Digital Commons Network^™

A Virtual Lab Environment For Improving Students’ Understanding Of Infiltration And Runoff Processes, Tom Vanwalleghem, Cristina Aguilar, Miriam Carpintero, Antonio Espejo-Pérez, Juan Vicente Giráldez, María José Polo

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Infiltration of water in the soil is a key process in the hydrological cycle and its understanding is paramount for students of any course related to Hydrology. Different equations exist, which, in function of boundary conditions and the level of detail required in any particular case can become complex to solve in an analytical way. Water movement in the soil can be described by the Richards equation, but its solution requires numerical methods. Therefore, amongst the most used ways of calculating water infiltration are the Green and Ampt method, Horton’s equation, Philip’s equation and the Curve Number method. In all …

Assessment Of Climate Change On Flood Dynamic With Deterministic Hydrological Model. Application To The Vugia-Thubon Catchment - Viet Nam, Ngoc Duong Vo, Philippe Gourbesville

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In recent years, Climate Change is commonly known as global warming and associated with sea level rise. Such processes are some one of the most serious challenges facing the human beings in the 21st century. Under the impact of this phenomena, extreme climatic phenomena are supposed to more frequent and serious, leading to natural disasters especially related to water. Flood risk represent a major issue especially for developing countries where the economy as well as the adapted capacity against disaster are still poor. As shown in World Bank studies, with more than 70% of the population works in the agriculture, …

Interoperability Between Grdc's Data Holding And The Geoss Infrastructure, Volker Andres, Henning Bredel, Ralf Busskamp, Simon Jirka, Ulrich Looser, Manuela Schlummer, Adrian Strauch, Michael Utech

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) operates under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization as an international data centre for hydrological data and information on a global scale. Its primary objective is to support the water and climate related programmes and projects of the United Nations, its specialised agencies, and the scientific research community on global and climate change and integrated water resources management. The Global Runoff Database maintained by the GRDC is a valuable data resource and a subset of its data is contributed to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems’ (GEOSS) freely accessible Data Core. As …

Volunteered Geographic Information For Water Management: A Prototype Architecture, Maria Antonia Brovelli, Luca Dotti, Marco Minghini, Massimo Pancaldi, Giorgio Zamboni

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Driven by Web 2.0 technology and the almost ubiquitous presence of mobile devices, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is knowing an unprecedented growth. These notable technological advancements have opened fruitful perspectives also in the field of water management and protection, raising the demand for a reconsideration of policies which also takes into account the emerging trend of VGI. This research investigates the opportunity of leveraging such technology to involve citizens equipped with common mobile devices (e.g. tablets and smartphones) in a campaign of report of water-related phenomena. The work is carried out in collaboration with ADBPO - Autorità di bacino del …

A Resource Centric Approach For Advancing Collaboration Through Hydrologic Data And Model Sharing, David G. Tarboton, Ray Idaszak, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Jefferson Heard, Dan Ames, Jonathan L. Goodall, Lawrence E. Band, Venkatesh Merwade

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

HydroShare is an online, collaborative system being developed for open sharing of hydrologic data and models. The goal of HydroShare is to enable scientists to easily discover and access hydrologic data and models, retrieve them to their desktop or perform analyses in a distributed computing environment that may include grid, cloud or high performance computing model instances as necessary. Scientists may also publish outcomes (data, results or models) into HydroShare, using the system as a collaboration platform for sharing data, models and analyses. HydroShare is expanding the data sharing capability of the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System by broadening the classes …

Cloud Computing Solutions For Aiding Urban Water Management, Peter Cheung, Vinicius Battistelli Lemos, Bruno Andrade

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The management of Urban Water Systems is a complex problem to not only under viewpoint of water supply but also storm water and sewer systems. Growth of urban areas, rise of the social class and economic empowerment of population mainly in developing countries have caused significant changes under water cycle. Several tools are needed to help water managers in the decision making process. In addition, the availability of these tools may be helpful in providing the regulatory body of rational frameworks for the policy-level decisions. Considering last advances of Information Technology (IT), such as the development of multi-core processors, virtualization, …

