Digital Commons Network^™

The Framework And Application Of Vulnerability Assessment Of Reclaimed Land To Typhoon Storm Surge Inundation, Shuyun Dong, Wayne J. Stephenson, Sarah Wakes, Zhongyuan Chen, Jianzhong Ge

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The coastal area has naturally attractive to population and industry due to its convenient geographical location and abundant resources. While the coastal area provides geographical advantages and resources for urban development, it also experiencing a dramatically growing vulnerability to natural hazards. For coastal mega-cities like Shanghai, typhoon storm surge presents a significant threat to both infrastructure and populations with relatively high vulnerability. Another fact about Shanghai coastal area is that the reclamation land has grown substantially due to the huge demand of land for further urban development. On the one hand, the reclamation land can alleviate the continuous growth of …

Modelling Forest Insect Outbreaks: Efforts Towards An Inverse Approach To Model Calibration, Liliana Perez, Roberto Molowny-Horas, Saeed Harati

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Modelling and simulation of epidemic insect outbreaks are powerful tools to be used in planning and preparing strategies for forest management under climate change. Calibration is a fundamental part of the modelling strategy. It aims to find those parameter values that allow the best characterization of emergent spatiotemporal dynamics within the system being modelled. In this study we implemented a cellular automata (CA) model to simulate the mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic in western Canada, which has killed about 50% of the total volume of commercial lodgepole pine in the province since 1990. We used spatial information on annual mortality …

Modelling Socio-Ecological Problems With Delay. Case Study On Environmental Damage, Veronika Novotná, Bedřich Půža, Jiří Hřebíček

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The paper presents modelling complex socio-ecological problems, where relations among individual quantities vary in time. This includes dynamics of processes in the model, which enables to understand time as a continuous quantity and to describe dynamic processes by a system of differential equations with delay. Implementation of these models in Maple system enables both analytic and numerical solutions and their visualizations. The Maple solution of the specific example of the model with delayed argument is shown, where all input parameters can be interactively changed during the solution process, i.e. delay, interval of the solution, or other parameters which have an …

Modelling Dynamic Social-Ecological Systems: Towards An Integrated, Multiscale Approach, Terence P. Dawson, Lorenzo Milazzo, Gary Polhill

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Social-ecological systems (SES) consist of open, coupled, complex, interactive and non-linear dynamic processes that are inherently unpredictable. SES are a form of Complex Adaptive System (CAS) in which a dynamic network of many agents (which may represent species, people, organisations, nations, etc.) are acting independently and in parallel, constantly responding to their environment and what the other agents are doing. Hence, the causal drivers of SES behaviour tend to be highly dispersed and decentralized. An important characteristic of a CAS is that they can exhibit emergent behaviour and self-organisation, phenomena that cannot be predicted directly from the properties of their …

Ilmsweb - A Modular, Web-Based Software Platform For Integrated Environmental Modelling, Data Management And Decision Support, S. Kralisch, A. Künne, J. M. Santos, P. Selsam, C. Schwartze

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Integrated water resources management in river basins and related impact assessment of changing climate and landuse typically demand for the integration of a variety of software tools and methods. These often include data management and information systems, classification tools for deriving spatial input data from satellite or airborne imagery, GIS tools for pre-processing and integration of spatial information, hydrological simulation models and multi-criteria comparison methods. While there is a plethora of individual solutions and tools available that address these requirements, their seamless and user-friendly integration in decision support tools remains challenging. We are presenting ILMSweb, a modular, web-based software platform …

A Systemic-Driven Perspective Towards Port´S Informational Decisions Through Consideration Of Port Sustainability, Ana X. Halabi-Echeverry, Philippe Clermont, Nelson Obregon-Neira

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents some of the challenges in the development of Decision Support Systems for ports. Specifically, it refers to port informational integration in a context of sustainable factors, practices and functions of the port. It discusses the systemic perspective of port informational integration containing the boundaries of the complex system named Port Decision System Approach (PDSA) and presents the recognition of a decision-making situation as the step one in a methodology that offers a high-level support enhanced through the application of techniques from Computational Intelligence. The PDSA provides the necessary theoretical elements to recognise and deal with the inherent …

