This study presents a comprehensive analysis of public sentiment toward traffic management policies in Knoxville, Tennessee, utilizing social media data from Twitter and Reddit platforms. We collected and analyzed 7906 posts spanning January 2022 to December 2023, employing Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) for sentiment analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for topic modeling. Our findings reveal predominantly negative sentiment, with significant variations across platforms and topics. Twitter exhibited more negative sentiment compared to Reddit. Topic modeling identified six distinct themes, with construction-related topics showing the most negative sentiment while general traffic discussions were more positive. Spatiotemporal analysis revealed geographic and temporal patterns in sentiment expression. The research demonstrates social media's potential as a real-time public sentiment monitoring tool for transportation planning and policy evaluation.

Planning inspectors recommended against a Hitachi-built nuclear power plant in Anglesey on the basis that it could dilute the island's Welsh language and culture, it has emerged. Hitachi scrapped plans to build a 20bn nuclear power plant at Wylfa in 2020 over cost concerns after failing to reach a funding agreement with UK ministers. Keir Starmer's government has vowed to make it easier to build major infrastructure projects by reforming the planning system and stopping campaigners from launching "excessive" legal challenges. The prime minister unveiled plans for a historic expansion in nuclear power this week, vowing to "push past nimbyism" and make sites across the country available for new power stations. Nuclear industry figures believe that the fate of Hitachi's proposed plant at Wylfa demonstrates the problems with the UK's planning system.

Elon Musk, right, has cast doubt on whether there is enough funding available to follow through on a 500 billion AI infrastructure project announced by President Donald Trump on Tuesday. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left, pushed back on Musk's claims. EMPTY COFFERS?: Business magnate and X CEO Elon Musk has cast doubt on whether there is enough funding available to follow through on a massive 500 billion artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure project announced by President Donald Trump on Tuesday. SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during an America PAC town hall on Oct. 26, 2024 in Lancaster, Pa. ( Samuel Corum/Getty Images) ON THE BRINK: Walter Isaacson, author of "Elon Musk," discusses the Trump administration's collaboration with tech giants to drive AI innovation and technological advancement on "America's Newsroom." CONTROVERSIAL TECH: Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are now available for future medical professionals at one Texas university to navigate the complexities of pregnancy and abortion--a development that further blurs the line between technology, politics and healthcare.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son comment on President Trump's Stargate AI investment project on'Special Report.' The three tech CEOs who have joined forces in President Donald Trump's multi-billion dollar artificial intelligence infrastructure project defended the venture as an investment that "impacts all of humanity." "This is a very large investment that affects all of humanity," Oracle founder Larry Ellison told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier on "Special Report" on Tuesday. President Trump unveiled a massive AI infrastructure project from the private sector on the first full day of his second term in office on Tuesday. During a speech at the White House, Trump announced that Softbank, OpenAI and Oracle have joined forces for a project called Stargate to build data centers in the U.S. for powering AI.

Large language models (LLMs) have achieved impressive results across various tasks. However, they still struggle with long-context documents. This study evaluates the performance of three leading LLMs: GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Gemini 1.5 Pro on lengthy, complex, and opinion-varying documents concerning infrastructure projects, under both zero-shot and few-shot scenarios. Our results indicate that GPT-4o excels in zero-shot scenarios for simpler, shorter documents, while Claude 3.5 Sonnet surpasses GPT-4o in handling more complex, sentiment-fluctuating opinions. In few-shot scenarios, Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms overall, while GPT-4o shows greater stability as the number of demonstrations increases.

The current study presents a comprehensive review of the benefits and barriers associated with the adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in infrastructure projects, focusing on the period from 2013 to 2023. The research explores the manifold advantages offered by BIM, spanning the entire project life cycle, including planning, design, construction, maintenance, and sustainability. Notably, BIM enhances collaboration, facilitates real-time data-driven decision-making, and leads to substantial cost and time savings. In parallel, a systematic literature review was conducted to identify and categorize the barriers hindering BIM adoption within the infrastructure industry. Eleven studies were selected for in-depth analysis, revealing a total of 74 obstacles. Through synthetic analysis and thematic clustering, seven primary impediments to BIM adoption were identified, encompassing challenges related to education/training, resistance to change, business value clarity, perceived cost, lack of standards and guidelines, lack of mandates, and lack of initiatives. This review explores the benefits and barriers in the industry that are facing BIM adoption in infrastructure projects, giving an important perspective toward improving effective BIM adoption strategies, policies, and standards. Future directions for research and industry development are outlined, including efforts to enhance education and training, promote standardization, advocate for policy and mandates, and integrate BIM with emerging technologies.

Michael Gove's plans to lift the onshore wind ban are finally here, after what campaigners have termed a "Tory obsession" with blocking the form of renewable energy. Since 2015, it has been almost impossible to erect wind turbines in England because the planning system was changed so even one objection from a local resident could derail an entire project – an incredibly stringent interpretation of community consent. Just 20 turbines have been approved since 2014 as a result. It has taken years of campaigning – and squabbling – within the government and the backbenches to get to this point, which could make it slightly easier to build renewables. Though what the housing secretary has proposed is better than the previous situation, it still leaves onshore wind at a disadvantage compared with any other infrastructure project and campaigners say developers will still not invest in building windfarms if their proposals could be squashed by local councillors.

The company's proprietary AI algorithms have analysed nearly $1 trillion worth of global construction projects and deploys this learning to spot delays and recommend improvements with an accuracy and scale previously not possible. In doing so, nPlan's data-led insights effectively reduce the volatility of and increase investor confidence in construction projects. There continues to be a significant global appetite for major infrastructure projects, both in the immediate boost they provide to jobs and construction companies' revenues, and the ongoing economic impact they can have on regions and even whole countries. According to recent data from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, 'In the last quarter of 2020, before the latest lockdowns, construction industry workloads increased for the first time since 2019. Further to this, 2020 saw a seven month period of increased activity and expansion within the UK construction sector.

Sometimes listening to an update call is more than a revenue report update on the recent acquisitions and technology advancements being announced by a company; it's really about the vision of the leader at the helm. And that was my takeaway after the May 13, Bentley Systems Spring Update conference call for press and analysts. If you listened to Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems, closely enough you were able to read between the lines and grasp how it plans to move the construction industry forward with a highly informed construction professional using only the best in tech tools to drive infrastructure. According to Bentley, with all the right tools in hand from machine learning, reality modeling, drone data acquisition, the future is upon us now. And as a result, what role will the "digital integrator" become in making key buying decisions?

The Herald spoke to industry leaders Mahmood Hikmet, R&D Coordinator, Ohmio; Matthew Ensor, Business Director - Advisory, Beca Diane Edwards, General Manager People, Systems and Technology, Ports of Auckland; Ben Reid, Executive Director, AI Forum NZ and Coby Duggan, General Manager, Volvo New Zealand to understand the AI opportunities for New Zealand, and what it could mean for the future of our roads and infrastructure. It's already out there and has been for decades! There is so much artificial intelligence already around you and not just on the roads. Ensor: It is hard to prepare when there is so much uncertainty around what changes artificial intelligence will create. We need to wait before making bets on which emerging technologies will dominate.