Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Use Of Repurposed Whole Textiles To Modify The Mechanical And Hydrogeological Properties Of Green Roof Media And Granular Soils, Angelis Almanzar-Chevalie, Yehya Elfgeeh, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

This study investigates using repurposed whole textiles to modify the mechanical and hydrogeological properties of lightweight Green Roof media and granular pavement soils.

Green Roof Media Green roofs aim to bring the advantages of suburban agriculture to urban environments while improving energy efficiency and enhancing stormwater management in public, commercial, and residential buildings. Previous studies by City Tech undergraduate research assistants demonstrated significant modification in hydrogeological properties when incorporating textile fabric up to 3% textile by weight (%Tex) at an aspect ratio of 1:1. The effects of mixing repurposed whole textile fiber with Green Roof media is evaluated with regards …

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts Econcrete Resource Analysis, Guianina Ferrari, Shervon Stephens, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy impacted 443,000 people and caused nearly $19 billion (about $58 per person in the US) worth of damage within New York City. As part of the New York City infrastructure reparation plan, the Living Breakwaters project in Tottenville addressed coastal resilience, allocating $100M of public funds to a series of artificial breakwaters by the southwest coast of Staten Island. Each breakwater is constructed and designed to mitigate water flow in storm events. ECOncrete, a primary element of the breakwater, is a specialty cast cementitious product that is marine organism-friendly that encourages biocalcification and photosynthesis. …

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts: Conceptual Scheduling, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused nearly $19 billion in damages in New York City including 69,000 residential units across the five boroughs. This disaster precipitated a post-disaster-rebuilding (PDR) project including roughly $4.2 billion in a Community Development Block Grant allocated towards PDR projects. A portion of the grant was used to construct a living breakwater in Tottenville, Staten Island, consisting of a resiliency approach to risk reduction through erosion prevention, wave energy attenuation, and enhancement of ecosystems and social resiliency to improve resistance to storms for the community of Tottenville. The ridges of each breakwater are designed with …

Data Fusion And Synergy Of Active And Passive Remote Sensing; An Application For Freeze Thaw Detections, Zahra Sharifnezhadazizi

Dissertations and Theses

There has been a recent evolvement in the field of remote sensing after increase of number satellites and sensors data which could be fused to produce new data and products. These efforts are mainly focused on using of simultaneous observations from different platforms with different spatial and temporal resolutions. The research dissertation aims to enhance the synergy use of active and passive microwave observations and examine the results in detection land freeze and thaw (FT) predictions. Freeze thaw cycles particularly in high-latitude regions have a crucial role in many applications such as agriculture, biogeochemical transitions, hydrology and ecosystem studies. The …

Quo Vadis Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo: A Future Outlook For Two Of The Caribbean Basin's Largest Lakes, Mahrokh Moknatian, Michael Piasecki

Publications and Research

Lakes Azuei (LA) and Enriquillo (LE) on Hispaniola Island started expanding in 2005 and continued to do so until 2016. After inundating large swaths of arable land, submerging a small community, and threatening to swallow a significant trade route between the Dominican Republic and Haiti; worries persisted at how far this seemingly unstoppable expansion would go. The paper outlines the approach to a look forward to answer this question vis-à-vis climate change scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It uses numerical representations of the two lakes, and it examines how the lakes might evolve, deploying three …

Adapting To Extreme Heat: Social, Atmospheric, And Infrastructure Impacts Of Air Conditioning In Megacities - The Case Of New York City, Harold Gamarro

Dissertations and Theses

Extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and intense in most large cities. Built-up surfaces also limit cooling mechanisms, leading to warmer conditions in cities, a phenomenon called the Urban Heat Island (UHI). This presents major challenges to reduce adverse health effects of hot weather, particularly in vulnerable populations like the elderly and low-income communities. Here we explore the overall impacts of increasing air conditioning (AC) system adoption in residences as an adaptive measure to reduce human health risks under heat waves, with New York City (NYC) as a case study. This study uses AC adoption data from the 2017 …

The Water/Energy Nexus: Climate, Consumption And Ecosystem Services, Hildegaard D. Link

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Water and energy are drivers of living systems. This work provides an assessment of the Water Energy Nexus in the United States, comparing the well-watered north-east and the arid west. Electric grid systems are most stressed on hot summer afternoons. Grid stress can lead to cascading failures of electricity, water and wastewater treatment systems. (Zimmerman, 2017) Water for power generation and/or water supply depend on ecosystem services. The ecosystem services and resource trade-offs embedded in provision of a watt of power and an ounce of potable water, however, have yet to be comprehensively enumerated nor have the cost relationships been …

Development Of Digital Bathymetry Maps For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo Using Sonar And Remote Sensing Techniques, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

This article presents an improved algorithm for optimization and development of a digital bathymetric model (DBM) for Lake Azuei (LA) (Haiti) and Lake Enriquillo (LE) (Dominican Republic) using the ANUDEM method. Both sonar data and contour lines of the lakes’ layout extracted using Landsat imagery were compiled for bathymetry development. We show that the performance of the ANUDEM method was strongly dependent on the density and irregularity of the spatial distribution of the data. Changing the resolution of the output grids and deriving auxiliary topographically corrected contours improved the ANUDEM performance and minimized the systematic errors of the method. Statistical …

Observational Time Series For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo: Surface Area, Volume, And Elevation, Mahrokh Moknatian, Michael Piasecki

