Urban heat island pose a significant threat to public health and urban livability. UHI maps are created using satellite thermal data, a crucial source for earth monitoring and for delivering mitigation strategies. Nowadays there is still a resolution gap between high-resolution optical data and low-resolution satellite thermal imagery. This study introduces a novel deep learning approach—named Dilated Spatio-Temporal U-Net (DST-UNet)—to bridge this gap. DST-UNET is a modified U-Net architecture which incorporates dilated convolutions to address the multiscale nature of urban thermal patterns. The model is trained to generate high-resolution, airborne-like thermal maps from available, low-resolution satellite imagery and ancillary data. Our results demonstrate that the DST-UNet can effectively generalise across different urban environments, enabling municipalities to generate detailed thermal maps with a frequency far exceeding that of traditional airborne campaigns. This framework leverages open-source data from missions like Landsat to provide a cost-effective and scalable solution for continuous, high-resolution urban thermal monitoring, empowering more effective climate resilience and public health initiatives.

In recent years, mining operators have adopted Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for monitoring and inspection operations but archaic/manual processes to collect and analyse data are still in use, thus making the protection of mining critical assets a costly and highly complex problem, reducing the capabilities of the monitoring system to trigger automatic alarms. Within the SEC4TD project, a low-cost IoT-based GNSS positioning device is developed, with the aim to provide accurate absolute positions of infrastructures. The solution includes the use of a two bands (L1, L2) GNSS receiver, long power autonomy and RTK correction on edge nodes. The paper describes the first prototype and the initial testing to evaluate its positional precision. A long term evaluation over 15 days is performed including a comparison with a high-end receiver. Lastly, field conditions are mimicked by reducing to 60 the number of epochs used in estimating the position each hour allowing for continuous monitoring of the infrastructure of interest.

As part of the LEAP project the seismic response of a liquefiable 5° slope was modelled at a number of centrifuges around the world. In this paper the two experiments conducted at Cambridge University are discussed. The model preparation is detailed with particular emphasis on the sand pouring, saturation and slope cutting process. The presence of the third harmonic in the input motion is shown and its significance discussed. The potential for wavelet denoising to filter random electrical noise from the pore pressure traces is illustrated. CPT strength profiles are highlighted and a possible softer layer in one of the tests is discussed. Whilst the specifications called for one dense and one loose test, the likelihood that both Cambridge tests were loosely poured is assessed. The PIV technique is used to obtain the displacements of the slope during the test. Finally, the correspondence between the PIV displacements and physical measurements of the marker movements is compared.

The understanding of the onset of breaching induced by surface erosion is fundamental to enable definition of the level of protection afforded by embankments and provision of standards for the design of new structures and the upgrading of existing ones. Compacted embankment materials are generally partially saturated due to seasonal variation in the water content. At the onset of the overflow process embankments undergo to a wetting process due to the changes at the outer surface boundary conditions (i.e. overflow). Erosion behaviour is known to be a counterbalance between gravity forces and shear erosion forces. However, as the particle size decreases (i.e. clayey soils), gravitational forces become negligible and electrochemical interaction between particles play a dominant role. Clay microstructure (e.g. particle configuration and inter-particle forces) changes with the hydro-mechanical stresses history. Thus, it is necessary to consider the microstructural changes in particle configuration to understand the influence of microstructure on the macroscopic behaviour of clay during erosion. Upon wetting, clay have a swelling/collapse behaviour. This research presents experimental results on erosion of clay samples compacted at the same initial dry density but with different compaction water content. The influence of different wetting times on erosion is also investigated. We show that for a given as-compacted water content, the longer the wetting stage, and hence the higher the sample water content, the more erodible the samples. Additionally, for samples compacted at the same dry density, the ones compacted on the dry side of optimum are more erodible than samples compacted at the optimum water content, despite the lower water content at formation. We hypothesise that this may be due to the formation of a different initial microstructure in sample on the dry side of optimum (i.e. bi-modal pore size distribution). Our results contribute to the fundamental understanding of time-dependent mechanisms that influence erosion of clay embankments during overflow and, hence, to embankment failure. In addition, these tests show how basic concepts of unsaturated soil mechanics can serve as a guide to ‘design’ the compaction conditions of embankment material.

Flood embankments are generally designed by assuming steady-state flow conditions and dry soil above the phreatic surface. However, steady-state conditions are rarely achieved and a significant portion of the embankment remains unsaturated upon a flood event. If transient water flow and partial saturation are considered, the flood embankment can be designed with steeper slopes on the landside, which may lead to significant savings in terms of earthfill material (i.e., embodied carbon) and footprint (i.e., habitat suppression and expropriation costs). This paper examines the case of flood embankments in the tidal area of the Elbe River in Germany. These embankments must be retrofitted by raising their crest from 5 to 7 m because of the new projection of extreme river levels due to climate change. In this paper, the conventional “prescriptive” design consisting of raising the embankment by maintaining the 1:3 inclination of the landside slope is compared with the “performance-based” design where the inclination of the slope on the landside could be potentially increased up to 1:1, which is shown to be sustainable if partial saturation and transient water flow are considered. Raising the flood embankment with 1:1 landside slope (rather than 1:3) could lead to expropriation cost savings on the order of €3.9 M/km. For the case of a newly built embankment of 7 m height, the saving would become €4.5 M/km. An approximate estimation of embodied carbon suggests that the carbon saving would be on the order of 3,100–4,200 tCO₂e/km.