditions. There are droughts at some places and floods at some. This climatic imbalance is the result of global warming.
Global warming leads to a change in the patterns of heat and humidity. This has led to the movement of mosquitoes that carry and spread diseases.
Due to an increase in floods, tsunamis and other natural calamities, the average death toll usually increases. Also, such events can bring about the spread of diseases that can hamper human life.
A global shift in the climate leads to the loss of habitats of several plants and animals. In this case, the animals need to migrate from their natural habitat and many of them even become extinct. This is yet another major impact of global warming on biodiversity.
A resource can be a material or an immaterial good from which benefit is produced. It is commonly understood as a means of production, a means of finance, soil, raw material, energy, people, and time. In the social sciences, a resource can refer to ability, a character trait, or a mindset (psychology); or to education, health, and prestige (sociology).
We need to devote more attention to resource use, since global demand for various goods and services is increasing, but the resources available to us are finite and limited. Industrialized countries already have high levels of resource consumption, while emerging countries need resources to provide appropriate living standards for their populations. Coordinated and collaborative efforts are required to ensure both availability and conservation of natural resources. Industrialized countries need to demonstrate how they intend to maintain their living standards in the face of considerably reduced resources, and emerging countries need to determine how their economies can continue growing through the most efficient use of scarce natural resources.
India is witnessing dynamic transformations due to its rapid economic growth, which is characterized by five main interlinked factors. These factors act as drivers of demand and have a strong impact on resource consumption. These drivers of demand are:
‒Growing population
‒Expanding industrial and service-related production
‒Rising (average) income
‒Growing middle class and/or expanding cohort of middle class
‒Increasing urbanization
Current and future dimensions of India’s resource requirements
Out of these 67.8 billion tonnes of renewable and non-renewable materials used globally, India consumed around 7.1% or 4.83 billion tonnes while hosting around 14% of the global population. If India continues the impressive economic development of the past few decades, it will more than triple its resource demand until 2030 – using as much materials as all the OECD countries combined consume at the present time.
Approaches for efficient use of resources
“Increasing recycling rates will reduce the pressure on demand for primary raw materials, help to reuse valuable materials which would otherwise be wasted, and reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from extraction and processing.
Low-carbon technologies reduce emissions and often bring benefits in terms of air quality, noise and public health.
Improving energy efficiency reduces the need to generate energy in the first place and the need for infrastructures. This, in turn, eases pressure on land resources.
Jobs created in sectors linked to sustainable growth are often more secure, with high potential for exports and economic value creation.
Action on climate change and energy efficiency can increase energy security and reduce vulnerability to oil shocks.
Improving the design of products can both decrease the demand for energy and raw materials and make those products more durable and easier to recycle. It also acts as a stimulus to innovation, creating business opportunities and new jobs.”
GIS - Geographic Information Systems is a piece of software that captures geographic data for the purpose of manipulation, viewing and analysis in whichever context and parameters the user desires or needs. It can be used to analyse spatial data or geographic information for any given and possible purpose.
Hurricane Katrina is seen by many as the first time that GIS was used a disaster management tool. Thanks to newly available technology, the first responders on the ground shared a great deal of data about street plans - particularly which streets were and were not accessible and the extent of the flooding. Despite that FEMA and the government came in for criticism, many agree that the efforts of data transmission both prior to and during initial relief efforts were vital to relief efforts.
2014 was a terrible year for drought for the SW United States. Increasingly, GIS is being used to manage environmental problems and specifically in disaster relief. Environmental experts have plotted the reporting of official droughts in most of these areas and shape files are now available of the affected region.
GIS is now vital to law enforcement and planning in terms of crime statistics. Though most police forces in the USA have used them for a long time, automated and digital mapping of reported crime has made the process much easier, especially when looking at different types of crime from different departments in larger cities. The ability to share maps and look for correlations between different types of crime can give police a much better idea of an overall picture of a wider region. The study cited here also permitted community leaders and the police to get a better understanding of each other, facilitating two-way dialogue.
GIS is now critical to many elements of archaeology as it takes on more elements and characteristics of an environmental science. There are many applications in the field of historical research but none has been more beneficial than the prediction of historic site location. Several US universities recently plotted an area to the south of the Caucasus to identify prehistoric sites and areas that may have potential for future on-the-ground research, most notably of the migration route out of Africa in antiquity. The project successfully identified a number of potential new sites for future investigation.
GIS has been a superb tool for rural and urban planning for the last few decades, working out local tax rates, planning desirability and mapping social deprivation, where new roads could go or which should be prioritised for repair. It is now a vital part of our green future too. As with regular and previous methods of planning utilities, using the landscape is far more critical to planning. Cascade in Montana is a prime site for wind farms and there is a website that uses GIS data to plot wind speeds over the course of a year in order to best site the wind farms.
Transport
One of the biggest public works in the UK right now is the planned High Speed 2 (HS2) rail connection between London and Manchester and then later beyond that. It plans to upgrade and revolutionise the rail network in the UK, arguably starved of much-needed modernisation since privatisation in the 1980s. Because of the massive amount of planning involved, including that many agencies have input into the project, it would have been a logistical problem with the massive amounts of data available and collected on a dedicated GIS site in order that the best decisions are made while respecting local infrastructures and the environment.
The United Nations’ HDI is an indicator of human development that measures a country’s achievements in the areas of longevity, education, and income. The Ecological Footprint is a measure of a population’s demand on nature and can be compared to the available bio-capacity.
The basic premise of integrating the two into one science-based measurement framework is that sustainable human development depends on achieving great lives for all, within the resource budget available to the population. The latter means adequate access to ecological assets over the long-term.
The average Indian has an ecological footprint nine times lighter than the U.S. citizen, three times lighter than the global footprint. The comparison with other societies shows that India is one of the countries with lighter ecological footprint in global hectares per capita.
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