Hydraulic Engineering Commons^™

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 …

Webxtreme: A Simple Web Tool For Calculating Agroclimatic Indicators Of Extreme Events, Tommy Klein, Argyris Samourkasidis, Ioannis N. Athanasiadis, Gianni Bellocchi, Pierluigi Calanca

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Extreme events such as frost, drought or excessive heat occurring during a critical plant stage can cause extensive and sometimes irreversible damages to agricultural production. Tools for gauging the occurrence of extreme events can thus play an important role in the context of agricultural decision problems. Agroclimatic indicators offer simple means to discriminate between favourable and unfavourable conditions. Their evaluation can be supported by dedicated software tools, even though this typically requires local installation of the proposed solution. Here we present webXTREME, a new web-based tool to characterize the occurrence and intensity of extreme events in agriculture (available through www.modextreme.org/webxtreme, …

Institutional Analysis For Flood Risk Reduction: A Coupled Agent-Based – Flood Model Method, Yared Abayneh Abebe, Amineh Ghorbani, Zoran Vojinovic, Igor Nikolic, Arlex Sanchez

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Flood risk results from flood hazard interacting with vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems. Though many associate flooding as just a natural phenomenon, it is also attributed to the economic, social, political, institutional and governance factors of affected areas. Institutions such as rules, laws, policies and norms that shape and constrain human interaction drive the hazard, vulnerability and exposure components of flood risk. In this study, we conduct an institutional analysis of rules, norms and strategies for flood risk reduction. Based on the institutional analysis, we build an agent-based model that is coupled with a hydrodynamic flood model. …

Towards Multifunctionality Of Landscapes – A Multi- Objective Land Use Optimization Framework For Exploring Interaction Between Ecosystem Services And Biodiversity, Michael Strauch, Anna Cord, Andrea Kaim, Carola Pätzold, Christian Schweitzer, Ralf Seppelt, Martin Volk

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The sustainable appropriation of resources and the design of multifunctional landscapes requires the finding of solutions that minimize trade-offs between contrasting goals of land use, ecosystem services and biodiversity. Substantial progress has been made in the model-based quantification of land-use effects on ecosystem services and biodiversity over the past years, but finding ‘optimal' land use patterns is still one of the challenges. Existing implementations of multi- objective land use optimization often have shortcomings or are not well designed for meeting multiple demands. For example, users may wish to include computationally extensive and complex process- based or statistical models to define …

Elicitation Of Farmers’ Information Sources And Use In Operational Decision Making, Charlotte Dayde, Stephane Couture, Roger Martin-Clouaire

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The current trend is towards increasing the amount of raw data regarding agricultural practices (e.g., through experimentation, availability of measurement devices, etc.). Consequently, the amount of information that farmers can use to make operational decisions is growing at an impressive rate. The issue of imbalance between the richness of available information and the ability of farmers to harness it in their decision-making process has received little attention so far. In this study, a descriptive approach based on interviews is adopted. It explores the origin (i.e., internal knowledge or external sources) and the nature of information used by farmers …

Determining The Variability Of Population Exposure To Air Pollution While Taking Into Account Personal Mobility – A Case Study For The Uk, S. Reis, M Vieno, R. Beck, E. Carnell, D. Leaver

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The quantification of population level exposure to ambient air pollution is typically based on static population distributions inferred from the postcode of residence, and annual average concentrations of priority air pollutants at that location. Contemporary atmospheric chemistry transport models (ACTMs) are capable of providing air pollution concentration fields with high spatial and temporal resolution, for instance generating 1 km × 1 km gridded maps at hourly time steps. In addition, the 2011 UK Census has generated a novel population data product accounting for the location of the workplace, the so-called ‘workday population’ distribution, which accounts for the location of individuals …

Documenting Models For Interoperability And Reusability, Rajbir Parmar, Kurt Wolfe, Gene Whelan, Gerard F. Laniak, Mike Galvin, Jonathan L. Goodall

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many modeling frameworks compartmentalize science via individual models that link sets of small components to create larger modeling workflows. Developing integrated watershed models increasingly requires coupling multidisciplinary, independent models, as well as collaboration between scientific communities, since component-based modeling can integrate models from different disciplines. Integrated Environmental Modeling (IEM) systems focus on transferring information between components by capturing a conceptual site model; establishing local metadata standards for input/output of models and databases; managing data flow between models and throughout the system; facilitating quality control of data exchanges (e.g., checking units, unit conversions, transfers between software languages); warning and error handling; …