Engineering Commons^™

Developing A Vision-Based Framework For Measuring And Monitoring Water Resource Systems Using Computer Vision And Deep Learning Techniques, Seyed Mohammad Hassan Erfani

Theses and Dissertations

Increased vulnerability of water systems to extreme events and climate change is among the profound challenges facing the management of water resource systems around the world. Extreme events, including droughts, floods, and natural hazards have become more frequent and intensive, particularly in coastal regions. Floods, for instance, caused tens of billions of US dollars losses and put the lives of thousands in danger, globally. To cope with the adverse consequences of floods, a wide range of structural, non-structural, and emergency measures are studied and deployed by flood management sectors. Various flood simulation, mapping, and forecast systems have been developed to …

Water Resources Planning Under Deep Uncertainty For Physically, Socially, And Politically Complex Systems, Sarah St. George Freeman

Doctoral Dissertations

Water supply systems, particularly those of large cities, are complex systems linking supply, regulatory and distribution infrastructure, and points of use. Despite their physical complexities, it is infrequent that full supply, distribution, end use, and feedbacks therein are considered in an integrated manner. These complex systems-of-systems face large uncertainties related to physical aspects such as degradation of infrastructure, changing demand, and climate variability and change. Though great, such physical uncertainties often pale in comparison to the those related to the human systems in place to manage them and yet uncertainty in the decision-making landscape is often grossly simplified in our …

Hydropower System Design In Nazarét, Panama, Claudia M. Bible, Matthew J. Tolson, Andrew Houser, Aj Condra, Nathan Smith

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Assessing Machine Learning Utility In Predicting Hydrologic And Nitrate Dynamics In Karst Agroecosystems, Timothy Mcgill

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Seasonal hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico and harmful algal blooms experienced in many inland freshwater bodies is partially driven due to excessive nitrogen loading seen from agricultural watersheds. Within the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin, many areas are underlain with karst features, and efforts to reduce nitrogen contributions from these areas have had varying success, due to lacking a complete understanding of nutrient dynamics in karst agricultural systems. To improve the understanding of nitrogen cycling in these systems, 35 months of high resolution in situ water quality and atmospheric data were collected and fed into a two-hidden layer extreme learning machine …

Development And Application Of A Decision Framework To Support Improved River Basin Water Management, Leah Meeks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Water management decisions made at local levels may have effects throughout an entire river basin. Water managers need better ways to help identify which decisions have broader implications and to quantify those effects to inform decision making. This dissertation presents a framework providing a basin-wide approach to water management using three studies. The first study developed a software tool to quantify how local changes within a water resources network affect the entire network. A case study was conducted on the Lower Bear River in Utah. The second study quantified the basin-wide effects of reducing return flows from irrigation areas to …

Nitrate And Phosphate Removal From Denitrification Bioreactors Using Woodchips, Steel Chips And Agricultural Residue Media, Abdoul Aziz Kouanda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nitrate and phosphate present in agricultural subsurface drainage water can impact surface water quality thus impacting the environment and human health by causing eutrophication and Methemoglobinemia in young infant. Biological denitrification and phosphate adsorption filters are treatments options that can help reduce nitrate and phosphate concentration from agricultural subsurface drainage before it can be discharged in surface water. The first objective of this dissertation was to determine the Michaelis-Menten kinetics model parameters for nitrate removal in bioreactors using the fresh, aged, and composted woodchips. The composted woodchips achieved a denitrification rate 2.4 times higher than the fresh woodchips which was …

Advancing Water Resources Systems Modeling Cyberinfrastructure To Enable Systematic Data Analysis, Modeling, And Comparisons, Adel Mohammad Kheir Abdallah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Water resources systems models aid in managing water resources holistically considering water, economic, energy, and environmental needs, among others. Developing such models require data that represent a water system’s physical and operational characteristics such as inflows, demands, reservoir storage, and release rules. However, such data is stored and described in different formats, metadata, and terminology. Therefore, Existing tools to store, query, and visualize modeling data are model, location, and dataset-specific, and developing such tools is time-consuming and requires programming experience. This dissertation presents an architecture and three software tools to enable researchers to more readily and consistently prepare and reuse …

The Collison Floating Evaporation Pan: Design, Validation, And Comparison, Jacob William Collison

Civil Engineering ETDs

Accurate tracking of open-water evaporative losses, one of the largest consumptive uses of water in the Southwestern USA, is increasingly important with anticipated climate shifts toward longer and more severe droughts. A new open-water evaporation technique, the Collison Floating Evaporation Pan, (CFEP), was tested on Cochiti Lake, New Mexico, USA for one year with objectives being: identify the limitations and potential solutions to evaporation techniques; deploy, test the reliability, and validity of the CFEP and evaluate uncertainties in standard evaporation techniques; and improvements over prior evaporation techniques. The CFEP provided reliable evaporation measurements during sustained winds greater than 20 m/s. …

Evaluation Of Gauge-Radar Merging Methods For Quantitative Precipitation Estimation In Hydrology: A Case Study In The Upper Thames River Basin, Jack L. Mckee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Hydrological models rely on accurate precipitation data in order to produce results with a high degree of confidence and serve as valuable flood forecasting and warning tools. Gauge-radar merging methods combine rainfall estimates from rain gauges and weather radar in order to capitalize on the strengths of the individual instruments and produce precipitation data with greater accuracy for input to hydrological models. A comprehensive review of gauge-radar merging methods reveals that there is an opportunity for near-real time application in hydrological models. The performance of four well known gauge-radar merging methods, including mean field bias correction, Brandes spatial adjustment, local …

