2012 in review
Civil Engineering Society, NIT Silchar wishes one and all a very happy new year.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.
CES Merchandise – Sweatshirt
Civil Engineering Branch Sweat-Shirt
After a long wait of 3 years, Civil Engineering Society presents Civil Engineering Branch Sweatshirt.
GIS And Its Application in Civil Engineering
What is GIS?
Geographic Information System (GIS) is a system intended to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology.
A GIS can be thought of as a system—it digitally creates and manipulates spatial areas that may be for jurisdictional purpose or application-oriented. Generally, a GIS is custom-designed for an organization. Hence, a GIS developed for an application, jurisdiction, enterprise, or purpose may not be necessarily interoperable or compatible with a GIS that has been developed for some other application, jurisdiction, enterprise, or purpose.
Application of GIS
GIS is a relatively broad term, which can refer to a number of technologies and processes, so it is attached to many operations; in engineering, planning, management, transport/logistics and analysis.
History of Development
During the 1854 cholera outbreak in London, English physician John Snow used points to represent the locations of some individual cases, possibly the earliest use of a geographic methodology in epidemiology. His study of the distribution of cholera led to the source of the disease, a contaminated water pump (the Broad Street Pump, whose handle he had disconnected, thus terminating the outbreak) within the heart of the cholera outbreak.
This historical became the advent of the usage of spatial data for analysis and planning in many fields including Civil Engineering.
GIS and Civil Engineering
An advanced information system like GIS plays a vital role and serves as a complete platform in every phase of infrastructure life cycle. Advancement and availability of technology has set new marks for the professionals in the infrastructure development areas. Now more and more professionals are seeking help of these technologically smart and improved information systems like GIS for infrastructure development. Each and every phase of infrastructure life-cycle is greatly affected and enhanced by the enrollment of GIS.
- Planning: In planning its major contribution is to give us with an organized set of data which can help professionals to combat complex scenarios relating to the selection of site, environmental impact, study of ecosystem, managing risk regarding the use of natural resources, sustainability issues, managing traffic congestion, routing of roads and pipelines etc.
- Data Collection: Precise and accurate data is the core driving factor of any successful project. GIS is equipped with almost all those tools and functions that enables user to have access to the required data within a reasonable time.
- Analysis: Analysis is one of the major and most influential phases of infrastructure life cycle. Analysis guides us about the validity or correctness of design or we can say that analysis is a method which supports our design. Some of the analyses that can be performed by GIS are:
- Water distribution analysis
- Traffic management analysis
- Soil analysis
- Site feasibility analysis
- Environment impact analysis
- Volume or Area analysis of catchment
- River or canals pattern analysis
- Temperature and humidity analysis
Construction: It is the stage when all layout plans and paper work design come into existence in the real world. The GIS helps the professionals to understand the site conditions that affect the schedule baseline and cost baseline. To keep the construction within budget and schedule GIS guides us about how to utilize our resources on site efficiency by:
- Timely usage of construction equipment.
- Working Hours
- Effects of seasonal fluctuations.
- Optimizing routes for dumpers and concrete trucks
- Earth filling and cutting
- Calculation of volumes and areas of constructed phase thereby helping in Estimation and Valuation.
Operations: Operations are controlled by modeling of site data and compared by the baselines prepared in planning phase. Modeling of site may be in the form of raster images or CAD drawings. These can help us to keep track of timely operations of activities.
GIS can help to make a record of work that has been completed and can give us visualization in the form of thematic maps which will guide us about rate of operations, completed operations and pending operations.
In short we can say that GIS will prove to be the foundation of next generation civil engineering.
Piyush Dwivedi
Class of 2016
Literacy in the labor class: A Capitalist’s Analysis
The role of the labor class and menial workers is much pronounced in the work sphere of Civil Engineering, perhaps more than in any other discipline of technology. Although scientific awareness and the Silicon Revolution have mechanized most of the practices, it’s still the human hand which executes the most fundamental chores on the worksite, nevertheless. As a matter of fact, the largest chunk of unskilled human resources working in the industry come from the construction and fabrication, erection and mining related jobs. So the efficiency of job execution and processes on the worksite is largely determined by the constitution of the workforce involved.
