Computer Engineering Commons^™

Using Multi-Objective Optimization To Support Urban Planning, Jonas Schwaab, Kalyanmoy Deb, Erik Goodman, Sven Lautenbach, Maarten Van Strien, Adrienne Grêt-Regamey

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Globally urban growth destroys fertile soils and endangers food security. Fertile soils are often located in the vicinity of existing urban areas. Thus, preserving high-quality soils often conflicts with the objective of compact city development. Urban planners have to account for both of these and many other objectives and react to political decisions which put a higher weight on some of them. In addition, urban planners have to deal with uncertain projections on population growth and the demand for housing. We used a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to show for a case study region in Switzerland how robust urban growth patterns …

The Stability And Ecophysiological Realism Of Calibrated Parameters In A Detailed Vegetation Model (Waves), R. W. Vervoort, J. D. Henry, M. Gharun, M. A. Adams

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

WAVES is a daily time-step one-dimensional vegetation, water and energy transfer model that has been used extensively across Australia (and globally) to simulate ecohydrological processes. In particular it has been used extensively for assessing future recharge under climate change. A literature review suggests parameter values from the user manual are most commonly used in research. This suggests that further investigation into the stability and equifinality of the parameters might be warranted, specifically since the model is used for scenario studies. This study made use of an extensive sapflow and soil moisture data set for 7 tree vegetation sites in the …

Using Scenario Analysis To Investigate Uncertainty In Water Resource Management, Baihua Fu, Joseph Guillaume, Mike Asher, Tony Jakeman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water resource management is a challenging task due to the complexity and uncertainty of the environmental systems and challenges of addressing multiple stakeholder perspectives. A crucial issue is therefore in specifically understanding if and how we can make decisions under such deep uncertainty.

We examined this issue in a case study which estimates groundwater sustainability, farm profit and ecological outcomes of many drivers (e.g. climate change, water policy, farm practices). An integrated model was developed for this purpose. It encompasses a surface and groundwater model, water allocation rules, a farm decision and crop model and an ecology model. Scenarios were …

A Conceptual Model To Guide Exploration Of Global Food-Water Security, Joseph H. A. Guillaume, Matti Kummu, Miina Porkka, Olli Varis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

While food security can be approached as a local issue, it is strongly influenced by factors at inter-regional and global scales related to production, transaction (e.g. trade and distribution) and consumption, and by drivers such as climate, population growth, diet change, as well as social, political and technological developments. Action on food security therefore benefits from being informed by current global patterns and potential future changes and taking an integrated approach to assessing impacts of proposed responses. Modelling can notably contribute by assessing the influence of various factors on food security. Due to the significant complexity and uncertainty involved, model …

Feedback Versus Uncertainty, Ronald R. P. Van Nooijen, Markus Hrachowitz, Alla G. Kolechkina

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Even without uncertainty about the model structure or parameters, the output of a hydrological model run still contains several sources of uncertainty. These are: measurement errors affecting the input, the transition from continuous time and space to discrete time and space, which causes loss of information about the input, discretization of the model equations resulting in errors due to the discretization scheme and the use of finite precision calculations in model evaluation. Interval analysis can provide upper bounds on the output error due to all of these sources. This paper focuses on tracking uncertainty about input values and the effects …

Sensitivity And Uncertainty Analysis Of A Plant-Wide Model For Carbon And Energy Footprint Of Wastewater Treatment Plants, Giorgio Mannina, Alida Cosenza, Riccardo Gori, Reza Sobhani, Manel Garrido, Diego Rosso

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents the sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of a mathematical model for Greenhouse gas (GHG) and energy consumption assessment from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The model is able to simultaneously describe the main biological and physical-chemical processes in WWTP. Specifically, the mathematical model includes the main processes of the water and sludge lines influencing the methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Further, the process energy demand and the energy recovery are also taken into account. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the key factors and sources …