Digital Commons Network^™

A Wind-Derived Upwelling Index For Lake Michigan, Stephen B. Davis, Rebecca Essig, Cary Troy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Coastal upwelling is a phenomenon that occurs along coastlines throughout the world, and has been shown to be strongly correlated with large fish populations in these areas. Coastal upwelling occurs when strong coastal winds drive water transport away from the coast, causing colder, often nutrient-rich water to upwell in its place. While coastal upwellings can be detected with satellite imagery or in situ temperature measurements, these datasets are neither continuous nor long-term. A wind-derived upwelling index was created for Lake Michigan to continuously quantify upwellings over multiple decades, and to allow for further understanding of the impact of upwelling in …

Challenges/Advances In Distributed Watershed Modeling: A Review And Application Of The Agroecosystem-Watershed (Ages-W) Model, James C. Ascough Ii, Timothy R. Green, Olaf David, Holm Kipka, Gregory S. Mcmaster, Manfred Fink, Peter Krause, Sven Kralisch

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Progress in the understanding of physical, chemical, and biological processes influencing water quality, coupled with advances in the collection and analysis of hydrologic data, provide opportunities for significant innovations in the manner and level with which watershed-scale processes may be quantified and modeled. This paper first provides a brief review of current challenges and advances in distributed watershed modeling including quantifying and coping with the uncertainty, data availability, influence of data resolution and scaling issues, and the use of environmental modeling frameworks that help maintain model modularity, reusability, and interoperability (or compatibility). Important findings and observed trends from this work …

An R Package For Implementing Multiple Evapotranspiration Formulations, Danlu Guo, Seth Westra, Holger R. Maier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The use of multiple evapotranspiration (ET) models is critical for exploring the ambiguity in the representations of ET processes. Although ensemble ET models are increasingly used to address this ambiguity, practical issues include: 1) the diversity of process representations, which require different input data and constants; 2) the diversity of nomenclature, terminology and units used in the literature; and 3) the complexity of some formulations, requiring significant time for coding and leading to potential user errors. We describe an R package that estimates both actual and potential ET from 17 well-known formulations. Results are presented as summary text and plots, …

Long-Term Numerical Simulation For Stability Within The River Mouth; Case Study: Rosetta Promontory, Egypt, Ali Masria, Abdelazim Negm, Moheb Iskander, Oliver C. Saavedra, M. A. Bek

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Estuaries are very sensitive and vulnerable to any interventions in coastal dynamics. Most of these inlets experience coastal problems such as severe erosion and accretion. Rosetta promontory, Egypt, is an example of such an environment. It suffers from coastline erosion and sedimentation inside the inlet. The shoaling of the inlet leads to hindering the navigation process of fishing boats, negative impacts to estuarine and salt marsh habitat and decreases the efficiency of the cross section to transferring the flood flow to the sea.

This paper aims to reach a new condition of stability of Rosetta Promontory by using coastal measures. …

Use Of Low-Cost Particle Monitors To Calibrate Traffic­-Related Air Pollutant Models In Urban Areas, Edmund Seto, Elena Austin, Igor Novosselov, Micheal Yost

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The availability of new small and low-cost particulate matter monitors has enabled the collection of large quantities of data to calibrate traffic-related air pollution models in urban areas. We present laboratory findings on the performance of our Portable University of Washington Particle (PUWP) monitor compared to a reference instrument, and its application to air quality modeling for epidemiologic studies. The instrument has been calibrated in laboratory chamber studies as well as in field collocation studies against reference instruments. We are currently examining the use of the PUWP to calibrate air pollution. In our laboratory studies, four PUWP monitors were placed …

Fronting Integrated Scientific Web Applications: Design Features And Benefits For Regulatory Environments, Jonathan Flaishans, Tao Hong, Marcia Snyder, Chancellor Pascale, Thomas S. Purucker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Integrated decision support systems for regulatory applications benefit from standard industry practices such as code reuse, test-driven development, and modularization. These approaches make meeting the federal government's goals of transparency, efficiency, and quality assurance more attainable, while facilitating science module updates and incorporation of new modules. The Obertool is a web-based dashboard suite of ecological risk assessment models supported by the United States Environmental Protection Agency that provides a cross-platform implementation for users. Its web-based approach provides users with a common interface to models developed in differing formats ranging from simple spreadsheet calculators to platform-dependent compiled executables. The dashboard combines …

Software Engineering For Scientific Application: Effort Report On The Community Land Model Within The Earth System Modeling Framework, Dali Wang, Yang Xu