Let us consider a simple job at a construction site, like the laying of bricks for a wall. Now it would be impractical to assume that an illiterate labor is aware of terms like Queen Closer, Quoin Header, Bed Stretcher, etc. He is just used to the idea of mechanically placing the bricks at their ‘designated’ places, designated in the sense, the idea which he has seen being followed traditionally. At small scale construction sites, these types of masons, welders, stone workers can be found most easily as they are easily available and at lost wage rates: any illiterate, unemployed village lad would be more than willing. However, at sites involving large scale construction, such an approach towards work leads to erroneous finish and at times, serious monetary deficits. On the other hand, employing a labor that is literate enough to understand the nature of job and its superficial technicalities might cost more, but a capital used for quality human resources is always an investment.
An educated and literate labor is also the man for the supervisor. Not only he saves the overseer precious time which was hitherto spent in primary instructions, he also finds himself in a position to drop in suggestions wherever he feels necessary. Also, he can adapt to new skills and work more easily, given his better level of awareness and education. Literate, educated workers contribute more towards a progressive industrial environment. To the hands that work and toil, the boon of literacy adds a contributing mind that guides and learns.
As Neo-Capitalism pervades the world, the industries have come to prefer human resources which may be tapped in different ways, as and when required by the market demands. The nature of job has ceased to be perennial for a person employed in a large scale industry. Thus, versatility is the most important aspect that the modern industries desire in their workforce. If the percentage of unskilled human resources in a particular firm were large, evidently, it would be on the cost of their versatility. A large number of the workers would be suited only for one kind of job, thus drastically affecting the efficiency of production or output. Literate, educated workers are more versatile and with little training, can be employed for different kinds of jobs; adding efficiency to the system; while the illiterate workforce is rendered only untenable.
A literate labor can be expected more to be aware of the economic and fiscal aspect of his employment. Illiterate masons and uneducated plumbers wouldn’t know how and when and what determines wage rates, so they are often exploited. To put it in a nutshell, literacy among the working class isn’t only instrumental towards the efficiency of the industry where they are employed; it is also an indispensible asset for their own social, industrial and economic well-being.
Anurag Anand
Class of 2015
ArcGIS
ArcGIS is a geographic information system (GIS) software developed by ESRI Company. With its latest version ArcGIS 10.1, it is helpful for working with maps and geographic information. Mainly used for creating and using maps; compiling geographic data; analyzing mapped information but also for sharing and discovering geographic information; using maps and geographic information in a range of applications; and managing geographic information in a database.
The software provides an infrastructure for making maps and geographic information available throughout an organization, across a community, and openly on the Web through the power of cloud computing.
ArcGIS is built around the geodatabase, which uses an object-relational database approach for storing spatial data. A geodatabase is a “container” for holding datasets, binding together the spatial features with characteristics. The geodatabase can also contain topology information, and can perform model simulation behavior of features, such as road intersections, with protocols on how features relate to one another.
ArcGIS includes the following plug-ins:
- ArcReader, which allows one to view and query maps created with the other ArcGIS products.
- ArcView, which allows one to view spatial data, create layered maps, and perform basic spatial analysis.
- ArcEditor, which in addition to the functionality of ArcView, includes more advanced tools for manipulation of shapefiles and geodatabases.
- ArcInfo, which includes capabilities for data manipulation, editing, and analysis.
- ArcMap, it is the application used to view, edit and query geospatial data, and create maps.
- ArcCatalog, It is the data management application, used to browse datasets and files on one’s computer, database, or other sources. In addition to showing what data is available, ArcCatalog also allows users to preview the data on a map. ArcCatalog also provides the ability to view and manage metadata for spatial datasets
- ArcToolbox, contains geoprocessing, data conversion, and analysis tools, along with much of the functionality in ArcInfo. It is also possible to use batch processing with ArcToolbox, for frequently repeated tasks.
