Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewage systems, pipelines, structural components of buildings, and railways.
The cryosphere is an all-encompassing term for those portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground. Thus, there is a wide overlap with the hydrosphere. The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system with important linkages and feedbacks generated through its influence on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, hydrology, atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Through these feedback processes, the cryosphere plays a significant role in the global climate and in climate model response to global changes. Approximately 10% of the Earth's surface is covered by ice, but this is rapidly decreasing. The term deglaciation describes the retreat of cryospheric features. Cryology is the study of cryospheres.
Muskeg is a peat-forming ecosystem found in several northern climates, most commonly in Arctic and boreal areas. Muskeg is approximately synonymous with bog or peatland, and is a standard term in Western Canada and Alaska. The term became common in these areas because it is of Cree origin; maskek (ᒪᐢᑫᐠ) meaning low-lying marsh.
The Dempster Highway, also referred to as Yukon Highway 5 and Northwest Territories Highway 8, is a highway in Canada that connects the Klondike Highway in Yukon to Inuvik, Northwest Territories on the Mackenzie River delta. The highway crosses the Peel and the Mackenzie rivers using a combination of seasonal ferry services and ice bridges. Year-round road access from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk opened in November 2017, with the completion of the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway, creating the first all-weather road route connecting the Canadian road network with the Arctic Ocean.
Seabed gouging by ice is a process that occurs when floating ice features drift into shallower areas and their keel comes into contact with the seabed. As they keep drifting, they produce long, narrow furrows most often called gouges, or scours. This phenomenon is common in offshore environments where ice is known to exist. Although it also occurs in rivers and lakes, it appears to be better documented from oceans and sea expanses.
An ice road or ice bridge is a human-made structure that runs on a frozen water surface. Ice roads are typically part of a winter road, but they can also be simple stand-alone structures, connecting two shorelines. Ice roads may be planned, built and maintained so as to remain safe and effective, and a number of guidelines have been published with information in these regards. An ice road may be constructed year after year, for instance to service community needs during the winter. It could also be for a single year or two, so as to supply particular operations, such as a hydroelectric project or offshore drill sites.
Aufeis,, is a sheet-like mass of layered ice that forms from successive flows of ground or river water during freezing temperatures. This form of ice is also called overflow, icings, or the Russian term, naled. The term was first used in 1859 by Alexander von Middendorff following his observations of the phenomenon in northern Siberia.
An underwater tunnel is a tunnel which is partly or wholly constructed under the sea or a river. They are often used where building a bridge or operating a ferry link is unviable, or to provide competition or relief for existing bridges or ferry links. While short tunnels are often road tunnels which may admit motorized traffic, unmotorized traffic or both, concerns with ventilation lead to the longest tunnels being electrified rail tunnels.
King's Highway 7A, commonly referred to as Highway 7A, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario that serves as a bypass of Highway 7. The highway begins in the community of Manchester, where Highway 7 is concurrent with Highway 12, and travels east through Port Perry, Nestleton Station, Bethany and Cavan, ending at Highway 115 southwest of Peterborough. From there, Highway 7 can be reached via Highway 115 northbound. Near its midpoint the route is concurrent with Highway 35 for 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi).
The Shashe River is a major left-bank tributary of the Limpopo River in Zimbabwe. It rises northwest of Francistown, Botswana and flows into the Limpopo River where Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa meet. The confluence is at the site of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area.
The Yellowknife Highway, officially Northwest Territories Highway 3 and also known as the Great Slave Highway, is a highway connecting Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, to the Mackenzie Highway, from a junction 188 km (117 mi) north of the Alberta border. First completed in 1960 as a gravel and dirt road, the highway is now paved and realigned after years of work concluded in 2006. Access to Yellowknife prior to the opening of the Yellowknife Highway was possible only by airplane, winter road, or boat across Great Slave Lake.
