This study was conducted to assess the impacts of climate change on drought over the Lake Urmia basin, Iran. Drought events for 2011–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100 were analyzed based on the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and were compared with the adopted baseline period (1976–2005). The SPI and SPEI were calculated using the precipitation and temperatures obtained from the second-generation Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2) under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 and RCP 8.5 as optimistic and pessimistic scenarios respectively. The results of SPI analyses revealed that under RCP 2.6 the frequency of droughts is almost constant while under RCP 8.5 drought frequency increased especially in the period 2071–2100. The calculated SEPI under both scenarios and during all future periods predict that the frequency and duration of droughts will increase. Generally, the difference between the SPI and SPEI is related to the input to each index. SPI is solely based on precipitation while the SPEI accounts for both precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET). Under global warming and changing climate, the significant role of PET was highlighted. It was concluded that the SPEI outperformed the SPI for drought studies under a changing climate.

Transportation agencies are primarily responsible for building new roads and maintaining current roads. The main focuses of these agencies are to prioritize maintenance and make significant rehabilitation decisions to handle serious problems facing road authorities. Considerable efforts and an abundance of studies have been performed to determine the nature, mechanisms, test methods, and measurement of pavements for preservation and improvements of roadways. The presented study reports a state-of-the-art review on recent advances in the application of artificial intelligence in various steps of flexible pavement, including pavement construction, performance, cost, and maintenance. Herein, the challenges of gathering large amounts of data, parameter optimization, portability, and low-cost data annotating are discussed. According to the findings, it is suggested that greater attention should be paid to integrating multidisciplinary roadway engineering techniques to address existing challenges and opportunities in the future.

In the current study, modified version of the penguins search optimization algorithm (PeSOA) was introduced, and its usage was assessed in the water resources field. In the modified version (MPeSOA), the Gaussian exploration was added to the algorithm. The MPeSOA performance was evaluated in optimal operation of a hypothetical four-reservoir system and Karun-4 reservoir as a real world problem. Also, genetic algorithm (GA) was used as a criterion for evaluating the performance of PeSOA and MPeSOA. The results revealed that in a four-reservoir system problem, the PeSOA performance was much weaker than the GA; but on the other hand, the MPeSOA had better performance than the GA. In the mentioned problem, PeSOA, GA, and MPeSOA reached 78.43, 97.46, and 98.30% of the global optimum, respectively. In the operation of Karun-4 reservoir, although PeSOA performance had less difference with the two other algorithms than four-reservoir problem, its performance was not acceptable. The average values of objective function in this case were equal to 26.49, 23.84, and 21.48 for PeSOA, GA, and MPeSOA, respectively. According to the results obtained in the operation of Karun-4 reservoir, the algorithms including MPeSOA, GA, and PeSOA were situated in ranks one to three in terms of efficiency, respectively.

In this article, 140 samples with different characteristics were collected from the literature. The Feed Forward network is used in this research. The parameters f’c (MPa), ρf (%), Ef (GPa), a/d, bw (mm), d (mm), and VMA are selected as inputs to determine the shear strength in FRP‐reinforced concrete beams. The structure of the artificial neural network (ANN) is also optimized using the bat algorithm. ANN is also compared to the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. Finally, Nehdi et al.’s model, ACI‐440, and BISE‐99 equations were used to evaluate the models’ accuracy. The results confirm that the bat algorithm‐optimized ANN is more capable, flexible, and provides superior precision than the other three models in determining the shear strength of the FRP‐reinforced concrete beams.