A Foss Based Web Geo- Service Architecture For Data Management In Complex Water Resources Contexts, Maria Antonia Brovelli, Carolina Arias, Matteo Giuliani, Andrea Castelletti

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Advances in environmental monitoring systems from remote sensing to pervasive real and virtual sensor networks are enlarging the amount and types of data available at local and global scale at increasingly higher temporal and spatial resolution. However, accessing and integrating these data for modeling and operational purposes can be challenging and highly time consuming, particularly in complex physical and institutional contexts, where data are from different sources. This research focuses on the design of a web geo- service architecture, based on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), to enable collection and sharing of data coming from complex water resources domains …

Model Validation Using Crowd-Sourced Data From A Large Pluvial Flood, Vedrana Kutija, Robert Bertsch, Vassilis Glenis, David Alderson, Geoff Parkin, Claire Walsh, John Robinson, Chris Kilsby

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

On 28 June 2012, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, was hit by a large convective storm delivering 45 mm of rain in less than two hours. Although not large on a world scale, the event had a big local impact. Widespread areas of the city were inundated and traffic was blocked in and around the city for about 6 hours. The following morning there was very small amount of visible evidence that the event happened. To gather data about the event through crowd sourcing Newcastle University organised and publicised a web page inviting public to upload their flood photographs, pin them …

Data Driving Better Decisions In The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin, Michael Piskur, Becky Pearson

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin contains approximately twenty percent of the world’s surface freshwater. The five Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario) provide drinking water for 24 million people and support industry, agriculture, and a world-class fishery and ecosystem. The region includes parts of two nations, eight U.S. States and two Canadian Provinces, many Tribes and First Nations, thousands of municipalities and local governments, and a range of stakeholders. These various governments and partners work across borders to manage and protect the region’s water resources and share data and information through a legal and political framework that …

Statistically Downscaled North American Precipitation Using Support Vector Regression And The Big Brother Approach., Carlos F. Gaitan, Keith W. Dixon, Venkatramani Balaji, Renee Mcpherson

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

We implemented a hybrid downscaling model using classification and regression trees and support vector regression with evolutionary strategies to statistically downscale precipitation occurrences and amounts from 16 points across North America. All the selected points belong to different climate regions. In addition, to evaluate the downscaling model’s historical and future performances we used daily precipitation outputs (from a high resolution ~25km grid spacing global atmospheric model) as predictands, and coarsened versions of the same high-resolution outputs from the nearest nine gridpoints (interpolated to a ~100km grid), as predictors. This experimental setup, known as “Big-Brother” allows us to use the high-resolution …

Levels Of Data Interoperability In The Emerging North American Groundwater Data Network, Boyan Brodaric, Nate Booth, Eric Boisvert, Jessica Lucido

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The Canadian Groundwater Information Network (GIN) and the US National Ground-Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) connect data from a variety of sources including states, provinces and federal agencies. Data heterogeneity is a major challenge faced by these networks, one that must be overcome at five distinct levels: systems, syntax, structure, semantics, and pragmatics. This paper discusses approaches taken at each of the five levels to ensure interoperability between the Canadian and American networks. The result is an emerging North American Groundwater Data Network, which enables users to access data transparently and uniformly on either side of the shared border.

Linked Water Data For Water Information Management, Edward Curry, Viktoriya Degeler, Eoghan Clifford, Daniel Coakley, Andrea Costa, Schalk-Jan Van Andel, Nick Van De Giesen, Christos Kouroupetroglou

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The management of water consumption is hindered by low general awareness and absence of precise historical and contextual information. Effective and efficiency management of water resources requires a holistic approach considering all the stages of water usage. A decision support tool for water management services requires access to a number of different data domains and different data providers. The design of next-generation water information management systems poses significant technical challenges in terms of information management, integration of heterogeneous data, and real-time processing of dynamic data. Linked Data is a set of web technologies that enables integration of different data sources. …