For more information visit: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis
The Perfect City
For historians and town planners alike, a civilization is where people start to live in cities. Cities are the pinnacle of order. Even if how ironic this statement may seem but cities are something which intrigued historians and town planners equally. There exists a difference, to what exactly they both want from cities?
For a historian his greatest achievement would be to find a lost civilization. To find an ancient city gone astray in the realm of time, embalmed under the sands and forgotten by humanity in its brief existence. On the other hand for a town planner his greatest achievement would be to create the perfect city. A city which is sustainable, expanding in all directions, armed with adequate transportation facilities and optimum land use.
Not everyone gets a chance to create or plan his own city. In this age of super-fast computing where everything from piloting an airplane to designing a machine component is simulated inside a tiny little box filled with circuits and chips, Focus Home Interactive developed a city simulator named Cities XL 2012. Released on October 20, 2011 this is the third game in the Cities XL franchise. The game was published by Monte Cristo Publishers.
Features:
- As a virtual mayor, find the right balance between economic development of your cities, attractiveness, transportation (road traffic, bus, metro…), pollution, social services, taxes and even leisure activities.
- Cities XL offers designation of three types of building lots: residential, commercial and industrial with three different densities – low, medium and high.
- Furthermore the residential lots are divided into four social classes: unskilled workers, skilled workers, executives and elites.
- To create building lots, players can zone an area of the map in which, upon confirmation, individual building lots will be created by the game apart from plopping building lots individually.
- Cities XL allows players to create a road network of a variety of road types at many different angles and curvatures. Bridges, tunnels, trains, ferries, subways and buses.
- Cross the city limits and manage a network of cities on the entire planet! Cities XL lets you connect every city that you will build in the game. This will give you a chance to specialize some of your cities and to establish business links to share resources and services.
- And many more, making it a near perfect city simulator.
Minimum System Requirements:
- OS: Microsoft XP SP3/Vista/7
- Processor: Intel Pentium 4 (~ 2.4 GHz) and above
- Memory: 1 GB
- Hard drive: 10GB free space
- Video: 128 MB, nVidia GeForce 6600 GT or higher, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and above, support for Pixel Shader 2.0 and higher support, DirectX 9.0c
Welcome, Batch of 2016
“We the Civil Engineers bridge the distance”
“We build the world”
“We construct the road to success”
“We can handle the stress & strain”
These were some of the quotes that were seen as one entered into the New Gallery 307 on 29th September, 2012, where “SANRACHNA’12” was taking place. The First Year students were anxious to know why it was
claiming to be the wildest fresher’s party.
Without much delay, the host Anurag Anand, Debanjana Gupta, Sugata Goswami, Anangsha Alammyan and Siddhant Azad welcomed the audience and made everyone sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Accompanied by a brief and motivating speech by M Ali Ahmed Sir, which enlightened one and all present in the Gallery with his vast experience and knowledge in the field of Civil Engineering and teaching. “Knowledge can be gained from all, so one should never feel ashamed to ask.” He further diverted everyone’s interest to a strange analogy between life and Civil Engineering. “… Construction starts from bottom and design starts from top” and left the part of life for the audience to think.
After that, the General Secretary Debanjan Purkayastha, Civil Engineering Society, 2012 – 2013, inaugurated the fresher’s party with a formal speech welcoming the Batch of 2016 to Civil Engineering Department, NIT Silchar.
Cultural Events witnessed that evening were as follows:
Dharmendra Chauhan performed a nostalgic ‘alvida’
Sonam Rai and group rocked the floor with the hearts going ‘dhadak dhadak’ with their dance performance.
A short rib-tickling PJ Competition, winner Arindam Chakraborty.
A tongue twister competition, winner Jaswant.
“Cheerleaders” dance contest.
A wonderful guitar performance on ‘nagin’ by Rahul and Dolang.
Arm Wrestling Competition: Payal takes on Devjani, Chandan Jena takes on Jaswant.