Publications and Research

In this report, we present historical time series of surface area, volume, and elevation for lakes Azuei (Haiti) and Enriquillo (Dominican Republic). The intention is to present a history of the lakes’ levels for both bodies of water as derived from Landsat imagery that is augmented by reports and narratives that reach further back in time. We also summarize lake level time series data collected and developed through various other efforts and compare these data sets to our time series. The time series contains 45 years’ worth of data ranging from 1972 to 2017 which we developed from Landsat imagery …

Hydroclimate Drivers And Atmospheric Dynamics Of Floods, Nasser Najibi

Dissertations and Theses

Our preliminary survey showed that most of the recent flood-related studies did not formally explain the physical mechanisms of long-duration and large-peak flood events that can evoke substantial damages to properties and infrastructure systems. These studies also fell short of fully assessing the interactions of coupled ocean-atmosphere and land dynamics which are capable of forcing substantial changes to the flood attributes by governing the exceeding surface flow regimes and moisture source-sink relationships at the spatiotemporal scales important for risk management. This dissertation advances the understanding of the variability in flood duration, peak, volume, and timing at the regional to the …

An Overview Of Smartwater Management System: Strategic Potential In Bangladesh, Muhammad Qumrul Hassan, Mir F. Karim, Nazrul I. Khandaker, Jowaher Raza

Publications and Research

Water loss management is becoming an increasingly important as supplies are stressed by population growth or water scarcity. A SmartWater system ensures optimum consumption and prediction of future water use. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries due to global climate change considering its rapid urbanization, inequitable land use, low income and greater reliance on climate sensitive sectors, particularly agriculture. Agricultural lands used for cropping and livestock rearing are more susceptible to degradation than non-agricultural lands. Most farmers irrigate through flooding, losing up to 75% of water to evaporation and creating a substantial drawdown of much needed water for …

Removal Of Organic Micro-Pollutants From Water Using Sewage Sludge Based Composite Adsorbents, Rui Ding

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Millions of tons of sewage sludge, waste oil sludge and fish waste are produced annually, and improper treatment/disposal of these wastes have resulted in numerous environmental issues. On the other hand, these wastes are rich in organic materials, metals, and inorganic minerals and could be sustainable resources if utilized properly. The main purpose of this dissertation study was, therefore, to convert these wastes into composite adsorbents, and then use these adsorbents to remove various types of organic pollutants, emerging organic contaminants in particular, from wastewater and drinking water sources.

It is hypothesized that a hydrophobic carbon phase in the composite …

Bathymetric Survey For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo, Hispaniola, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Joseph Cleto, Yolanda Leon, Jorge Gonzalez, Daniel Comarazamy

Publications and Research

The two largest lakes on the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola, Lake Azuei in Haiti and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic, have experienced dramatic growth and surface area expansion over the past few years leading to severe flooding and loss of arable land around the lake perimeters. In order to better understand the reasons for this unprecedented rate of expansion and the resulting consequences a multi-disciplinary team comprised of researchers from Haiti, the DR, and the US have embarked on an extensive data collecting and hydrologic and climatological modeling campaign. While the sensor deployment entails stations that measure climatological data …

A Review Of Advances In The Identification And Characterization Of Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems Using Geospatial Technologies, Isabel C. Pérez Hoyos, Nir Y. Krakauer, Reza Khanbilvardi, Roy A. Armstrong

Publications and Research

Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem (GDE) protection is increasingly being recognized as essential for the sustainable management and allocation of water resources. GDE services are crucial for human well-being and for a variety of flora and fauna. However, the conservation of GDEs is only possible if knowledge about their location and extent is available. Several studies have focused on the identification of GDEs at specific locations using ground-based measurements. However, recent progress in remote sensing technologies and their integration with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has provided alternative ways to map GDEs at a much larger spatial extent. This paper presents a review …

Water Conservation To Reduce Wet Weather Pollution Loads To The Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, Ny, Suzanne Carol Stempel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public participation plays an important role in wet weather pollution management. However, the effects of participation programs on local water quality are often difficult to quantify. This project aims to quantify the potential effects of a community based, non-structural, BMP aimed at controlling inputs to combined sewage systems by encouraging residents to reduce their water use during rain events. A household could participate by reducing the amount of water they use for flushing toilets, washing dishes, taking showers, etc. during rain events; thereby reducing stress on the system during the time of highest demand. The Gowanus Canal sewershed in Brooklyn, …

Tunnel Geology As Seen By Geologists: Manhattan, New York City, Nazrul I. Khandaker, Stanley Schleifer, Masud Ahmed, Alan R. Slaughter, Belal A. Sayeed, Dorean J. Flores, Mario Jo-Ramirez

Publications and Research

Current exploratory boring operations in and around Manhattan, New York City are providing geologists and geotechnical engineers with a plethora of new and interesting geological information, which has not been previously reported. The rocks encountered, mostly medium to high-grade metamorphic rocks, with both mafic and felsic intrusives, are highly variable in competency and mechanical durability. One of the most frequently encountered rock types is a garnetiferous-muscovite-biotite schist which grades into schistose gneiss and displays a wide variety of structural, compositional, and textural attributes. Metamorphic minerals showing the variable degree of metamorphism include graphite, talc, garnet, kyanite, tourmaline, emory, and occasionally …