Evaluating Alternative Water Allocation Policies Among Competing Users In Bow River Basin, Alberta, Canada, Wei Xu, Nader Khoshroo, Henning Bjornlund

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Demand for water from rivers and aquifers for consumptive use has grown greatly due to population and economic growth and changing lifestyle and dietary habits. Consequently, aquatic ecosystems, especially in semi-arid and arid regions across the world, suffer adverse environmental impacts of over-extraction. Historically, Alberta’s water allocation system has been based on the first-in-time-first-in-right (FITFIR) system, granting the preference to the licensees based on the seniority of their licenses. In recent years, scientists, policy makers, and water users have raised questions whether FITFIR will continue to be the most appropriate allocation system to manage increasing scarce water resources in Alberta. …

Effects Of 2d And 1d Modeling On Mapping Aquatic Habitat Quality, Rohan Benjankar, Daniele Tonina, Jim Mckean

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The distribution of aquatic habitat at the organism scale, i.e. 1 by 1m or smaller is typically predicted from local physical characteristics of stream flow, bed, banks and sediment characteristics and a set of biological preference curves. The flow properties are typically predicted with numerical modeling whereas stream bed and bank characteristics defined from interpolated DEM generated by topographical surveys and field observations. Information on the effects of flow properties and streambed morphology due to numerical modeling dimensionality on aquatic habitat modeling is limited. Two-dimensional (2D) modeling is becoming the most popular method to map micro-habitat but its application is …

Light Pollution Research Through Citizen Science, John Kanemoto

STAR Program Research Presentations

Light pollution (LP) can disrupt and/or degrade the health of all living things, as well as, their environments. The goal of my research at the NOAO was to check the accuracy of the citizen science LP reporting systems entitled: Globe at Night (GaN), Dark Sky Meter (DSM), and Loss of the Night (LoN). On the GaN webpage, the darkness of the night sky (DotNS) is reported by selecting a magnitude chart. Each magnitude chart has a different density/number of stars around a specific constellation. The greater number of stars implies a darker night sky. Within the DSM iPhone application, a …

Predicting Baseflow Using Genetic Programing, Ali Meshgi, Petra Schmitter, Vladan Babovic, Ting Fong May Chui

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Developing reliable methods to estimate baseflow has been a subject of research interest over the past decades due to its importance in catchment response and sustainable watershed management (e.g. ground water recharge vs. extraction). Limitations and complexities of existing methods have been addressed by a number of researchers. For instance, physically based numerical models are complex, requiring substantial computational time and data which may not be always available. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as Genetic Programming (GP) have been used widely to reduce the challenges associated with complex hydrological systems without losing the physical meanings. However, up to date, in …

An Information Model For Exchanging Hydrological Rating Tables, Peter Taylor, Paul Sheahan, Stuart Hamilton, David Briar, Matthew J. Fry, Michael Natschke, David Valentine, Gavin Walker

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Many hydrological data systems provide Internet access to observational and processed data in various forms, from websites to web services. This data is generally described with basic metadata, such as units, names of measured variables, spatial coordinates, and so on. This metadata is largely suitable for further analysis or ingestion into hydrological models. However, when the data has been processed through many – potentially complex – steps, more information is required to give users details of implicit assumptions, inaccuracies, or uncertainties that may have been introduced. A common example of this within hydrology is the use of ratings tables to …

Interactive Web-Based Flood Simulation System As An Education Platform For Hydrological Concepts, Ibrahim Demir

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Recent developments in web technologies make it easy to manage and visualize large data sets with general public. Novel visualization techniques and dynamic user interfaces allow users to create realistic environments, and interact with data to gain insight from simulations and environmental observations. The floodplain simulation system is a web-based 3D interactive flood simulation environment to create real world flooding scenarios. The simulation systems provides a visually striking platform with realistic terrain information, and water simulation. Students can create and modify predefined scenarios, control environmental parameters, and evaluate flood mitigation techniques. The web-based simulation system provides an environment for students …

Delivering And Evaluating Multiple Flood Risk Benefits In Blue-Green Cities, Nigel G. Wright, Colin Thorne

