Environmental Engineering Commons^™

New Approach To Interactive Use Of Energy System Models For Policy Support, Evelina Trutnevyte, Phillip Bernsten

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A typical approach of producing a handful of energy scenarios with energy system models is limited because these scenarios cover only patches of the vast uncertainties and complexities inherent in the energy transition. Such a handful of scenarios is inflexible to serve the needs of the variety of policy makers and stakeholders in a rapidly changing policy arena. Interactive use of energy system models has proved effective for enabling users to browse through many scenarios for insight. Existing interactive tools, such as UK DECC2050 Calculator or Swiss Energyscope, ask users to choose one or several preferred energy scenarios. However, focus …

Assimilation Of Sar And Optical Data Into An Agro-Meteorological Model For Monitoring Yield Of Corn, Maël Ameline, Rémy Fieuzal, Julie Betbeber, Jean-Franҫois Berthoumieu, Frédéric Baup

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This study aims to assess the contribution of SAR and optical satellite images to estimate corn biophysical parameters and crop yield at field scale. Satellite data are assimilated into a simple agro-meteorological model named SAFY-WB (Simple Algorithm For Yield estimates combined with a Water Balance model), in order to simulate leaf area index, dry mass and yield. The method has been assessed thanks to data collected over two study areas (both located in the South-West of France), during two experimental campaigns: MCM’10 and MCM’15 (Multispectral Crop Monitoring), respectively performed in 2010 and 2015. SAR backscattering coefficients were acquired in the …

Using Sddp To Perform Basin-Wide Water Resources Assessments With Limited Data Availability, Charles Rougé, Amaury Tilmant

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In many situations, water resources assessments are hindered by the limited availability of data concerning both water supplies and demands. Stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) is one of few solutions available to determine optimal allocation policies in large-scale water resources systems. Yet, limited data on water demands and hydraulic infrastructure leads to the existence of multiple near-optimal solutions (MNOS). This work shows that when MNOS exists, SDDP is very sensitive to even minimal variations of the problem setting, e.g. initial conditions – we call this “algorithmic chaos”. Besides, the approximations of the benefit-to-go function that SDDP constructs at each stage …

The Global Geo Health Data Centre (Gghdc): A Web Service For Human Environmental Exposures, D. Karssenberg, I. Soenario, O. Schmitz, K. De Jong, H. De Raaff, I. Vaartjes, G. Hoek, M. Strak, B. Brunekreef, P. Hessels, F. J. De Groot, D. E. Grobbee, M. J. Dijst

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

To study environmental health effects, information is required on human environmental exposures, which encompass a wide range of attributes, for instance air pollution, water quality, or fast food restaurant density. Often it is preferable to assess exposure of each individual in a cohort or population, which requires assessment of exposures for large numbers of people. As direct measurement of personal exposure for entire populations is not feasible, exposure needs to be estimated by mapping environmental attributes, integrating observations and statistical or processbased modelling. This spatially and temporally continuous information is then aggregated over the space-time path of each individual resulting …

Advances In Probabilistic And Parallel Agent-Based Simulation: Modelling Climate Change Adaptation In Agriculture, Christian Troost, Thomas Berger

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

MPMAS is a software package for farm-level and agent-based simulation in agriculture that has been applied to a variety of agro-economic and bioeconomic case studies around the world in the last twenty years. We present recent advances to the software and its application that focus on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, massive parallel computing, land market interactions and farm succession. These extensions improve the applicability of agent-based simulation for ex ante assessments of climate adaptation in agriculture.

Challenges With Maintaining Legacy Software To Achieve Reproducible Computational Analyses: An Example For Hydrologic Modeling Data Processing Pipelines, Bakinam T. Essawy, Jonathan L. Goodall, Tanu Malik, Hao Xu, Michael Conway, Yolanda Gil

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In hydrology, like many other scientific disciplines with large computational demands, scientists have created a significant and growing collection of software tools for data manipulation, analysis, and simulation. While core computation model software are likely to be well maintained by the groups that develop these codes, other software such as data pre- and post-processing tools, used less often but still critical to scientists, may receive less attention. These codes will become “legacy” software, simply meaning that the software is out of date by modern standards. A challenge facing the scientific community is how to maintain this legacy software so that …

Uncertainty And Resilience Assessment Of Critical Infrastructures: Application Of Mcda To Fiumicino Airport, Carlo Giupponi, Juliana Bernhofer, Vahid Mojtahed

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The flooding of La Guardia airport after Hurricane Sandy and other airports around the world due to extreme events and the associated high social and economic costs of disruption in such services have shifted the attention of decision-makers to assessing the resiliency of the critical infrastructure and considering the resiliency of the future development plans. However, future climate and socio-economic changes as the main drivers of uncertainty has made the risk and resilience assessment a challenging task for analysts and decision makers. The level of uncertainty of these drivers is known to be deep, since we haven’t yet undergone those …