Dynamic Modelling Of Dissolved Organic Carbon Concentrations In The Severn-Thames River Systems And Assessment Of The Impact Of A Water Transfer, Jaeyoung Lee, Gianbattista Bussi, Paul Whitehead, Martyn Futter, Jim Hall

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The aim of this modelling study has been to assess Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) in the River Thames and River Severn and the impacts of water transfers from in drought or low flow years. The transfer of water from the River Severn to the Thames is a water resource option under consideration by Thames Water as part of Water Resource Management Plan 2014. Rising trends of DOC in upland rivers in Wales have been observed over the past 15 years and with the proposed water transfer there is a chance that high DOC concentrations might be transferred across to the …

Using Machine Learning To Make The Most Out Of Free Data: A Deforestation Case Study, Helen Mayfield, Carl Smith, Marcus Gallagher, Lauren Coad, Marc Hockings

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Deforestation remains a major environmental issue and is studied for a range of reasons such as informing policy decisions, predicting at risk areas and evaluating interventions. Despite there being a range of machine learning (ML) techniques with a proven record in complicated, non-linear problems, many of these are rarely applied to deforestation analysis. We propose that this is partially due to uncertainty in the environmental services field regarding how these models perform compared to standard statistics. There is also a lack of guidance on which situations various models are suitable for. We compared the three ML techniques of artificial neural …

Service-Based Processing Of Modis Global Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Data For Hydrological Modelling, C. Siegert, S. Kralisch, A. Künne, D. Nüst, B. Proß, C. Stasch

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Current challenges of understanding and assessing the impacts of climate and land use changes on ecosystems worldwide demand for an ever increasing integration of data and process knowledge in environmental simulation models. While the growing performance of multi-processor computer environments and the availability of well-tested data products with global coverage provide the basis to address this demand, the seamless and automated pre-processing of existing information and their integration into environmental models often remains a crucial point. Here, Web Processing Services (WPS) can be used for an easily usable, standardized geo-information processing that links data with models. This work presents a …

Integrating Landscape Structure Into Participatory Bayesian Network Models Of Habitat Suitability, J. G. Froese, C. S. Smith, C. A. Mcalpine, P. A. Durr, R. D. Van Klinken

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Species distribution and habitat suitability models are widely used to inform decisions about conservation, resource or invasion management. Bayesian networks (BN) have received increasing attention in environmental modelling and habitat suitability modelling. Some important advantages of BNs are: a) they lend themselves to a participatory modelling framework including calibration from expert knowledge, explicit treatment of uncertain or missing knowledge and scenario analysis for decision support; b) they model responses specifically from interactions of influential habitat variables rather than statistical correlations; and c) recent advances have greatly simplified spatially-explicit applications (PMAT, https://github.com/DriesLanduyt/PMAT, QUICKScan, http://www.quickscan.pro or GeoNeticaTM, https://www.norsys.com). However, limited …

Group-Based Crop Change Planning: Application Of Smartscapetm Spatial Decision Support System For Resolving Conflicts, Amin Tayyebi, Jamal J. Arsanjani, Amir H. Tayyebi, Hichem Omrani, Hossein S. Moghadam

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agricultural changes are complex and managing an appropriate type of crop change to satisfy stakeholders with various interests is challenging. Decisions regarding a crop change need to be debated among multiple stakeholders with various conflicting viewpoints. Two kinds of conflicts might occur as a result of crop change in an agricultural landscape: 1) conflicts among multiple ecosystem services i.e., internal conflicts and 2) conflicts among multiple stakeholders i.e., external conflicts. In this study, we held a series of meetings with stakeholders, who were experts in economics, energy, soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, surface water, and biodiversity, to develop two crop …