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In the UK a research consortium has been funded to develop new strategies for managing urban flood risk as part of wider, integrated urban planning intended to achieve environmental enhancement and urban renewal in which multiple benefits of Blue-Green Cities are rigorously evaluated and understood. This approach is very much part of the resilience paradigm and seeks to develop the socio-technical tools required to fully evaluate resilience options as part of a wider system. The Consortium’s objectives are to: Put competent authorities, businesses and communities at the centre of the research by establishing feedback pathways between them and the FRM …

A New Automated Approach To Sewershed Delineation For Urban Drainage Modelling Studies: A City Of Toronto Case Study, Saalih M. Shamead, Celia Fan, Weihua Cao, Doug Banting, Darko Joksimovic, James Li

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Toronto Water is developing a new detailed urban drainage model of the City's combined service area. The traditional manual delineation of sewersheds by the City of Toronto, deemed a tedious and subjective process, was not efficient enough to develop the large model. Instead, an automated approach was developed relying upon the powerful Arc Hydro Engine that helps eliminate the subjectivity of the former process and potentially holds great promise in being applied elsewhere. The process considers the topography of the urban environment by burning in both the roads and storm and combined sewers with catch basins attached to them while …

City Of Toronto’S Approach On Implementing The New Federal Wastewater Effluent Regulations Using A Gis-Based Hydrologic And Hydraulic Model, Celia Fan, Weihua Cao, Darko Joksimovic, James Li, Doug Banting, Saalih M. Shamead, Jian Lei

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Canada releases over 150 billion litres of untreated and undertreated wastewater into the water environment every year1. To clean up urban wastewater, new Federal Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations (WSER) on establishing national baseline effluent quality standards that are achievable through secondary wastewater treatment were enacted on July 18, 2012. With respect to the wastewater from the combined sewer overflows (CSO), the Regulations require the municipalities to report the annual quantity and frequency of effluent discharges. The City of Toronto currently has about 300 CSO locations within an area of approximately 16,550 hectares. The total sewer length of the CSO area …

Does Hyporheic Intensity Explain Spawning Site Selection?, Rohan Benjankar, Daniele Tonina, Jim Mckean, Daniel J. Isaak

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Pool, riffle and runs are streambed features and important habitats for aquatic species. It is well-known that salmonid species utilize these streambed features as spawning site. Pools are characterized by deep water depth, low velocity and gentle water surface slope, whereas riffles are characterized by shallow depth, high velocity and steep slope. Past studies have used hydrodynamic model simulated hydraulic characteristics such as depth, velocity and shear stress to delineate these features. However, the magnitude of these hydraulic characteristics may vary significantly with the discharge and longitudinal slope of the stream. Additionally, these indexes still do not entirely explain the …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Regulatory Stormwater Monitoring Protocols On Groundwater Quality In Urbanized Karst Regions, Daniel C. Nedvidek

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Non-point pollution from stormwater runoff is one of the greatest threats to water quality in the United States today, particularly in urban karst settings. In these settings, the use of karst features and injection wells for stormwater management results in virtually untreated water being directed into the karst aquifer. Currently, no policies exist specifically to provide water quality protections to karst environments. This study utilized a combination of karst stormwater quality data, along with survey data collected from MS4 Phase II communities, and an analysis of current federal, local, and state water quality regulations, to assess the need for karst-specific …

Mtn Mobile Money Technology As A Convinient Option For Water Utility Bills In Uganda, Agnes Namuli

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In the past, the public struggled to stand long hours and travelling long distances to pay watebills in Uganda urban centres. This made people become reluctant to pay for water bills leading to continious water cut offs and loosing trust in the National Water and Sewerage Cooperation in Uganda. The use of mobile money technology has changed and made access to water in the urban centres more effective and efficiency. The convenience of MTN Mobile money to the public came as a real time solution and has eliminated delays in updating customer accounts as well as reduce on the physical …

Deterministic Hydrological Model For Flood Risk Assessment Of Mexico City, Vargas Bringas Rafael, Gourbesville Philippe

