India is a leader when it comes to agriculture. A significant part of the country’s population depends on agriculture for livelihood. However, many of them face challenges due to using unreliable farming techniques. Sometimes the challenges increase to the extent that they commit suicide. Besides, India is highly populated, and its population is steadily increasing, requiring its government to grow its GDP and increase its energy supply proportionately. This paper reviews integrating solar farming with agriculture, known as Agrivoltaics, as a Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) option for Indian farmers. This study is further supported by the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of agrivoltaics. Using the SWOT analysis, this article presents how agrivoltaics can make agriculture sustainable and reliable. This paper identifies rural electrification, water conservation, yield improvement, sustainable income generation, and reduction in the usage of pesticides as the strengths of agrivoltaics. Similarly, the paper presents weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to agrivoltaics in India. The research concludes with the findings that agrivoltaics have the potential of meeting multiple objectives such as meeting global commitments, offering employment, providing economic stability, increasing clean energy production capacity, conserving natural resources, and succeeding in several others. The paper also includes a discussion about the findings, suggestions, and implications of adopting agrivoltaics on a large scale in India.

Capital structure and revenue-sharing agreements lie in the essence of balancing public and private interests in public–private partnership (PPP) contracts. In the United States, many PPP projects may not be fully self-financed through tolls or other user fees because of insufficient revenue streams. With a limited debt capacity secured by toll revenues, most PPP projects must be supported by both private equity investments and public funds. The equity structure is critical in a PPP contract because it implies risk and profit sharing and therefore provides a mechanism for private incentive and protection of the public interest. This paper presents a structured approach to determining the debt–equity investment in PPP projects. Scenarios are generated by using linear programming and probability programming models to reach the optimal equity structure under risk and uncertainty. The I-10 connector project is used as a case study to demonstrate the optimization process. The model is especially useful for public agencies to (a) estimate the range of private equity investment, (b) determine the target equity structure, and (c) document the benefits and costs of private financing for a successful PPP contract.

The construction industry has experienced phenomenal growth because of technological advancements in the past couple of decades. Prefabrication constitutes a sizeable share of this industry and is being adopted all over the world. The method of casting construction elements in a controlled environment and assembling them on-site has revolutionised the industry. Research on various aspects of the technology is ongoing around the world, and an impressive number of articles have been published. However, the prefab technology, materials used, and terminology have varied across locations, which may have hindered the method’s wider acceptability. By evaluating technical articles published between 1991 and 2022, this report analyses the present body of knowledge regarding prefab technology, its evolution, sustainability, and stakeholder views. This technology effectively contributes around 40% in time saving, 27% in cost reduction, 30% in reduced carbon emissions, and 84% in on-site wastage reduction. It also increases quality, gives a dependable alternative for meeting mass construction targets, is energy efficient, and provides environmentally conscious options. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a snapshot of the prefab industry spanning three decades, detailing a wide range of factors affecting the industry.

Power is an undisputed lifeline in today’s high-tech world. Mass awareness drives have created significant cognizance toward sustainable and green technologies in the past quarter-century in response to the depletion of fossil fuels and volatility of energy prices. Photovoltaics (PV)-based, sustainable, and green-technology-based power sources are in high demand due to their ability to meet industrial, commercial, and residential demands. Government incentives available to consumers for PV-based renewable energy systems have further fueled their acceptance. Due to the consistently increasing popularity of PV-based energy, many advancements have happened that enable improving its performance and reducing its cost. Recent advancements in silicon processing have increased the efficiency of single-crystalline silicon-based PV cells by 28%.¹ Also, many advanced maximum power point tracking algorithms are now available that enable harvesting higher amounts of energy from a PV panel.² Despite these improvements in solar energy harvesting, PV modules still use series-parallel (SP)-based fixed topology. As a result, a PV module remains vulnerable to such issues as partial shading,^3,4 irradiance fluctuation,^{5 – 8} mismatch,^{9 – 11} and faulty conditions,^{12 – 15} which are known to severely affect its power efficiency and performance. In response, most of the PV modules are equipped with a bypass diode to minimize the effects of such issues.^{15 – 17}

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have emerged as an important project delivery method in the United States, where funding agencies are finding it difficult to support the increasing demand of highway projects. The United States has witnessed several types of PPPs during the past two decades, and a recent trend shows that newer designs of PPPs are being adopted for upcoming projects. Availability Payment, an extensively used PPP in the United Kingdom and Canada, is the newest performancebased PPP implemented in California and Florida. Extensive use of these PPPs in other countries strongly supports the belief of their widespread acceptance in the United States. The literature review indicates that concession term and availability payments are the most important parameters of this PPP. However, the public agencies do not have any solid tool that can design these parameters and have to largely depend on traditional methods. This research work introduces a hybrid model that will allow the public sector to determine the upper limit of availability payments and concession duration. The hybrid model has been developed by combining the stochastic dynamic programming model with multi-objective optimization principles. The model allows using private sector's financial condition, uncertainty of private sector's performance and the remaining life cycle costs of the asset. The use of this model ensures cost savings for the public sector and financial stability for the private sector simultaneously. This research includes an analysis of the CALTRANS' Presidio Parkway Project as a case study to demonstrate the use of the model.

Construction projects are notorious for their frequent disputes and costly legal battles. This is particularly true for infrastructure projects, where technical and institutional complexity increases the risks and challenges of facing litigation. Early studies have been focused on subject matter experts’ ability to identify various risks and potential disputes. This paper presents a novel approach to estimate litigation risk using widely accessible social media data. By defining levels of legal risk and potential plaintiff’s profile, this paper presents a data-driven risk estimation model to track litigation risk in real time. The Purple Line transit project from the state of Maryland is used as an example to demonstrate the litigation risk estimation model with continuous retrieval of Twitter data for analysis. The implication and effectiveness will be discussed in this case study.