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

One key factor in the improved understanding of earth system science is the development and improvement of high fidelity models. Along with the deeper understanding of earth system processes, the software complexity of those modelling systems becomes a barrier for further rapid model improvements and validation. In this paper, we present our experience on better understanding of the community land model (CLM) within an earth system modeling framework. After the science and software background of CLM, we represent three groups of CLM software engineering practices, which aim to 1) better understand the software system for rapid software system development on …

Rethinking Riverine Habitat Quality: Integrated Systems Modeling To Improve Watershed Habitat Management And Decision Making, Avman H. Alafifi, David E. Rosenberg

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

River restoration and conservation projects use habitat quality indicators (e.g., Habitat Suitability Index) to monitor and quantify changes of one or a few habitat attributes (e.g. instream flow, bank stability, and flood regime). A more integrated approach representing broader watershed habitat components requires rethinking riverine habitat quality. Systems models provide decision makers with tools to quantify and understand interconnections between different habitat components. They help predict and account for potential changes in hydrologic, ecological, and management variables in water systems. Applying systems models in restoration practice requires developing and applying new and robust habitat quality indicators that capture dynamic hydrologic …

Using Surrogate Modelling For Fast Estimation Of Water Budget Component In A Regional Watershed, Aurelien Hazart, Koji Mori, Kazuhiro Tada, Hiroyuki Tosaka

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We developed a method based on surrogate modelling to estimate the water flow in both surface and subsurface sections of a basin watershed. The real case of a regional watershed near Tokyo with a catchment area of 100km² was targeted with observations on a period of about 16 years. Our purpose was to propose a tool of water resources management that can be operated daily by the person in charge of a watershed without expert knowledge of the numerical modelling process. Replacement of complex physical models by surrogate models like artificial neural networks (ANN) has been proved useful in …

Optimal Surveillance System Design For Outbreak Source Detection Maximization: A Vol Model, M. Convertino, C. Hedberg

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Foodborne diseases cause an estimated 48 million illnesses each year in the United States, including 9.4 million caused by known pathogens. Real time detection of cases and outbreak sources are important epidemic intelligence services that can decrease morbidity and mortality of foodborne illnesses, and allow optimal response to identify the causal pathways leading to contamination. For most outbreaks associated with fresh produce items, outbreak source detection typically occurs after the contaminated produce items have been consumed and are no longer in the marketplace.

We developed a probabilistic model for real time outbreak source detection, prediction of outbreaks, and contamination-prone area …

An Architecture For Integration Of Multidisciplinary Models, Getachew F. Belete, Alexey Voinov, Niels Holst

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Integrating multidisciplinary models requires linking models: that may operate at different temporal and spatial scales; developed using different methodologies, tools and techniques; different levels of complexity; calibrated for different ranges of inputs and outputs, etc. On the other hand, integration of models requires us to address technical, semantic, and dataset aspects of interoperability. So we need a genuine techniques that enable us to integrate various domain specific models for interdisciplinary study. In this research work, we investigated best practices of System Integration, Enterprise Application Integration, and Integration Design Patterns. We developed an architecture of a multidisciplinary model integration framework that …

Usage Of The Deltares Open Archive, Peter Gijsbers, Andre Grijze, Marc Van Dijk, Onno Van Den Akker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water agencies conducting daily operational forecasting need an archive solution that enables them to review (and legally defend) forecasts and decisions made, conduct post-event performance analysis, create canned datasets for training and create datasets for model calibration and hindcasting. Each use case has different storage needs, both in terms of data types stored, moment of archiving, backup and end-of-life strategies. In addition, each use case has different discovery and retrieval needs, sometimes followed by additional data creation (e.g. a post-event evaluation report) to be stored in relation to the original data. Data discovery strategies for scientific purposes typically start with …

Ogc And His: Implementing Wfs And Waterml2 For Hydroserver, Rohit M. Khattar, Dan Ames

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

An integral step in the data life cycle (after collection and curating) is providing access and data discovery for others to explore the data. Sharing of data across various computer hardware and software platforms is enabled by tools such as the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrological Information System (HIS) which stores and manages hydrologic and climate data. This system is growing in use by water scientists globally. At the same time, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has promulgated standards used within the GIS software industry that are also based on web services technologies …