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Mexico City is facing problems of flooding in some areas at certain times of the year, causing important losses and damages on properties and residents including some casualties. Therefore, it is important to carry out a flood risk assessment in the catchment of Mexico City and estimate damages of probable flood events. However, limited data of observed discharges and water depths in the main rivers of the city are available, and this represents an obstacle for the understanding of flooding in Mexico City. The objective of the developed tool is to provide an efficient support to management of the flood …

Enabling Access To Non-Point Source Risk Mapping Tools Using Open Source Software And Open Geospatial Consortium (Ogc) Standards : The Development Of The Scimap Webapp, Peter Wells, Sim Reaney

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

No-point (diffuse) pollution is a key environmental pressure effecting water quality and ecology in lakes and rivers. Many governmental and NGO bodies are working to tacking the problem but their efforts are constrained by the complexities of the problem. To enable the spatial targeting of the mitigation measures at the landscape scale, the SCIMAP risk mapping approach was developed by Durham and Lancaster Universities in the UK. The approach was well received but the desktop implementation created problems for users. NGO users generally did not have the required datasets or GIS skills. Governmental users within a corporate managed IT environment …

Sesame: Finding Ways Of Promoting Sme Adaptation To Flood Risk, Graham Coates, Nigel G. Wright, Sangaralingam Ahilan, Dabo Guan, Martina Mcguinness, N. Johnson, Lindsey Mcewen, Tim Harries

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Small and medium-sized companies and other enterprises (SMEs) around the world are exposed to flood risk and many of the 4.5 million in the UK are at risk. As SMEs represent almost half of total business turnover in the UK, their protection is a vital part of the drive for greater climate change resilience. However, few have measures in place to ensure the continuity of their activities during a flood and its aftermath. The SESAME project aims to develop tools that encourage businesses to discover ways of becoming more resilient to floods and to appreciate how much better off they …

A Management Indicator Program For Water Operating Agencies, Martha Patricia Hansen Rodríguez, Víctor Hugo Alcocer Yamanaka, Yenni Laurel Varela

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

The management indicator program for operating agencies (PIGOO, for its initials in Spanish) specifies a set of 28 management indicators that help to measure the operational aspects, financial aspects and efficiencies of potable water supply systems. Ideally, the performance indicators of an operating agency should be linked to an objective or strategy established by that same agency. The performance indicators are calculated based on annual data, variables such as the volume of water produced, the number of employees, total income and expenditures, rate of leaks and claims. The Mexican Institute of Water Technology has conducted PIGOO since 2005. From 2005 …

Reliability Of Simulated Discharges For Different Gauge Locations In A Semi Distributed Rainfall Runoff Model, Johannes Bellinger, Stefan Achleitner, Johannes Schöber, Friedrich Schöberl

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

In terms of flood forecasting in alpine environments, predictions at different gauges as well as sites with exposed infrastructure within the catchment are required. The used semi-distributed hydrological model HQsim combines runoff formation and surface runoff routines with an implemented channel routing for river reaches. This allows the estimation of discharges at selected channel segments. As a case study a large alpine catchment with a size of 890 km² is used. The uncertainty in the discharge prediction is investigated at three discharge gauges located along the main river. The basis of our experimental set-up are 15,000 samples describing the prior …

Introduction—23rd North American Prairie Conference, Dr. Douglas J. Cattani, Dr. Nicola Koper, Dr. Pamela Rutherford, Dr. Richard K. Baydack

The Prairie Naturalist

Building upon the tradition started in Illinois by Peter Schramm in 1970, with the first conference on prairies and prairie restoration, the North American Prairie Conference (NAPC) has developed a tradition of excellence in native prairie research, conservation, education and restoration of one of the worlds’ most productive, yet most endangered, ecosystems. It has spawned great interest, enthusiasm and efforts to better understand, appreciate, manage and conserve this vital part of North America’s natural and cultural history.

In early August 2012, the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg hosted the 23rd NAPC. The theme of the 2012 conference was “Celebrating Our …