Soil salinization is a ubiquitous global problem. The literature supports the integration of remote sensing (RS) techniques and field measurements as effective methods for developing soil salinity prediction models. The objectives of this study were to (i) estimate the level of soil salinity in Abu Dhabi using spectral indices and field measurements and (ii) develop a model for detecting and mapping soil salinity variations in the study area using RS data. We integrated Landsat 8 data with the electrical conductivity measurements of soil samples taken from the study area. Statistical analysis of the integrated data showed that the normalized difference vegetation index and bare soil index showed moderate correlations among the examined indices. The relation between these two indices can contribute to the development of successful soil salinity prediction models. Results show that 31% of the soil in the study area is moderately saline and 46% of the soil is highly saline. The results support that geoinformatic techniques using RS data and technologies constitute an effective tool for detecting soil salinity by modeling and mapping the spatial distribution of saline soils. Furthermore, we observed a low correlation between soil salinity and the nighttime land surface temperature.

Concrete is the most widely used building material, but it is also a recognized pollutant, causing significant issues for sustainability in terms of resource depletion, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, efforts should be concentrated on reducing concrete’s environmental consequences in order to increase its long-term viability. In order to design environmentally friendly concrete mixtures, this research intended to create a prediction model for the compressive strength of those mixtures. The concrete mixtures that were used in this study to build our proposed prediction model are concrete mixtures that contain both recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) and ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBFS). A white-box machine learning model known as multivariate polynomial regression (MPR) was developed to predict the compressive strength of eco-friendly concrete. The model was compared with the other two machine learning models, where one is also a white-box machine learning model, namely linear regression (LR), and the other is the black-box machine learning model, which is a support vector machine (SVM). The newly suggested model shows robust estimation capabilities and outperforms the other two models in terms of R² (coefficient of determination) and RMSE (root mean absolute error) measurements.

Because of the incorporation of discontinuous fibers, steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) outperforms regular concrete. However, due to its complexity and limited available data, the development of SFRC strength prediction techniques is still in its infancy when compared to that of standard concrete. In this paper, the compressive strength of steel fiber-reinforced concrete was predicted from different variables using the Random forest model. Case studies of 133 samples were used for this aim. To design and validate the models, we generated training and testing datasets. The proposed models were developed using ten important material parameters for steel fiber-reinforced concrete characterization. To minimize training and testing split bias, the approach used in this study was validated using the 10-fold Cross-Validation procedure. To determine the optimal hyperparameters for the Random Forest algorithm, the Grid Search Cross-Validation approach was utilized. The root mean square error (RMSE), coefficient of determination (R2), and mean absolute error (MAE) between measured and estimated values were used to validate and compare the models. The prediction performance with RMSE=5.66, R2=0.88 and MAE=3.80 for the Random forest model. Compared with the traditional linear regression model, the outcomes showed that the Random forest model is able to produce enhanced predictive results of the compressive strength of steel fiber-reinforced concrete. The findings show that hyperparameter tuning with grid search and cross-validation is an efficient way to find the optimal parameters for the RF method. Also, RF produces good results and gives an alternate way for anticipating the compressive strength of SFRC

SCS (Soil Conservation Service) synthetic unit hydrograph technique was used to estimate the storm runoff overflows entering the Housha tunnel. The flood hydrographs were derived under different storm event durations for the ungauged Husha Catchment area. Geomorphological and hydrological parameters of the watershed were extracted using GIS measurement tools. The data identified various parameters (time to peak, time of base, and peak flow) of the synthetic unit hydrograph. The peak discharge (Qp in m3 s−1 cm−1) of rainfall excess for different time durations (5, 10, 20, 30, 60, 120, 180, 360, and 720 minutes) was estimated. The results revealed that the peak discharge (Qp) decreased with the increase in time of rainfall excess. The maximum peak discharge (27.5 in m3 s−1 cm−1) was reached 84 minutes after the beginning of the rainfall storm for 5 minutes of rainfall excess whereas the minimum peak discharge (5.2 in m3 s−1 cm−1) was reached after 7 hours and 22 minutes for 12 hours of rainfall excess. Geographic information system (GIS) data-based SCS synthetic unit hydrograph model was verified by comparing the simulated runoff with the estimated runoff from measured rainfall data of the watershed.