Waste disposal is one of the issues that plague the society. Philippines is an agricultural country due to its strategic location in the tropics. Because of this nature, the agriculture sector tends to produce a huge amount of waste that if not disposed properly could pose a threat to the society and to the environment. With the advancement of technology, it has been a challenge for researchers to improve the quality of construction materials that is used in the industry. Studies have been performed on the possibilities of incorporating agricultural wastes to various construction materials as a form of waste diversion. In order to address the problem with agricultural wastes as well as to improve the property of construction materials, a study on coconut waste and eggshell waste was conducted as a constituent in concrete brick production. In this study, the density, compressive strength as well as the water absorption of concrete bricks with coconut charcoal powder (CCP) and eggshell powder (ESP) as replacement for fine aggregates and cement was conducted. Different mix ratios (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 10% CCP with a constant value of 5% ESP in each mix ratio) were carried out and the results were compared to a control sample. From the results of the density test, the concrete bricks with 5% CCP and 5% ESP was the lightest at a density of 1678.184 kg/m3, it also showed the least water absorption at 8.58% and exhibited the highest compressive strength at 17.5 MPa.

In society today, improper waste disposal brings about numerous problems. One of the most common residual wastes found in the municipal solid waste is human hair. This waste, which is evidently continuing to accumulate in disposal streams poses a threat if not disposed properly. Several studies have been done in the search for possibilities of incorporating hair to construction materials. In this study, the compressive strength of Hair Fiber Reinforced Concrete (HFRC) was studied aiming to find the combination that would yield the optimum compressive strength. A parametric study on the effect of amount of hair (1%, 2% and 3%) as well as length of hair strand (0.5-inch, 1 inch and 1.5 inch) on the compressive strength of HFRC was done. The results of the parametric study were used to find the optimum compressive strength. Utilizing the Central Composite Design (CCD) of Response Surface Methodology (RSM), a mathematical model was produced relating the parameters and the combination of parameters that would yield the maximum compressive strength. Based on the results, the mathematical model obtained a Coefficient of Regression of 0.9807 showing that the probability plot of the residuals fits the regression line. As generated by the mathematical model, a combination of 3.2% amount of hair by volume of concrete and a hair strand length of 0.752 inch will yield an optimum compressive strength of 38.15 MPa.

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The Philippines is an agricultural country due to its location in the tropics. Because of this nature, the agriculture sector tends to produce a huge amount of waste that if not disposed properly could pose a threat to the society and to the environment. Studies have been performed on the possibilities of incorporating agricultural wastes to various construction materials as a form of waste diversion. In order to address the problem with agricultural wastes as well as to improve the property of construction materials, a study on alkali-treated banana fiber as web reinforcement in concrete was done. In this study, a characterization of alkali-treated banana fiber was done in order to assess the characteristics of a possible reinforcement for concrete by tensile strength test on the fiber. The applicability of the treated fiber was then examined as a web reinforcement in concrete in terms of its load capacity. The parametric study was conducted to investigate the effect on the compressive strength of varying bundle diameter (4 mm, 8 mm, 12 mm, 16 mm) while holding the spacing of mesh at 20 mm and also the effect of varying mesh spacing (10 mm, 15 mm, 20 mm and 25 mm) while holding the diameter at 16 mm. Test results show that the 4 mm diameter of treated banana fiber yielded the highest tensile strength at 314 N compared to only 197 N of the untreated banana fiber. The parametric study results the diameter of banana fiber indicate that the increase in diameter also results in the increase in load capacity. With respect to spacing, the smaller the value of spacing results in higher load capacity.

Urbanization has spread throughout the globe. Accompanied by rapid population growth, urbanization has resulted in the change of land use/land cover manifested by conversion of forests to impervious areas and subsequent alteration of the hydrology in the area. This study sheds light on the impacts of such land cover changes to peak discharges in the Davao River Basin as a result of the watershed alterations. Land cover from 2010 and 2018 were used to represent two (2) levels of urbanization (increasing with year). These were generated from spatial analysis of MODIS imagery data in ArcGIS. This was used in the hydrologic simulation in HEC-HMS to gather the peak discharges for the two events. An increase in peak discharge is observed along with an increase in urbanization. Furthermore, the additional 1.12% of land converted to an impervious area of the basin lead to an increase in peak discharge of 105.85% in the simulations. Moreover, the conversion of areas to impermeable surfaces led to a 52.23% decrease in the infiltration capacity of the sub basins.