‘Plain-View’ Earth System Simulation, Christian Neuwirth

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Hard-coded models of the earth system are typically perceived as ‘black boxes’, which are unserviceable by anyone other than those who developed the model. This constitutes a constraint to open innovation and cross-disciplinary model building. Likewise, the use of icon-based solutions is restricted by inappropriate performance on a larger spatial scale. This contribution, introduces a middleware program for the synchronization of icon-based software with GIS software. Parallel programming is used to boost simulation performance. In contrast to mainstream modeling environments such as SIMILE or NOVA, spatiotemporal modeling capabilities are supported by GIS interoperability. This enables interactive spatial analyses, access to …

Participatory Modelling To Assess Climate Impacts On Water Resources In The Big Wood Basin, Idaho, J. Koch, A. Inouye, D. Lach, J. Stevenson, J. P. Bolte

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many of the natural resource issues we face today cannot be fully understood using normal scientific methods or theories. When uncertainties or decision stakes are high, participation by an “extended peer community” can be critical to studying and managing complex systems since local expertise on land use and ecosystem processes may not otherwise be captured. We conducted a case study of participatory modelling to support natural resource management under a changing climate. Over a two-year period, we convened a Knowledge to Action Network (KTAN) of scientists and stakeholders interested in exploring the impacts of climate change in Idaho’s Big Wood …

R Package Mvghd: Causal Inference Procedure For Geographic High-Dimensional, Stéphane Bourrelly, Pascal Auquier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Causal statistic inference is a key issue in machine learning. The goal is designing procedures that are able to select relevant subsets of explanatory variables, which might help scientists to better understand the underlying mechanisms behind the studied phenomena. We present a causal statistic inference procedure, especially designed for Geographic High-dimensional Datasets (GHD). The promise of discovering unknown informative factors are as great as the intrinsic learning challenges in these complex datasets, which are more and more common in the fields of environment, health, ecology, epidemiology, geography, agriculture, etc. Firstly, we point out the difference between the variable selection strategies …

Standardization Of Human-Computer-Interface For Geo-Fencing In Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, David Thirtyacre, Robert Brents, Michael Goldfein, David Hunter, B. Terwilliger

Publications

The use of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) has increased significantly in the past year. Geographic fencing (geo-fencing) is software built into most medium-cost consumer sUAS. This software is typically used to limit the altitude above launch point, the flight distance from the transmitting controller, and/or restrict flight inside a no-fly zone. While the concept of a geo-fence is simplistic, the human-computer-interface (HCI) varies drastically among platforms, and even between software iterations on the same platform. This research examines the HCI of three popular consumer-level sUAS with regard to geo-fencing. The software procedures and human interface for the DJI Inspire-1, …

A Multipurpose Soil Inorganic Carbon Prediction Model, Ben W. Kolosz, Peter Manning, Jorat M. Ehsan, Saran P. Sohi, David A.C. Manning

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

There is a lack of models to predict soil inorganic carbon (SIC) which are not only multipurpose, but can predict SIC in a variety of soils and materials. The importance of estimating SIC stocks is due to the large contribution they make towards total carbon in some soils. This paper proposes such a model which aims to account for the variance and geographical range of soils. As an example, one such use is the accurate prediction of passive SIC sequestration rates as this is currently a complex challenge, mainly due to environmental effects such as water, temperature and atmospheric CO …

A Combined Abm-Ca Approach For Analysing Effects Of Peer-Influence And Landowner Decision- Making On Urban Development Patterns, J. Koch, M. A. Dorning, S. M. Beck, G. M. Sanchez, A. Shashidharan, L. S. Smart, J. W. Smith, D. B. Van Berkel, Q. Zhang, R. K. Meentemeyer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In many parts of the U.S., population growth combined with continued demand for low-density housing is transforming the structure of peri-urban landscapes. Despite the substantial amount of privately owned land, the important decision-making roles that individual landowners play in shaping patterns of urbanization and landscape change is understudied. We introduce a data-informed simulation model developed to analyse the decision-making processes that determine spatial characteristics of fragmentation in peri-urban areas by combining the utility of a cellular automata urban growth algorithm (CA module), based on the FUTURES model, with an agent-based model (ABM module). The CA module is conceptualized as a …

