Construction contractors usually undertake multiple construction projects simultaneously. Such a situation involves sharing different types of resources, including monetary, equipment, and manpower, which may become a major challenge in many cases. In this study, the financial aspects of working on multiple projects at a time are addressed and investigated. The study considers dealing with financial shortages by proposing a multi-project scheduling optimization model for profit maximization, while minimizing the total project duration. Optimization genetic algorithm and finance-based scheduling are used to produce feasible schedules that balance the finance of activities at any time with the available funds. The model has been tested in multi scenarios, and the results are analyzed. The results show that negative cash flow is minimized from −693,784 to −634,514 in enterprise I and from −2,646,408 to −2,529,324 in enterprise II in the first scenario and also results show that negative cash flow is minimized to −612,768 with a profit of +200,116 in enterprise I and to −2,597,290 with a profit of +1,537,632 in enterprise II in the second scenario.
The strong cryptography employed by PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is one of the best available today. The PGP protocol is a hybrid cryptosystem that combines some of the best features of both conventional and public-key cryptography. This paper aim to improve PGP protocol by combined between the Random Genetic algorithm, NTRU (N-th degree Truncated polynomial Ring Unit) algorithm with PGP protocol stages in order to increase PGP protocol speed, security, and make it more difficult in front of the counterfeiter. This can be achieved by use the Genetic algorithm that only generates the keys according to the Random Genetic equations. The final keys that obtained from Genetic algorithm were observed to be purely random (according to the randomne
... Show MoreContent-based image retrieval has been keenly developed in numerous fields. This provides more active management and retrieval of images than the keyword-based method. So the content based image retrieval becomes one of the liveliest researches in the past few years. In a given set of objects, the retrieval of information suggests solutions to search for those in response to a particular description. The set of objects which can be considered are documents, images, videos, or sounds. This paper proposes a method to retrieve a multi-view face from a large face database according to color and texture attributes. Some of the features used for retrieval are color attributes such as the mean, the variance, and the color image's bitmap. In add
... Show MoreHuge yearly investments were made by organizations for the development and maintenance. However, it has been reported that most of the IT projects fails as it is delayed, over budget and discontinued quality. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for the IT projects. Nine (9) CSFs was identified from the SLR. An online survey was conducted among 103 respondents from developers and IT managers. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 22). The findings showed that the highest CSFs of IT projects is commitment and motivation. Project monitoring was found the lowest score ranked by respondents.
Over the years, the prediction of penetration rate (ROP) has played a key rule for drilling engineers due it is effect on the optimization of various parameters that related to substantial cost saving. Many researchers have continually worked to optimize penetration rate. A major issue with most published studies is that there is no simple model currently available to guarantee the ROP prediction.
The main objective of this study is to further improve ROP prediction using two predictive methods, multiple regression analysis (MRA) and artificial neural networks (ANNs). A field case in SE Iraq was conducted to predict the ROP from a large number of parame
In this research, Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process technique is applied (Fuzzy AHP) which is one of multi-criteria decision making techniques to evaluate the criteria for urban planning projects, the project of developing master plan of Al-Muqdadiyah city to 2035 has been chosen as a case study. The researcher prepared a list of criteria in addition to the authorized departments criteria and previous researches in order to choose optimized master plan according to these criteria. This research aims at employing the foundations of (Fuzzy AHP) technique in evaluating urban planning criteria precisely and flexible. The results of the data analysis to the individuals of the sample who are specialists, in this aspect. The la
... Show MoreRapid worldwide urbanization and drastic population growth have increased the demand for new road construction, which will cause a substantial amount of natural resources such as aggregates to be consumed. The use of recycled concrete aggregate could be one of the possible ways to offset the aggregate shortage problem and reduce environmental pollution. This paper reports an experimental study of unbound granular material using recycled concrete aggregate for pavement subbase construction. Five percentages of recycled concrete aggregate obtained from two different sources with an originally designed compressive strength of 20–30 MPa as well as 31–40 MPa at three particle size levels, i.e., coarse, fine, and extra fine, were test
... Show MoreIn this study, a fast block matching search algorithm based on blocks' descriptors and multilevel blocks filtering is introduced. The used descriptors are the mean and a set of centralized low order moments. Hierarchal filtering and MAE similarity measure were adopted to nominate the best similar blocks lay within the pool of neighbor blocks. As next step to blocks nomination the similarity of the mean and moments is used to classify the nominated blocks and put them in one of three sub-pools, each one represents certain nomination priority level (i.e., most, less & least level). The main reason of the introducing nomination and classification steps is a significant reduction in the number of matching instances of the pixels belong to the c
... Show MoreThe behavior and shear strength of full-scale (T-section) reinforced concrete deep beams, designed according to the strut-and-tie approach of ACI Code-19 specifications, with various large web openings were investigated in this paper. A total of 7 deep beam specimens with identical shear span-to-depth ratios have been tested under mid-span concentrated load applied monotonically until beam failure. The main variables studied were the effects of width and depth of the web openings on deep beam performance. Experimental data results were calibrated with the strut-and-tie approach, adopted by ACI 318-19 code for the design of deep beams. The provided strut-and-tie design model in ACI 318-19 code provision was assessed and found to be u
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