Cellular confinement systems (CCS)—also known as geocells—are widely used in construction for erosion control, soil stabilization on flat ground and steep slopes, channel protection, and structural reinforcement for load support and earth retention. Typical cellular confinement systems are geosynthetics made with ultrasonically welded high-density polyethylene (HDPE) strips or novel polymeric alloy (NPA)—and expanded on-site to form a honeycomb-like structure—and filled with sand, soil, rock, gravel or concrete.
Pressure grouting or jet grouting involves injecting a grout material into otherwise inaccessible but interconnected pore or void space of which neither the configuration or volume are known, and is often referred to simply as grouting. The grout may be a cementitious, resinous, or solution chemical mixture. The greatest use of pressure grouting is to improve geomaterials. The purpose of grouting can be either to strengthen a formation or to reduce water flow through it. It is also used to correct faults in concrete and masonry structures. Since first usage in the 19th century, grouting has been performed on the foundation of virtually every one of the world's large dams, in order to reduce the amount of leakage through the rock, and sometimes to strengthen the foundation to support the weight of the overlying structure, be it of concrete, earth, or rock fill. It is also a key procedure in the creation of post-tensioned prestressed concrete, a material used in many concrete bridge designs, among other places.
Geoprofessions is a term coined by the Geoprofessional Business Association to connote various technical disciplines that involve engineering, earth and environmental services applied to below-ground (“subsurface”), ground-surface, and ground-surface-connected conditions, structures, or formations. The principal disciplines include, as major categories:
Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except where cyclists are barred such as many freeways/motorways. It includes amenities such as bike racks for parking, shelters, service centers and specialized traffic signs and signals. The more cycling infrastructure, the more people get about by bicycle.
Svein Olafur Sigfusson was a Canadian athlete and entrepreneur. He won a bronze medal in the discus throw at the 1950 British Empire Games and was Canadian champion for the hammer throw.
Offshore geotechnical engineering is a sub-field of geotechnical engineering. It is concerned with foundation design, construction, maintenance and decommissioning for human-made structures in the sea. Oil platforms, artificial islands and submarine pipelines are examples of such structures. The seabed has to be able to withstand the weight of these structures and the applied loads. Geohazards must also be taken into account. The need for offshore developments stems from a gradual depletion of hydrocarbon reserves onshore or near the coastlines, as new fields are being developed at greater distances offshore and in deeper water, with a corresponding adaptation of the offshore site investigations. Today, there are more than 7,000 offshore platforms operating at a water depth up to and exceeding 2000 m. A typical field development extends over tens of square kilometers, and may comprise several fixed structures, infield flowlines with an export pipeline either to the shoreline or connected to a regional trunkline.
A snow road is a type of winter road, which is a road that is used or trafficable only in the winter. Snow roads make up some or all of the on-land segments of a winter road. The snow is either compacted in place or, when there is not enough of it, is hauled from elsewhere, then compacted. The snow may be processed, for instance, by agitation to reduce the size of the particles before compaction. Additional snow is also used to help protect the vegetation and as a means of improving trafficability. This snow, sometimes referred to as 'snow pavement', can be compacted to various level, depending on requirements and available equipment – a higher compaction will accommodate heavier vehicles and higher tire pressures.
Christina Jackson is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and Honorary Professor at the School of Engineering, University of Birmingham. Her work has involved coordinating the treatment of abandoned limestone workings in the Black Country, leading work on land reclamation and regeneration, and major works on the M40 and M6 Toll. Jackson was the first woman elected chair at the Institution of Civil Engineers West Midlands in 2004.
The Neoloy Geocell is a Cellular Confinement System (geocell) developed and manufactured by PRS Geo-Technologies Ltd. Geocells are extruded in ultrasonically welded strips. The folded strips are opened on-site to form a 3D honeycomb matrix, which is then filled with granular material. The 3D confinement system is used to stabilize soft subgrade soil and reinforce the subbase and base layers in flexible pavements. Cellular confinement is also used for soil protection and erosion control for slopes, including channels, retention walls, reservoirs and landfills.
