For many decades, IT infrastructure has provided the foundation for successful application deployment. Yet, general knowledge of infrastructures is still not widespread. Experience shows that software developers, system administrators, and project managers often have little knowledge of the big influence IT infrastructures have on the performance, availability and security of software applications. This book explains the concepts, history, and implementation of IT infrastructures. Although many of books can be found on individual infrastructure building blocks, this is the first book to describe all of them: datacenters, servers, networks, storage, virtualization, operating systems, and end user devices. Whether you need an introduction to infrastructure technologies, a refresher course, or a study guide for a computer science class, you will find that the presented building blocks and concepts provide a solid foundation for understanding the complexity of today's IT infrastructures.

Infrastructure Computer Vision delves into this field of computer science that works on enabling computers to see, identify, process images and provide appropriate output in the same way that human vision does. However, implementing these advanced information and sensing technologies is difficult for many engineers. This book provides civil engineers with the technical detail of this advanced technology and how to apply it to their individual projects. - Explains how to best capture raw geometrical and visual data from infrastructure scenes and assess their quality - Offers valuable insights on how to convert the raw data into actionable information and knowledge stored in Digital Twins - Bridges the gap between the theoretical aspects and real-life applications of computer vision

Construction is one of the biggest industries in the world, providing necessary facilities for human prosperity ranging from the homes in which we live to the highways we drive, the power plants that provide energy for our daily activities, and the very infrastructure on which human society is built. The construction sector, including the building sector, has among the largest potential of any industry to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This ambitious and comprehensive textbook covers the concept of embedding sustainability across all construction activities. It is aimed at students taking courses in construction management and the built environment. Written in a lively and engaging style the book sets out the practical requirements of making the transition to a sustainable construction industry by 2020. Case studies are included throughout making the book both a core reference and a practical guide.

This book seeks to contribute to prior research facing the discussion about public value creation in Smart Cities and the role of governments. In the early 21st century, the rapid transition to a highly urbanized population has made societies and their governments around the world to be meeting unprecedented challenges regarding key themes such as sustainability, new governance models and the creation of networks. Also, cities today face increasing challenges when it comes to providing advanced (digital) services to their constituency. The use of information and communication technologies (usually ICTs) and data is thought to rationalize and improve government and have the potential to transform governance and organizational issues. These questions link up to the ever-evolving concept of Smart Cities. In fact, the rise of the Smart City and Smart City thinking is a direct response to such challenges, as well as providing a means of integrating fast evolving technology into our living environment. This focus on the public value creation in Smart Cities could be of interest for academics, researchers, policy-makers, public managers, international organizations and technical experts involved in and responsible for the governance, development and design of Smart Cities

An exploration of the technical, social, legal, and economic aspects of the scholarly infrastructure needed to support research activities in all fields in the twenty-first century. Scholars in all fields now have access to an unprecedented wealth of online information, tools, and services. The Internet lies at the core of an information infrastructure for distributed, data-intensive, and collaborative research. Although much attention has been paid to the new technologies making this possible, from digitized books to sensor networks, it is the underlying social and policy changes that will have the most lasting effect on the scholarly enterprise. In Scholarship in the Digital Age, Christine Borgman explores the technical, social, legal, and economic aspects of the kind of infrastructure that we should be building for scholarly research in the twenty-first century. Borgman describes the roles that information technology plays at every stage in the life cycle of a research project and contrasts these new capabilities with the relatively stable system of scholarly communication, which remains based on publishing in journals, books, and conference proceedings. No framework for the impending “data deluge” exists comparable to that for publishing. Analyzing scholarly practices in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, Borgman compares each discipline's approach to infrastructure issues. In the process, she challenges the many stakeholders in the scholarly infrastructure—scholars, publishers, libraries, funding agencies, and others—to look beyond their own domains to address the interaction of technical, legal, economic, social, political, and disciplinary concerns. Scholarship in the Digital Age will provoke a stimulating conversation among all who depend on a rich and robust scholarly environment.

This book covers a range of topics including selective technologies and algorithms that can potentially contribute to developing an intelligent environment and smarter cities. While the connectivity and efficiency of smart cities is important, the analysis of the impact of construction development and large projects in the city is crucial to decision and policy makers, before the project is approved. This book also presents an agenda for future investigations to address the need for advanced tools such as mobile scanners, Geospatial Artificial Intelligence, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Geospatial Augmented Reality apps, Light Detection, and Ranging in smart cities. Some of selected specific tools presented in this book are as a simulator for improving the smart parking practices by modelling drivers with activity plans, a bike optimization algorithm to increase the efficiency of bike stations, an agent-based model simulation of human mobility with the use of mobile phone datasets. In addition, this book describes the use of numerical methods to match the network demand and supply of bicycles, investigate the distribution of railways using different indicators, presents a novel algorithm of direction-aware continuous moving K-nearest neighbor queries in road networks, and presents an efficient staged evacuation planning algorithm for multi-exit buildings.

This edition demonstrates various infrastructure management tools and techniques for application to roads, bridges, airports, utility services, water and waste water facilities, parks, buildings, and sports complexes. It integrates planning, design, construction, maintenance, rehabilitation and renovation along with life-cycle, decision support systems, database management, analysis and modelling. Examples and case studies are included throughout.