This study explores the strategic integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Virtual Reality (VR) within the built environment, addressing the growing complexities of urban development. Through a detailed examination of BIM applications, the research highlights a 37 % reduction in design conflicts and iterations, thereby enhancing design precision and efficiency in urban construction projects. Simultaneously, VR technology is demonstrated to increase stakeholder engagement by 62 % and improve spatial awareness by 48 %, fostering greater community participation and inclusivity in the development process. The combined use of BIM and VR optimizes not only construction workflows but also considerably enhances environmental and socio-economic outcomes, such as a remarkable 20 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It will, therefore, support advanced urban infrastructure development and provide a replicable model for sustainable and resilient urban planning. This research underlines the crucial contribution of integrating BIM and VR technologies to the development of sustainability and resilience of the built environment.

This paper presents a new method of dielectric capacitance cell as a proposed device for measuring the impedance of pure sand artificially contaminated with four heavy metals. Dielectric constant and loss factor of clean and contaminated sand at various levels were calculated from the measured sand impedances. The advantages and benefits of using the proposed dielectric capacitance cell were its low cost, simple calculation, calibration procedures, portable and lightweight, and easy to modify the electrodes to suit testing in the field. Pure sand was saturated with water artificially polluted in the lab with Pb, Cd, Fe, and Zn at heavy metal contents 0, 7.5, 15, 22.5, and 30 mg/kg of sand. The dielectric properties of polluted sand were evaluated at a frequency range from 100 kHz to 1000 kHz. The polluted sand exhibit different dielectric constants and loss factors from the unpolluted sand. The results also indicate that the dielectric constant decreases with increasing pollution level for all heavy metals. This may attribute to the polarization mechanism change with existing heavy metal. The loss factor of sand increases with the increasing pollution level. This may be explained by the increase of ionic conductivity of pore water with heavy metal in the sand. Sand polluted with heavy metal with higher resistivity and density possess a higher dielectric constant and lower loss factor than other polluted metals. Evaluation of the dielectric characteristics of polluted sand could have the potential to monitor heavy metal pollution. Even with promising results obtained with the proposed dielectric device, it is necessary to explore several other factors affecting the measurements such as sand water content, soil texture, and type of soil. Also, testing polluted soil near industrial pollution is needed.

The use of agricultural waste materials to remove heavy metals from wastewater is attractive due to its simplicity and economic efficiency. In this study, the applicability of calcined eggshell waste materials (CES) for heavy metals removal from real wastewater were examined via transport column experiment preceded by coagulation/flocculation process.A column packed with granular activated carbon (GAC) is operated in parallel to CES column to evaluate the adsorptive attributes of CES. The findings are assessed from another set of column experiments consisting of sand followed by CES column to evaluate the effect of particulate matter (PM) on CES performance toward heavy metals removal. In coagulation experiment, alum addition at an optimum dose (3.0 g/L) reduced the total suspended solids (TSS) by 80%, whereas the Fe, Pb, Zn, Cu, Ni, and Cr were reduced by 80%, 77%, 76%, 73%, 56%, and 49%, respectively. Under the current applied hydrodynamic conditions, using sand column before CES column improved the removal efficiencies of Fe, Pb, Cu, Zn, Ni, and Cr from 50% to 92%, 55% to 93%, 60% to 87%, 53% to 76%, 45% to 65%, and 41% to 60%, respectively. The whole results illustrate that CES can be competitive to GAC for heavy metals removal from landfill leachate, mainly if applied after PM removal by sand filtration.

A sequential treatment consisting of coagulation/flocculation followed by transport column experiment was adopted and used in this work for the treatment of landfill leachate containing phenols and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Coagulation experiment was performed in a standard jar test apparatus using alum as coagulant material. In column experiments, natural eggshell material was used as filter media after calcinations at 750oC either separately or combined with granular activated carbon (GAC). Alum addition at a predetermined optimum dose (3.5 g/L) caused a reduction in total suspended solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total phenols, and total (PAHs) by 82%, 32%, 24%, and 34% respectively. Specific PAHs analysis revealed higher binding affinity of more hydrophobic PAHs toward particles with 50% reduction than those of less hydrophobic PAHs with only 6% reduction. The results obtained from the transport column experiments indicate that calcined eggshell (ESC) particularly when applied as a mixture with GAC can be used as promising adsorbent for both phenols and PAHs. 95% of phenols and PAHs were removed during the first 1,500 pore volumes (PV) of column operation while > 80% were obtained at the end of the experiment (3,500 PV).