Bioinspired morphing offers a powerful route to higher aerodynamic and hydrodynamic efficiency. Birds reposition feathers, bats extend compliant membrane wings, and fish modulate fin stiffness, tailoring lift, drag, and thrust in real time. To capture these advantages, engineers are developing airfoils, rotor blades, and hydrofoils that actively change shape, reducing drag, improving maneuverability, and harvesting energy from unsteady flows. This review surveys over 296 studies, with primary emphasis on literature published between 2015 and 2025, distilling four biological archetypes—avian wing morphing, bat-wing elasticity, fish-fin compliance, and tubercled marine flippers—and tracing their translation into morphing aircraft, ornithopters, rotorcraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and tidal or wave-energy converters. We compare experimental demonstrations and numerical simulations, identify consensus performance gains (up to 30% increase in lift-to-drag ratio, 4 dB noise reduction, and 15% boost in propulsive or power-capture efficiency), and analyze materials, actuation, control strategies, certification, and durability as the main barriers to deployment. Advances in multifunctional composites, electroactive polymers, and model-based adaptive control have moved prototypes from laboratory proof-of-concept toward field testing. Continued collaboration among biology, materials science, control engineering, and fluid dynamics is essential to unlock robust, scalable morphing technologies that meet future efficiency and sustainability targets.

To encourage environmentally friendly construction, reasonable data (such as Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) performance results) that determines the potential environmental impact of construction works should be provided during the decision-making process in the early design phase. However, it is difficult to acquire the data necessary to carry out an LCA prior to completing the design, so LCA is not typically used in the design phase. In order to overcome this limitation, this study developed an LCA-based environmental impact estimation model that uses the information available during the design phase to provide an estimate of the environmental impact of an earthwork-type road project. Earth, drainage, and pavement were defined as major work categories that have a significant effect on environmental impact and were accordingly made the focus of the developed model. The impact of the earthwork category was determined by case-based reasoning methodology, and the work quantity methodology using standardized cross sections was used to determine the impact of the drainage and pavement categories. Test results indicate that the proposed model provides a mean absolute error rate of 8.20%, demonstrating that it is valid and offers significant benefits for the early project estimation of environmental impact.

In regards to the guideline for computing carbon emission amount by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) and existing studies on the computation of environmental load of road facilities, they present computation methods based on construction output volume finalized after the design development. Accordingly, they are not being helpful in the decision making of the environmental economics of road facilities in the planning stage in which specific information on construction output volume is lacking. Based on literature analysis of existing studies and consultation from a group of construction environmental professionals, 12 types of property information considered to be related to environmental load were selected from an inventory of information that will be available in the road planning stage. In addition, multiple regression analysis was performed based on the environmental load computed through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of 40 national highway project cases of Korea to deduce five impact factors of environmental load in the road facilities planning stage, namely administrative district, road height, road division, geographical feature and design speed. This paper presented a foundation on which environmental economics can be assessed by quantifying in the planning stage environmental load expected to occur from road construction project.

For road pavements, hot-mix asphalt (HMA) and Portland cement concrete (PCC) are the materials most commonly used. In the selection of one of these materials, their economic performance and environmental performance are evaluated to determine which material exhibits excellent overall performance. However, no overall performance assessment exists in the construction community attributed to the lack of method providing easy-to-use and informative criteria for the decision-making process. Thus, in this paper, a new method that enables a comprehensive overall performance assessment is proposed, which is called Improved Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability. After an eco-economic life-cycle assessment is performed, along with environmental performance and economic performance evaluation, the best-fit pavement material can be selected. This method has proven that the use of HMA for road pavements reduces the environmental impact by 27.1%P (i.e., percentage point), whereas the use of PCC reduces cost by 19.7%P. The existing Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) method shows that the performances of both HMA and PCC were over-assessed by 4.6%P and 7.4%P, respectively, since the environmental performance and economic performance cannot be computed quantitatively by incorporating the environmental and cost impact index into existing BEES model, the Improved BEES method accurately projects environmental performance and economic performance attained through the application of the environmental and cost impact index, hence, encouraging more informed decision. This method facilitates in articulating a quality decision making through the consideration of both the environmental performance and economic performance, hence reducing unnecessary costs generated from the trial and error due to the use of the existing method. Moreover, it promotes the development of a sustainable construction technology.

Pile installation has an environmental impact through its various processes ranging from raw material extraction to construction. In addition, the environmental performance, productivity, and cost of pile installation depend on the construction plan. Therefore, the chain of activities must be considered when analyzing the sustainability of pile installation. A rational construction plan must carefully examine the factors that affect the productivity and sustainability of pile installations. This study presents a method for evaluating eco-economic performance by analyzing the resource utilization and processes of PHC pile installation. First, a process modeling technique, wherein details are broken down to the work task level, based on energy consumption and resource cost, is proposed. Second, a simulation method that calculates the eco-economic performance of the PHC pile process and resources (e.g., equipment) is presented. Third, a quantitative comparison of durations, costs, and emissions resulting from simulation, estimation based on the CSPR (Construction Standard Production Rate) and IUC (Itemized Unit Cost), site contract, and actual construction is presented. The results reveal that the method effectively reflects the prediction of duration, cost, and carbon emissions generated in the real world during the construction planning stage.

To reduce the environmental loads of construction projects, a methodology needs to be established that reasonably assesses the environmental impact. Currently, life cycle assessment (LCA) is used as a methodology for evaluation of the environmental impact in various fields. However, this approach is not employed for the assessment of the environmental impact at the planning or design stages of construction projects. The reason is that the features of construction projects cannot entirely provide the full information required for performing LCA until the design has been complete. This study performed LCA of concrete girders and estimated the properties and basic unit quantity of the environmental loads. Our findings support that environmental impact assessment based on LCA should be performed at the planning or design stage when no full information is still available. Moreover, we propose an environmental impact index based on the input cost and the occurrence rate of environmental loads as an environmental performance indicator of concrete girders. This methodology is expected to induce the paradigm to transit from the existing environmental impact assessment methodology based on input resource amounts to the environmental impact assessment methodology in economic perspective considering the characteristics of construction projects.