Integrated Assessment Of Novel Two-Season Production Systems In Mato Grosso, Brazil, Marcelo Moraes, Affonso Libera, Evgeny Latynskiy, Anna Hampf, José Maria Silveira, Thomas Berger

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

One of the most significant advantages of growing crops in Mato Grosso (in mid-western Brazil) is that farmers can grow two crops (in some specific cases even three) in the same season. From an economic point of view, on the one hand, this provides a strong comparative advantage. On the other hand, this increases the number of decision variables that a decision making agent has to take into account. The agricultural production planning is complex and dynamic and it needs to consider crop rotation/succession in accordance with annual variability of climatic conditions. We developed a region-specific bio-economic micro-simulation model in …

The Pasture Simulation Model – Evaluation Of Plant Acclimatory Effects On Grassland Systems In France, Serge Zaka, Renáta Sándor, Raphaël Martin, Gaëtan Louarn, Katja Klumpp, David Borras, Gianni Bellocchi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The temperature responses of plant photosynthesis and respiration observed on single-plant species can be assumed to occur at the scale of a grassland ecosystem (which is a dynamic and competitive associations of plants). Based on the model for a single, fully expanded leaf as derived from experimental evidence and to gain insights into acclimatory and modulatory effects of growth temperature, we have: 1) improved a complex soil-vegetation-management model of grasslands, PaSim (Pasture Simulation model), and 2) evaluated it on multi-year datasets of plant biomass and C-water- energy fluxes in managed grassland systems. Illustrative results are presented for the French grassland …

Review Of Sustainable Energy -- Without The Hot Air By David Mackay (2009), Kira Hamman

Numeracy

David MacKay. Sustainable Energy: Without the hot air. (Cambridge, England: UIT Cambridge Ltd., 2009). 384 pp. ISBN 978-0954452933 (also available as a free e-book).

Physicist David MacKay transforms what has historically been a debate fraught with skepticism and hysteria into an informed conversation. He does this by providing clear, accurate quantitative information on energy production and consumption in a form that allows comparison and invites thoughtful analysis. By recalibrating power into kilowatt-hours per day per person, he makes the numbers meaningful on an individual level. He then meticulously estimates the productive capacity of various renewable energy sources, explores alternative …

Ua66 Ogden College Of Science & Engineering Newsletter, Cheryl Stevens, Dean

Ogden College of Science & Engineering Publications

No abstract provided.

Passenger Obesity And Regional Aircraft Performance For The Most Corpulent States In The Usa, Douglas D. Boyd

Publications

Obesity affects over 25% of Americans; however, prescribed FAA standard passenger weights for US airlines are based on data compiled 15 years ago. Since increased passenger weight degrades aircraft performance and may lead to a loss of control, the hypothesis herein is that passenger weight under-estimation for states with high obesity rates could potentially lead to a runway overrun or the inability to out climb rising terrain. In terms of the employed methodology, current person weights for the ten most obese states were determined using nationwide data adjusted for state ethnicity. Performance degradation for regional aircraft was assessed by accelerate-stop …

The Eco-Friendly Intermodal Delivery Network, Sergio Mourelo

Senior Honors Theses

The design of the distribution process is a strategic issue for almost every company. As the use of advanced technology and automation increases in manufacturing and logistics, the implementation of autonomous and electrical transportation, such as driverless vehicles and electric trucks, has become an interesting topic of study within the last few years, with the main objective of minimizing distribution costs and delivery times. The purpose of this research is to prove that intermodal delivery networks, which may combine a train and several electric vehicles, are more efficient and environmentally friendly than unimodal networks for high volume and long haul …

The Effect Of Generation On Retention Of Women Engineers In Aerospace And Industry, Kristine Maria Kiernan

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the nature and extent of differences between generational cohorts regarding the effect of family factors on retention of women in engineering, with an emphasis on women in the aerospace industry. While 6% of the aerospace workforce is made up of aeronautical engineers, an additional 11.2% of the aerospace workforce is drawn from other engineering disciplines. Therefore, the analysis included all engineering sub-disciplines. In order to include women who had left the workforce, women in all industries were used as a proxy for women in aerospace.

