Measuring the structure's displacement plays a very important role in ensuring the safe operation of railway bridges in general and urban railway bridges in particular. In Vietnam, traditional methods using high-precision mechanical gauges have been used to measure the displacement of railway bridges. However, these methods need a lot of effort in installation and traffic control during implementation. These methods are based on the static principle: The test loads are placed on the bridge structure, and then the structure's displacement is observed. The safety assessment and analysis results are guaranteed by multiplying the dynamic coefficients, leading to some assessments that may not be close to the actual exploitation of the bridge structure. Therefore, the current study presents a new solution for measuring the displacement of railway bridge structures. This method uses Linear Variable Differential Transformer (LVDT) sensors to record the continuous displacement of the structure during the time the train passes over the bridge. Through field measurements combined with a finite element analysis model, the research focuses on developing and applying LVDT sensors in urban railway bridge structure health monitoring. At the same time, the potential of developing this method in Vietnam in the future is evaluated.

Withstanding extreme events is increasingly a significant challenge for the construction industry. Where civil infrastructures remain using traditional concrete, which has low tensile strength, poor durability, and weak crack resistance, in this regard, ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC), with its outstanding mechanical properties and high strength, offers the prospect of wide application. This advanced technology allows for the fabrication of thin and light-dimensional structures to accelerate construction while increasing corrosion resistance to minimize maintenance intervention and extend the service life of the infrastructures. Despite this, UHPC is less eco-friendly due to consuming more cement than the usual material, which requires replacement materials, such as silica fume (SF) and rice husk ash (RHA), which are readily available from other local material production. This study proposes an experimental approach to assess the influence of SF and RHA content on the properties of UHPC. Different SF and RHA compositions will be adjusted to analyze their effects on slump flow, compressive strength, flexural strength, tensile strength, and the stress–strain relationship in UHPC tension testing. Based on the results, the most effective ratio is RHA replacing 50% of the SF in the UHPC mixture. Specialized tensile experiments reveal enhanced tensile strength with judicious RHA incorporation at 5-day and 28-day stages, particularly in initial crack and damage conditions. Stress–strain curves for 5% to 15% RHA samples show increased ductility, indicating that optimal RHA-SF ratios enhance UHPC cracking characteristics. Based on the results, a discussion on the appropriate proportions for utilizing most local materials will be derived, especially for regions of Vietnam. It is evaluated as a feasible and promising solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions threatening global climate change.

Construction materials are at the forefront of global economic development as they provide the foundation for the infrastructure of other industries, with cementitious materials being predominantly used in construction projects. To promote sustainable development, alternative materials are added to cement mortar to increase durability and reduce emissions. In this regard, graphene oxide (GO) and fly ash (FA) are two alternative materials commonly used in cement mortar, which are readily available or are just the waste from other local material production. With different ratios, the amount of GO and FA can affect the properties of cement mortar positively or negatively. This study aims to determine the effects of GO and FA on cement mortar mixtures under material conditions. Research results show that 10 wt% FA and 0.036 wt% GO will give cement mortar the best physical and mechanical properties while ensuring other necessary properties, such as workability. When increasing FA to 30 wt% or GO to 0.05 wt%, the strength of the mortar mixture tends to decrease. Another issue is that the specific surface area of graphene is very high, which poses a significant challenge when uniform dispersion in the cement paste mixture is required. Polycarboxylate combined with a specific mixing sequence has demonstrated good dispersibility and high stability. Through this research, it is demonstrated that the addition of GO and FA has the potential for sustainable development of the construction industry by considering the contexts of the local recycled cementitious replacement materials.

Monitoring the condition of existing structures remains one of the most pressing challenges within the construction industry. Structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques have proven increasingly effective in this regard; however, maintaining and archiving complete lifecycle data for such structures remains costly. Data acquisition is particularly critical, as the SHM system relies upon this information to analyse and evaluate structural behaviour. Nonetheless, a range of challenges—such as environmental influences, sensor malfunction, and transmission failures—can lead to data corruption or loss. These issues compromise the reliability of the dataset, necessitating either data reconstruction or additional measurement campaigns, both of which are resource-intensive. This study proposes the use of a long short-term memory (LSTM) network to reconstruct missing or corrupted data. A complete dataset collected from an actual construction project is employed to train the network. Data loss scenarios are then simulated, including single-channel (loss from one sensor) and multi-channel (loss from multiple sensors) cases. The trained LSTM model is subsequently applied to reconstruct the missing data. A case study on a real bridge demonstrates that the reconstructed data show strong agreement with the original measurements in both the time and frequency domains. These findings indicate that the proposed approach has the potential to support engineers in conserving resources by reducing the need for costly and time-consuming additional measurement interventions.

Cultural heritage buildings are increasingly exposed to climate-related hazards, yet conventional conservation approaches often give insufficient consideration to climate resilience and adaptive capacity. This study proposes a Heritage Climate Resilience Index (HCRI) for assessing the resilience of cultural heritage buildings under changing climatic conditions. The framework integrates climate hazard exposure, heritage-specific building characteristics, and a dynamic weighting scheme that reflects local hazard conditions. It is applied to two case studies in Bac Giang, Vietnam, and Riga, Latvia, representing distinct climatic and heritage contexts. The assessment demonstrates the framework’s ability to distinguish differences in resilience performance and to identify vulnerable building domains requiring targeted intervention. The results provide a basis for prioritizing adaptation and conservation measures according to site-specific conditions. By combining local climate information with heritage-sensitive assessment criteria, the HCRI provides a practical, transferable tool for climate-informed heritage management. The proposed framework can support stakeholders in prioritizing interventions, allocating resources, and strengthening the long-term resilience of cultural heritage buildings under increasingly frequent and severe climate-related risks.