Health Impact Of Air Pollution On Italy: Main Findings Of Viias And Med Hiss Projects, Antonio Piersanti, Carla Ancona, Giovanna Berti, Ennio Cadum, Luisella Ciancarella, Ilaria D’Elia, Francesco Forastiere, Gaia Righini

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The effects of air pollution on human health in Italy have been recently estimated in two different projects with complete national coverage, VIIAS and EU LIFE+ MED HISS. The projects share the methodological approach of the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and the combined use of dispersion models and monitoring networks data, but differ on the exposure assessment and the overall objectives. VIIAS, using sub-municipal census data of population projected on the dispersion model grid, has estimated health outcomes on baseline years (2005 and 2010) and on three scenarios for 2020, in order to evaluate trends and effects of alternative policies. …

Methane Extraction From Lake Kivu: A Case Study For Model-Based Policy, Martin Schmid, Alfred Wüest

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Lake Kivu in East Africa contains enormous amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide and methane. The dissolved methane is increasingly used as a resource to produce electricity, with two power plants currently in operation and several additional facilities in planning. The design of such gas extraction facilities needs to take into account possible negative impacts: if badly designed, the extraction could disturb the lake’s permanent density stratification and thus risk to create a catastrophic gas eruption; and it could increase nutrient fluxes from the deep water to the surface layers, leading to eutrophication and related negative consequences for the ecosystem, fisheries …

Agent-Based Modelling: What Matters Is Action, Franҫois Guerrin, Zoubida Afoutni, Rémy Courdier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Computer-aided management tools or models of production systems in the manufacturing or agricultural domains generally rely implicitly on the theory of planned action. Every action is assumed to be part of an anticipated sequence leading from a current state to a predetermined goal. The main limits of this classical view are due to the difficulty to deal with unexpected changes and disturbances. To overcome these limits, we developed an agent model based on the theory of situated action. Whereas the classical approach puts the emphasis on actor’s decision (action being assumed to straightforwardly follow), situated action is viewed as a …

Mathematical Modelling Of Sustainable Fisheries Management In Morocco, H. Essekhyr, K. Elkalay, K. Khalil

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Moroccan Atlantic coast is considered as one of the richest fishing areas in the world that support a rich assortment of aquatic biological diversity. In the past decade, the fisheries sector has achieved considerable growth. However, the sector suffers from many serious problems that need to be resolved to ensure their sustainable development. Such problems include over-fishing in the coastal, degradation of the marine environment and coastal resources. In this study, a mass-balance Ecopath Model of the Moroccan Atlantic coast is constructed, for improving fisheries management and attaining sustainable development of coastal fisheries in this ecosystem. The results indicate that …

Pasture Degradation As A Consequence Of Non-Compliance With Social Norms: Exploring Behavioral Strategies With An Agent-Based Simulation Model, Gunner Dressler, Karin Frank, Jürgen Groeneveld, Birgit Müller

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Pasture resting as a key strategy for sustainable grazing management has been in place for centuries in the form of social norms in rangeland systems. Most of these areas are drylands, characterized by low and variable rainfall and scarce resources that require well-adapted resource use strategies to avoid pasture degradation. However, in many areas such traditional norms are at stake as new management strategies are introduced by government authorities, new herders belonging to different ethnic groups enter the system, or former communal grazing land is converted into private property or agricultural land. As a result, compliance with traditional norms declines, …

The Sherpa Methodology And Implementation To Explore Potential Air Quality Improvements At The Regional/Local Scales, Enrico Pisoni, Philippe Thunis, Bart Degraeuwe, Alain Clappier, Giuseppe Maffeis, Roberta Gianfreda, Fabrizio Ferrari

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This work presents the SHERPA tool (Screening for High Emission Reduction Potentials on Air quality), a simplified air quality model that has been recently developed at the European Commission Joint Research Centre, to simulate the effect of local emission reduction policies on air pollution.

The SHERPA methodology is based on the concept of source-receptor models, that is to say on the use of simplified models able to mimic the link between emissions and concentrations as simulated by a complex deterministic Chemical Transport Model. As “family” of source-receptor models in SHERPA we used “linear regressions”, designed to simulate yearly PM25, PM10 …

The Case For Standardizing Procedural Knowledge Models For Cross-Discipline Data And System Integration, Aaron R. Byrd, David G. Tarboton

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Scientifically consistent and coherent systems for model and data discovery and integration rely on a shared body of concepts that describe the data and systems. The standardization of these disciplines is critical to the effectiveness of their ability to integrate data and systems across disciplines. There is, however, a significant shortcoming with most current approaches to creating these bodies of concepts. This is that the are designed to target only one type of knowledge--propositional knowledge--and neglect the other key type of knowledge--procedural knowledge.

