Cost and Constructability of Permafrost Test Sections Along the Alaska Highway, Yukon
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A significant amount of Yukon's highway infrastructure is constructed on warm, ice-rich permafrost interlaced with ice wedges. Reconstruction of the North Alaska Highway 10-15 years ago induced thawing of the permafrost. As a result, the highway is continually subjected to severe settlements and longitudinal cracking. Currently, increased attention is being given to the problem of permafrost thawing underneath infrastructure due to the global focus on climate change. Yukon Highways and Public Works has undertaken an extensive research project aimed at finding cost-effective construction techniques to reduce permafrost thawing underneath the highway embankment. Several test sections along a 600m length of highway were constructed in April-June 2008. Mitigation techniques being tested include: air convection embankments (ACE), heat drains, longitudinal air ducts, light-coloured aggregate surfacing, side slope snow clearing, and snow sheds. The test sections are instrumented with thermistors, surface temperature loggers, and weather monitoring equipment. The primary goals of the research are to find methods suitable for rehabilitation of existing embankments, thereby reducing the ongoing maintenance costs over the life cycle of the highway and improving the ride and safety of the highway. The examination of the cost and constructability of the test sections, covered in this paper, is the first step in evaluating the potential of the mitigation techniques. The analysis includes descriptions of the procedures used for construction, specific construction challenges, and recommendations for future work. As well, the costs of implementing the various techniques have been compiled and compared.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".