Tethys Platform: A Development And Hosting Platform For Water Resources Web Apps, Nathan R. Swain

Theses and Dissertations

The interactive nature of web applications or “web apps” makes it an excellent medium for conveying complex scientific concepts to lay audiences and creating decision support tools that harness cutting edge modeling techniques. However, the technical expertise required to develop them represents a barrier for would-be developers. The barrier can be characterized by the following hurdles that developers must overcome: (1) identify, select, and install software that meet the spatial and computational capabilities commonly required for water resources modeling; (2) orchestrate the use of multiple FOSS and FOSS4G projects and navigate their differing application programming interfaces (APIs); (3) learn the …

Impacts Of Climate Change On Water Resources And Corresponding Adaptation Strategies Of The Nam Ngum River Basin, Laos, Dumindu Lasitha Jayasekera

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Nam Ngum River Basin (NNRB) in Laos has received attention of foreign investors due to high hydropower development potential and low per capita electricity consumption. The NNRB is rapidly developing due to its hydropower generation potentials while water demands will increase for agricultural and domestic purposes due to population increase and land-use changes. Water availability conditions will be affected with the increasing water demand and climate change may worsen the water availability conditions. Climate is often defined as the weather averaged over time whereas weather describes atmospheric conditions at a particular place and time in terms of air temperature, …

A Hazard-Based Risk Analysis Approach To Understanding Climate Change Impacts To Water Resource Systems: Application To The Upper Great Lakes, Paul Markert Moody

Open Access Dissertations

Water resources systems are designed to operate under a wide range of potential climate conditions. Traditionally, systems have been designed using stationarity-based methods. Stationarity is the assumption that the climate varies within an envelope of variability, implying that future variability will be similar to past variability. Due to anthropogenic climate change, the credibility of the stationarity-based assumptions has been reduced. In response, climate change assessments have been developed to quantify the potential impacts due to climatic change. While these methods quantify potential changes, they lack the probabilistic information that is needed for a risk-based approach to decision-analysis. This dissertation seeks …

A Roof Runoff Strategy And Model For Augmenting Public Water Supply, Robert Carnahan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water is the essential resource that is becoming extremely scarce worldwide. The 21st century will further stress all available water resources through the growth and expansion of developing nations. It is not only the quantity of cheap water that is being depleted, but the quality of these waters is being endangered. Florida is an example where rapid development and an exploding population are competing for shrinking groundwater resources. Current water use does not address the use of alternative supplies and reuses in the United States.

The objective of this research was to determine a strategy for augmenting existing water supplies …

Water Resources, Health, And The Sustainability Of Interventions To Achieve Water And Sanitation Targets Of The Millennium Development Goals In A Changing World, Lauren M. Fry

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

This dissertation addresses sustainability of rapid provision of safe water and sanitation required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Review of health-related literature and global statistics demonstrates engineers' role in achieving the MDGs. This review is followed by analyses relating to social, environmental, and health aspects of meeting MDG targets.

Analysis of national indicators showed that inadequate investment, poor or nonexistent policies and governance are challenges to global sanitation coverage in addition to lack of financial resources and gender disparity. Although water availability was not found to be a challenge globally, geospatial analysis demonstrated that water availability is a potentially …

Stochastic Spatio-Temporal Uncertainty In Gis-Based Water Quality Modeling Of The Land Water Interface, Ahmad Mohamad Salah

Theses and Dissertations

Integrated water resources management has been used for decades in various formats. The limited resources and the ever growing population keep imposing pressure on decision makers to better-, and reliably, manage the available waters. On the other hand, the continuous development in computing and modeling power has helped modelers and decision makers considerably. To use these models, assumptions have to be made to fill in the gaps of missing data and to approximate the current conditions. The type and amount of information available can also be used to help select the best model from the currently available models. Advances in …

A Survey Of Missouri's Water Resources Involvement, Frank R. Ellis Ii

Masters Theses

"A survey of the procedures for development of water resources in the State of Missouri reveals shortcomings in many areas. Recommended improvements include: 1) revising and publishing a statewide water plan, 2) improving methods of project evaluation and priority establishment, 3) expanding methods of citizen involvement, and 4) reorganization of state agencies and legal authority. The paper examines the history of water resource involvement by the State of Missouri, and current jurisdiction of state agencies, including procedures for review of environmental impact statements"--Abstract, page iv.

Hydrologic Inventory Of The Great Salt Lake Desert Area, Gary L. Foote

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Utah, located in the arid southwest, is a state that experience s chronic water shortages. The pattern of valleys and high mountain ranges that exists in the state produces sharply contrasting differences in climatic conditions . Desert valleys in the western portion may receive as few a s 4 inches of precipitation in a year while headwater areas in the Wasatch Mountains receive 60 inches or more. Wide cyclic as well a s geographical variations of precipitation added to uneven seasonal distribution makes development and efficient utilization of water resource s vital though difficult.

In order to make the most …