First Year students who participated for Mr. & Ms. Freshers were
Mr. Freshers : Vinayak, Ashim, Prawal, Vivek, Arindam, Piyush
Ms. Freshers : Payal, Ruplekha, Devjani, Sonam, Chandrima
More events:
A very inspiring video presented about the Civil Engineering Branch and its achievements which left the audience with goose bumps and in awe that why the video ended?
Mimicry performance by Arindam Chakraborty
Secrets Revealed; beans spilled. A chit-chat between the hosts and Ravi Sharma and Sandeep Menon, remarking upon the paradox that how two persons so opposite can be as thick as thieves.
A soothing ‘incomplete’ by Dipankar.
Aryan Farhan left everyone dumbstruck by a special performance with nunchucks.
With this the Mr. & Ms. Fresher’s 2012 talent round began:
Ruplekha sang a melodious song ‘Love Story’ by Taylor Swift.
o Chandan chipped in with a short but energetic Bhangra performance.
Vinayak dedicated his own song to someone he misses the most.
Payal recited a beautiful Assamese poem.
o Shantanu performed a song.
Followed by Payal and Ruplekha performing ‘mauja hi mauja’.
o No one left the dance floor as Debanjana came up with ‘tum hi ho bandhu’
o A few lucky 7th Semester guys got a chance to fulfill their wish – dance with any girl they want.
o The venue was rocked by the rocking performance of our very own rock star, Sammujal Das, General Secretary, Gymkhana Students Union Body, 2012 – 2013.
o A medley of Hollywood, Bollywood and Bhojpuri dance by First Year boys.
Devjani gracefully danced to ‘mar jawaa’.
Arindam performed with the guitar, ‘dooba dooba’.
Sonam proved with her dance performance that she is a ‘desi girl’.
Ashim did a comic act based on the rubbish of TV News.
o Madhurjya Das made everyone miss their soulmates with lovely ‘ankhon mein teri’.
o Much awaited Bihu Dance, everyone danced to the dhol.
Piyush performed a thought-provoking ‘shayari’.
Vivek sang a beautiful song ‘jashn-e-bahara’.
Prawal sang another romantic number ‘soniyo’.
o Surprise dance by Nikhil Pasari made everyone reach out to the floor spontaneously.
The contest of Mr. and Ms. Fresher’s 2012 was concluded with a very interesting and funny situation round. Questions were posed by Mr. and Ms. Fresher’s 2009, Raheef Rasheed Aowal and Srishti Banerji accompanied by other seventh semester guys and girls.
Based on the overall performance, Arindam Chakraborty became the “Prince” and Sonam Rai the “Princess” of Civil Engineering Branch Fresher’s of 2012. Devjani received a special performance award.
All First Semester students were presented by Society Diary, pioneering again and setting the standards high as if it were a habit of CES.
Everyone irrespective of their age and position danced to the numbers on the floor, as the most memorable Fresher’s Party of this year and the years to come concluded.
Ronak Sharma
Batch of 2016
SRiSHTEE’12
Civil Engineering Society 2012-2013 is proud to present the only Branch Magazine of NIT Silchar for the fourth consecutive year. This edition of SRiSHTEE’12 was not published in the year 2011-2012 due to the lack of sponsorship but still to maintain the continuity the PDF version of the same is being launched.
Special thanks to Shobhit Shukla, Publication Secretary, CES 2011-2012
Hope you all like it.
The Rio-Antirrio Bridge
The Rio Antirrio Bridge, the longest cable stayed suspension bridge in the world, stands across the Gulf of Corinth in Greece. 368 small cables supported on 4 conical towers constitute this bridge, which is also the deepest in the world in terms of foundation, as deep as 2200m!
Following challenges were met during the construction of this bridge:
- The Gulf was very deep and the sea bottom was very soft and yielding. At even 450m, the soil had poor bearing capacity. So no piles could be driven to support the colossal weight of the structure.
- An earthquake active fault line cuts through the middle of the bridge span. So this complicated the foundation laying process.
- The water current through the region was very fast.