Technology Behind The Deltares Open Archive, Andre Grijze, Peter Gijsbers, Erik De Rooij, E. Pelgrim, Onno Van Den Akker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water agencies conducting daily operational forecasting need an archive solution that enables them to review (and defend) forecasts and decisions made, conduct post-event performance analysis, create canned datasets for training and create datasets for model calibration and hindcasting. This archive solution should store datasets that range from time series (observations and forecast), workflow definition and model-run settings, to web-reports and text products (e.g. forecaster notes). The challenge is to provide an open solution that supports both operations and science, allowing access by a variety of applications. The Deltares Open Archive is a new solution which meets those needs. The solution …

The Pocketlai Smartphone App: An Alternative Method For Leaf Area Index Estimation, Roberto Confalonieri, Caterina Francone, Marco Foi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The possibility of adopting the technology implemented in low-costs devices for the monitoring of biophysical processes is being increasingly explored by the scientific community. In the context of environmental studies, leaf area index (LAI) is one of the variables scientists and technicians are more interested in, since directly involved in radiation interception, and in crop response to water availability. An indirect method for leaf area index estimation was recently proposed and implemented in the smartphone app PocketLAI. The application uses the smartphone camera and the accelerometer to acquire images at 57.5° below the canopy while the user is rotating …

Abstractions From Sensor Data With Complex Event Processing And Machine Learning, Markus Stocker, Mauno Rönkkö, Mikko Kolehmainen

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Environmental knowledge systems that build on sensor-based environmental monitoring rely on techniques in knowledge acquisition and representation to interpret the numbers obtained in measurement for what they tell about the monitored environment. Languages and systems in knowledge representation and reasoning, specifically Semantic Web technologies, support the formulation and execution of rules, a technique that enables deductive inference in a knowledge base. This technique has been used to demonstrate inference on sensor data. While the approach certainly has its merits, it is often demonstrated for numerical thresholds and, thus, for relatively trivial “semantic enrichment.” In reality, knowledge acquisition tasks of interest …

An Ontology-Based Approach For The Instrumentation, Control And Automation Infrastructure Of A Wwtp, Davide Sottara, Jean Claude Coreale, Thierry Spetebroot, Dalila Pulcini, Daniele Giunchi, Fabrizio Paolucci, Luca Luccarini

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The instrumentation, control and automation of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is a key aspect to ensure good performance and lower operational costs. However, control systems are seldom interoperable and standard-compliant. In this paper, we propose a knowledge-based approach which decouples the description of the plants and their control strategies from their physical structure and instrumentation. In particular, we propose a semantic model based on ontologies, formalized using the W3C OWL2 standard. We have extended the Semantic Sensor Network and created a specialized representation of the WWTP domain, to provide a consistent description of instrumentation (sensors and probes), actuators and data …

A Chemical Properties Simulator To Support Iem, Gene Whelan, Eric Weber, Caroline Stevens, Mitch Pelton, Kurt Wolfe, Rajbir Parmar, Mike Galvin, Said Hilal, Justin Babendreier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Users of Integrated Environmental Modeling (IEM) systems are responsible for defining individual chemicals and their properties, a process that is time-consuming at best and overwhelming at worst, especially for new chemicals with new structures. A software tool is needed to allow users to define a chemical structure, predict transformation products within an environmental setting, and calculate relevant physicochemical properties. Independent software provides relevant chemical and environmental descriptors to parameterize IEM systems that support fate/transport of organics by integrating cheminformatic applications and software technologies. These 1) encode process science using SMART reaction strings, an extension of SMILES notation; 2) generate transformation …

An Information Platform Fostering Re-Use Of Water Data, Ralf Denzer, Sascha Schlobinski, Gerben Boot, Frank Keppel, Erik De Rooij

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The re-use of publicly funded governmental data has received a lot of attention recently. In the environmental domain, it is clear that improved public services need exchange of data across governments at all levels. Governments keep producing information products at all levels, and some of them are more or less readily available. Reporting obligations in the EC, for instance demanded by the Water Framework Directive (WFD), are direct inputs to European datasets. The technology base for advanced systems is supported by the OGC suite of standards and by encodings for water information.

