Engineering Commons^™

Adaptive Policy Design In Water Resources Systems Under Uncertain Climate And Human Stressors, Jon Herman

All ECSTATIC Materials

Long-term planning of water resources systems must contend with severe uncertainty in future projections of hydroclimatic variability across multiple scales, as well as uncertainty in human behavior, such as land use and reservoir operation. This talk will review recent developments in adaptive policy design to meet this challenge, centered around the key question: how should we learn from, and react to, dynamic observations of hydroclimatic, human, and ecological variables to ensure long-term sustainability? Specific contributions will cover three areas: (1) adaptation of short-term control rules, enabling existing infrastructure to manage multiple objectives across a range of possible futures; (2) exploration …

Wildfires Force Thousands To Evacuate Near Los Angeles: Here’S How The 2020 Western Fire Season Got So Extreme, Mojtaba Sadegh, Ata Akbari Asanjan, Mohammad Reza Alizadeh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Two wildfires erupted on the outskirts of cities near Los Angeles, forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes Monday as powerful Santa Ana winds swept the flames through dry grasses and brush. With strong winds and extremely low humidity, large parts of California were under red flag warnings.

High fire risk days have been common this year as the 2020 wildfire season shatters records across the West.

More than 4 million acres have burned in California – 4% of the state’s land area and more than double the previous annual record. Five of the state’s six largest historical …

The Year The West Was Burning: How The 2020 Wildfire Season Got So Extreme, Mojtaba Sadegh, Ata Akbari Asanjan, Mohammad Reza Alizadeh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

More than 4 million acres of California went up in flames in 2020 – about 4% of the state’s land area and more than double its previous wildfire record. Five of the state’s six largest fires on record were burning this year.

In Colorado, the Pine Gulch fire broke the record for that state’s largest wildfire, only to be surpassed by two larger blazes, the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires.

Oregon saw one of the most destructive fire seasons in its recorded history, with more than 4,000 homes destroyed.

What caused the 2020 fire season to become so extreme?

Large-Scale Modeling And Assessments Of Climate, Land Cover, And Sea Level Change Impacts On Stormwater Runoff In Coastal Urban-Natural Environments, Erfanul Huq

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation investigated the potential impacts of changing climate, land cover, and sea level on the future stormwater budget and extreme runoff in coastal urban-natural environments. Two large-scale basins, namely Florida Southeast Coasts Basin (7117 km2) and Saint Johns River Basin (24928 km2), were selected for this study. The basins represented gradients in climate, land cover, and hydrology across the Atlantic coasts of Florida and the southeast U.S. Two mechanistic hydrologic models were developed for the basins using U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA)’s Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) 5.1. The models were calibrated and validated with observed historical streamflow …