However, the engineers devised an innovative way to meet these challenges. They strengthened the sea floor by using as many as hundred metal cylinders, 30m long and 2m wide. Gravel was also poured, covering the area of the circle formed so that the foundation would slide on the gravel bed in the event of an earthquake. Floating Pile Driving Ships were employed, guided by GPS. Dampers were installed to absorb the energy of the earthquakes so that the deck moved up to 5m, but survived without collapsing.
The foundation size was large enough to span across one and half football fields! It was made by a dense network of steel reinforcement bars, the net weight of which was around 2 million kilograms. The amount of concrete required for the same purpose would have been around 19 million liters, but concrete simply couldn’t be poured as the dense network created huge air pockets so that compactors were needed to be used.
The net weight of the foundation was 64 million kilograms. It was built on dry land, so there was difficulty in moving it in water on account of its gigantic weight. So, various floating compartments were made and the entire area was filled with water. Once the foundation floated, two huge ships pulled them at calculated points using total stations instead of chains. As the foundations floated in the sea, towers were constructed on them; whose weight sunk the foundations even further and they touched the ground.
Settlement was feared as the soil was soft on the sea bed. So, the foundation was forced into the soil by filling it with water so that it remained steady when full weight of the bridge rested upon it.
In constructing the cables which serve as a trademark of this bridge, around 4.5 million kilograms of steel were used. Each cable had seven small cables, each of a size of a chopstick.
As Greece was chosen to host the 2004 Olympic Games, the contractors were forced to complete it a little earlier than the scheduled date. However, when the Olympic Torch finally crossed the Rio Antirrio Bridge, contractors had only shifted gears from construction to maintenance. A computerized command center was installed as it was impossible over a human to keep a vigil over so many cameras. So the computers serve to analyze the date obtained from the camera and alert the center for potential risks.
Image Courtesy Wikipedia
Compiled by:
- Digvijay Singh
- Anurag Anand
- Vaibhav Suman
Class of 2015
Happy Independence Day
66 years ago India threw off the chains of the British Empire and became a free nation. And now the world’s largest democracy is rushing headlong into the future. As the brief heyday of the west draws to a close, one of the greatest players in history is rising again. India has seen the airborne flow of huge events since the beginning of history. Its tale is of one of the incredible drama and the biggest ideas. It is a place whose children will grow up in a global superpower and yet still know what it means to belong to an ancient civilization. This is the land where all human pasts are still alive. A ten thousand year old epic that continues even today.
As a Civil Engineer’s point of view India is a free nation that has a road network of over 4.32 million kilometers; it has one of the world’s largest railway networks comprising a total of 114,500 kilometers of track over a route of 65,000 kilometers and 7,500 stations; despite having a long coastline, spanning 7516.6 kilometers, is dotted with 13 major ports and 187 notified minor and intermediate ports and a total of 454 airports and airstrips with 16 designated as international airports.
For the next years to come India is poised with strong focus on the development of infrastructure to meet the international standards. I believe somewhere some part of that strong focus, that responsibility lies on the shoulders of each and every Civil Engineer in this country. Our country may be spiritually and culturally the richest, academically one of the richest, economically growing and superseding the riches of the west and the imperials but somewhere some part we are still lagging behind. Like we may have 0.66km of roads per square kilometer while the United States has 0.65, China 0.16 and Brazil 0.20 but a fact still clouds these impressive figures that as of 2008, only 49% of the Indian roads were paved.
Since ancient times Indian civilization has been driven by great ideas; by the search for knowledge and truth. Nowadays truth has taken a back seat. Imagine a place where no one needs to lie. Where moral image of a person is respected in society more than the superficial image which the youngsters now praise and preach. From the Buddha to Mahatma Gandhi, Indian history is brimming with men and women who contested the idea that history should only be written by men of war.As our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru said in his mid-night speech, Tryst with Destiny;
The future of India is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means, the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.
Click Here for the Actual Text of his Speech
The cultures, the languages, the religions of India are built up over tens and thousands of years that bear the deep current on which the great events of history are just surface movements. And they make up that deep core of the identity of India.
And this is just the beginning…
Civil Engineering Society, NIT Silchar BLOG 