Urban infrastructure (UI), subject to ever-increasing stresses from artificial activities of human beings and natural disasters due to climate change, assumes a key role in modern cities for maintaining their functional operations. Therefore, understanding UI resilience turns essential. Based on the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model, this paper built a comprehensive evaluation index system for urban infrastructure resilience evaluation. Four municipalities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing in China, were selected for the case study, given their specific significance in terms of geographical location and urban infrastructure scale. Temporal differences of UI resilience in those four cities during 2002–2018 were explored. The results showed that: (1) The various stages of PSR relative importance for the urban infrastructure resilience development in the four cities were different. The infrastructure status, primarily resource environmental benefit, had the most significant effect on urban infrastructure resilience, accounting for 38.73%. (2) While Shanghai ranked first, the levels of urban infrastructure resilience in four cities were generally poor in 2002–2018 with continuously low resilience. (3) Significant differences were found in the resilience levels associated with the three stages of pressure, state and response failing to form a positive development cycle, with the poorest pressure resilience. This paper puts forward some recommendations for providing scientific support for urban resilient infrastructure development in four municipalities in China.

The COVID-19 pandemic, characterized by high uncertainty and difficulty in prevention and control, has caused significant disasters in human society. In this situation, emergency management of pandemic prevention and control is essential to reduce the pandemic’s devastation and rapidly restore economic and social stability. Few studies have focused on a scenario analysis of the entire emergency response process. To fill this research gap, this paper applies a cross impact analysis (CIA) and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach to analyze emergency scenarios and evaluate the effectiveness of emergency management during the COVID-19 crisis for outbreak prevention and control. First, the model extracts the critical events for COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control, including source, process, and resultant events. Subsequently, we generated different emergency management scenarios according to different impact levels and conducted scenario deduction and analysis. A CIA-ISM based scenario modeling approach is applied to COVID-19 emergency management in Nanjing city, China, and the results of the scenario projection are compared with actual situations to prove the validity of the approach. The results show that CIA-ISM based scenario modeling can realize critical event identification, scenario generation, and evolutionary scenario deduction in epidemic prevention and control. This method effectively handles the complexity and uncertainty of epidemic prevention and control and provides insights that can be utilized by emergency managers to achieve effective epidemic prevention and control.

Investigation on the deformation mechanism of sandstone is crucial to understanding the life cycle patterns of pertinent infrastructure systems considering the extensive adoption of sandstone in infrastructure construction of various engineering systems, e.g., agricultural engineering systems. In this study, the state-of-the-art digital image correlation (DIC) method, which uses classical digital photography, is employed to explore the detailed failure course of sandstone with physical uniaxial compression tests. Four typical points are specifically selected to characterize the global strain field by plotting their corresponding strain–time relationship curves. Thus, the targeted failure thresholds are identified. The Hill–Tsai failure criterion and finite element simulation are then used for the cross-check process of DIC predictions. The results show that, though errors exist between the experimental and the theoretical values, overall, they are sufficiently low to be ignored, indicating good agreement. From the results, near-linear relationships between strain and time are detected before failure at the four chosen points and the failure strain thresholds are almost the same; as low as 0.004. Failure thresholds of sandstone are reliably determined according to the strain variation curve, to forecast sandstone damage and failure. Consequently, the proposed technology and associated information generated from this study could be of assistance in the safety and health monitoring processes of relevant infrastructure system applications.

In the continuous growth trend of global energy demand, the energy consumption of building cooling occupies a significant proportion. The utilization of alternative or partially alternative energy-input cooling methods in buildings, for example, the application of radiative cooling technology to building roofs, can effectively achieve better cooling performance. This has a positive impact on reducing energy consumption in the building field and slowing down global warming. This paper uses bibliometric analysis methods to systematically review the application of radiative cooling technology on building roofs. The development trajectory, hotspot issues, cutting-edge trends, and future research prospects in the research field over the past 20 years are analyzed and summarized. This study provides insights for the scaled application of radiative cooling technology in buildings and references for the application of radiative cooling technology in the field of architecture to reduce energy consumption, improve energy efficiency, achieve energy conservation, carbon reduction, and sustainable development.

Passenger behavior in subways has recently become a matter of great concern, with more attention being paid to the health risks of the subway microenvironment (sub-ME). This paper aimed to provide guidance for subway passengers on better adapting to the health risks presented by the sub-ME. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in Nanjing, China, and descriptive analysis and a one-way analysis of variance were performed to understand the sensitivity levels of subway passengers and analyze their adaptive behaviors, based on their sensitivity to sub-ME health risks. The results showed that passengers over 66 years old and those who are frequently sick are more sensitive to the presented health risks. Additionally, passengers traveling for longer and those traveling in rush hours are more sensitive to sub-ME health risks. We also found that individual characteristics, knowledge structure, and information communication all influence passengers’ adaptive behaviors. It was ascertained that those with a positive attitude and those who had previously suffered from environmentally influenced diseases, as well as those who studied an environment-related subject, tended to demonstrate more adaptive behaviors. Moreover, passengers who are very familiar with the subway information communication channels and the related information adapted better to the health risks of the sub-ME. Our findings are beneficial for improving passengers’ adaptability to the health risks presented by the sub-ME and for promoting the sustainable operation of subway systems.

Through a formal experiment, this study aims to identify miscommunication scenarios, quantify miscommunication levels, and analyze potential factors influencing communication in the construction industry with a focus on the communications between owners and designers. The study entails a five-step process: literature review, experiment design, questionnaire formulation, experiment execution, and post-experiment survey. Data analysis indicates that the owners and designers interpreted the communication processes and contents differently, with the presence of communication barriers leading to misunderstandings, errors, and misinterpretation of the design ideas. The utmost need is identified for improved communication strategies within design and construction projects to minimize miscommunications and support project success.