Procedural knowledge is at the heart of the actual process of integrating data and systems across disciplines. …

Autoflow© - A Novel Application For Water Resource Management And Climate Change Response Using Smart Technology, Khoi Anh Nguyen, Oz Sahin, Rodney Anthony Stewart, Hong Zhang

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Urban areas are increasingly at risk from climate change, with negative impacts predicted for human health, the economy and ecosystems. These risks require responses from cities to improve their resilience. Several analysis platforms have been developed worldwide to help effectively control and response to these impacts from different angles, including water resources management, energy production and consumption management, air pollution control, or other natural resources management. To contribute to this goal, Griffith University in Australia has developed Autoflow^©, a smart application for water demand analysis and carbon emission monitoring and prediction. Various advanced mathematical models have been …

A Scalable Approach To Modelling Health Impacts Of Air Pollution Based On Globally Available Data, Gregor Kiesewetter, Wolfgang Schöpp, Markus Amann

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Integrated assessment of air pollution and its impacts typically requires pre-calculated atmospheric transfer relations on a fine spatial resolution. While such concepts have been applied successfully for Europe and other regions with high data coverage, extending calculations to world regions with low local data availability is challenging and needs to be based on globally available data sets. Here we introduce a scalable approach which has been developed to expand the calculations of health impacts from exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) in the Greenhouse Gas-Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) integrated assessment model to (almost) any desired …

An Agent-Based Model Of Jordan Highland Farmer Decision Making, Phil Selby, Josue Medellin-Azuara, Christian Klassert, Jim Yoon, Julien Harou

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We build a hydro-economic behavioural model of groundwater irrigated agriculture to help understand and analyse the impact of institutional and biophysical changes on land and water use in the Jordan Highlands. The model sits within a Multi-Agent-Simulation (MAS) framework representing the physical and institutional components of the wider national water resources system, which are being modelled by an interdisciplinary team, including a tanker water market and a groundwater model which interact with the farmer model. The MAS is designed to evaluate climate change scenarios and policy interventions to test whether reform of institutional rules that govern water usage in Jordan …

Sobol’ Sensitivity Analysis For Stressor Impacts On Honeybee Colonies, Carmen Kuan, Robert Curry, Gloria Degrandi-Hoffman, Kris Garber, Andrew Kanarek, Marcia Snyder, Tom Purucker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We employ Monte Carlo simulation and nonlinear sensitivity analysis techniques to describe the dynamics of a bee exposure model, VarroaPop. Daily simulations are performed of hive population trajectories, taking into account queen strength, foraging success, mite impacts, weather, colony resources, population structure, and other important variables. This allows us to test the effects of defined pesticide exposure scenarios versus controlled simulations that lack pesticide exposure. The daily resolution of the model also allows us to conditionally identify sensitivity metrics. We use the variancebased global decomposition sensitivity analysis method, Sobol’, to assess firstand secondorder parameter sensitivities within VarroaPop, allowing us to …

Evaluating Model Structure Uncertainty By A New Approach To Sensitivity Analysis Utilizing Hydrological Signatures, Jiri Nossent, Mahyar Shafii, Willy Bauwens

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Model structure uncertainty is one of the most significant sources of uncertainty in traditional hydrological modelling and, above all, challenging to quantify. Structurally flexible models have recently become very popular in hydrology as they tend to allow a reduction of this uncertainty due to their flexibility in the mathematical representation of the hydrological response of a catchment. Reducing structural uncertainty within the flexible framework requires identifying (using top-down or bottom-up approaches) the most suitable (hydrologically consistent) model structure for a given watershed. To assess the models’ hydrological consistency, diagnostic model evaluation techniques are employed to test their capability of reproducing …

Assessing The Economic Value Of A Regional Air Quality Plan, Elisabetta Angelino, Claudio Carnevale, Roberta Gianfreda, Giorgio Guariso, Guido Lanzani, Guiseppe Maffeis, Enrico Turrini, Marialuisa Volta

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

When developing an air quality plan, environmental authorities usually devise a number of individual actions, constituted by the application of both technical (end-of-pipe) and energy efficiency measures. They may range from the incentives to buy less polluting vehicles, to the enforcement of stricter rules on domestic heating. The assessment of the economic effectiveness for the society as a whole of the individual measures and of the overall plan requires a flexible support system able to quickly perform air quality impact evaluations on the specific area. One such system is RIAT+, a software package developed and tested during a series of …