Exits to other fields were modeled separately …

Sustainability At U.S. Urban Water Utilities: A Framework To Assess Key Attributes, Matthew Paul Ries

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban water utilities in the United States face challenges due to a combination of external drivers. These include urbanization and population growth, which are stressing a system of aging infrastructure. Compliance with increasing regulations is also a challenge in a fiscally-constrained economic environment. A changing climate threatens infrastructure and past assumptions for water supply and quality. Urban utilities provide clean water and sanitation services to over 80% of the country’s population and its industrial centers. Therefore, the sustainability of these water utilities are crucial to the country’s and the public’s well-being.

New operating models are emerging for a “utility of …

Modeling Of Soybean Under Present And Future Climates In Mozambique, Manuel António Dina Talacuece, Flávio Barbosa Justino, Rafael De Ávila Rodrigues, Milton Edgar Pereira Flores, Jéssica Garcia Nascimento, Eduardo Eduardo Santos

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

This study aims to calibrate and validate the generic crop model (CROPGRO-Soybean) and estimate the soybean yield, considering simulations with different sowing times for the current period (1990–2013) and future climate scenario (2014–2030). The database used came from observed data, nine climate models of CORDEX (Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment)-Africa framework and MERRA (Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications) reanalysis. The calibration and validation data for the model were acquired in field experiments, carried out in the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 growing seasons in the experimental area of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Angónia, Mozambique. The yield …

Model For Assessing The Functionality Of Soil And Water Conservation Facilities, Nai-Hsin Pan, Kuei-Yen Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Most soil and water conservation facilities are located in remote areas, posing measurement difficulties for precision instruments. Therefore, visual inspection, which is advantageous because of its high speed, is the primary assessment method for such facilities. However, the degree of infrastructural damage subjectively assessed by various inspectors may vary. Therefore, to overcome the problem induced by inspectors’ subjectivity in assessing facilities, this study adopted the concept of fuzzy set theory to establish a soil and water conservation facility assessment model that can define the membership functions of specific semantic ranges. This study applied semantics to infer current facility conditions, which …

The New Grid, Vincente Ciancio, Andrew Dobbins, Steven Sanz

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The New Grid seeks to provide mobile users with an additional method for off-grid communication, or communication without connection to Internet infrastructure. The motivation for this project was to find another alternative to Internet-dependent communication. Current Internet infrastructure is antiquated; it is expensive to maintain and expand, it has numerous vulnerabilities and high-impact points of failure, and can be rendered unusable for lengthy periods of time by natural disasters or other catastrophes. This current grid will eventually need to be replaced by a more modern, scalable, and adaptive infrastructure. The results of the projects research showed that implementing a library …

Nicaragua Water Distribution System, Leah Bensching, Jamie Monk

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

In developing nations, such as Nicaragua, water security issues affect a large portion of the population. A lack of clean and secure water negatively causes many public health, environmental and economic concerns. This project addresses the need to develop a water distribution system to a rural community in Nicaragua. The proposed solutions will allow the community to choose more resilient design options to ensure reliable water delivery throughout the community.

By using NeatWork, a Nicaraguan based system, and WaterGEMS, which is more commonly used in the United States, it was determined that designing for 100% reliability was the most responsible …

Socio-Eco-Efficiency Analysis Of Highways: A Data Envelopment Analysis, Omer Tatari, Gokhan Egilmez, Dhruva Kurmapu

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

To ensure the large network of highways is performing sustainably, there is a dire need to quantify sustainability for highways. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) based mathematical model is developed to evaluate sustainability in an attempt to aid these efforts. Sustainability goals pertaining to the three dimensions of sustainability, social, economic and environmental, were utilized. Utilizing the developed model, sustainability scores of thirty highway sections were calculated and ranked accordingly. Percent improvement analysis was carried out to gain more insight. In addition, sensitivity analysis was carried out to understand how different values of input parameters impacted the socio-eco-efficiency …