Still re-use of data is not happening at …

Interactive Web-Based Flood Modeling At Country Wide Scale And Plantar Size Resolution, Fedor Baart, Jack Ha, Arthur Van Dam, Gennadii Donchyts, Martijn Siemerink

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The flooding of rural and urban areas is an increasing hazard to society. Accurate and timely predictions are essential for the water manager to prepare and respond to these hazards. Predicting flooding requires a numerical model that represents the physical processes (rain, evaporation, infiltration, overland flow, groundwater flow). This model, fed with measurements, and possible measures, calculates the expected flooding. The traditional working method consists of a three step process: schematization setup, running and post-processing, with a total feedback time of hours. This process is suitable for confirmatory modeling. Most of the time, models are applied exploratory, requiring a different …

Back-End Science Model Integration For Ecological Risk Assessment, Tao Hong, Chancellor Pascale, Jonathan Flaishans, Marcia Snyder, S. Thomas Purucker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) relies on a number of ecological risk assessment models that have been developed over 30-plus years of regulating pesticide exposure and risks under Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Endangered Species Act. Since computing technology have changed dramatically over this time period, constituent legacy models often contain algorithms based on source code with defunct dependencies and/or have been integrated with graphical user interface elements no longer compatible with current operating systems. Model migration to modern web applications creates integration challenges for back-end science model code residing on a server. An example …

Epidemia - An Ecohealth Informatics System For Integrated Forecasting Of Malaria Epidemics, Micheal C. Wimberly, Geoffrey M. Henebry, Yi Liu, Gabriel B. Senay

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Advance information about the timing and locations of malaria epidemics allows more effective targeting of resources for prevention, control, and treatment. However, these predictions must be accurate to ensure that potential outbreaks are not missed and resources are not wasted responding to predicted outbreaks that do not occur. Early warning systems based on environmental monitoring can identify critical risk factors before an epidemic actually starts, but their accuracy is constrained by the complex interrelationships of climatic variability, mosquito population dynamics, malaria transmission, and the resulting risk of human infection. In contrast, early detection of malaria epidemics based on epidemiological surveillance …

Integrating Raster And Vector Spatial Representations With Interaction Graphs For Multi-Scale Environmental Simulations, Mathieu Castets, Pascal Degenne, Pascal Poncelet, Danny Lo Seen

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Nowadays, developing tools for modelling complex system is a mandatory issue in environmental research. Environmental modelling implies taking into account processes at different scales of space and time. Ocelet is a domain specific environmental modelling language that uses graphs to describe how spatial entities in the system interact, with functions attached to the arcs of the graphs that are activated within scenarios to represent the dynamics of the system. The language has a strong focus on spatial interactions where the vector format is used for attributing geometries to entities, thus allowing a precise description of their shapes. However, the vector …

Multi-Level Automated Sub-Zoning Of Water Distribution Systems, Lina Sela Perelman, Micheal Allen, Ami Preis, Mudasser Iqbal, Andrew J. Whittle

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water distribution systems (WDS) are complex pipe networks with looped and branching topologies that often comprise of thousands of links and nodes. This work presents a generic framework for improved analysis and management of WDS by partitioning the system into smaller (almost) independent sub-systems with balanced loads and minimal number of interconnections. This paper compares the performance of three classes of unsupervised learning algorithms from graph theory for practical sub-zoning of WDS: (1) Graph clustering – a bottom-up algorithm for clustering n objects with respect to a similarity function, (2) Community structure – a bottom-up algorithm based on network modularity …

Towards A Low-Cost, Full-Service Air Quality Data Archival System, Argyris Samourkasidis, Ioannis N. Athanasiadis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We present our explorations towards a low-cost solution for creating an autonomous environmental data archival system. AiRCHIVE is a software platform for providing open access to sensor data with different ways, that account for machine interoperability. It is built with Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, pocket-size computer, and Air Pi a low-cost amateur sensory kit for air quality monitoring. Raspberry Pi with AirPi allowed us to easily capture raw sensor data and store them in a local database, and with AiRCHIVE we deployed “on sensor” a web server that provides with a set of services for data preprocessing and dissemination, including …

A Hybrid, Integrated Iedds For The Management Of Sequencing Batch Reactors, Davide Sottara, Stefano Bragaglia, Dalila Pulcini, Paola Mello, Luca Luccarini

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) is a particular kind of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), where all treatment processes take place in a single reactor tank, according to a fixed temporal sequence. SBR offers several advantages in terms of reduced costs, minor impact and greater flexibility with respect to traditional WWTPs. However, an optimal cost/performance ratio can only be achieved if the treatment processes are continuously monitored and controlled. In this paper, we present a hybrid, distributed, knowledge-based (Intelligent) Environmental Decision Support System (IEDSS) specifically dedicated to the management of SBRs. The IEDSS is responsible for verifying, ensuring and enforcing the …

Towards An Ontology For Situation Assessment In Environmental Monitoring, Markus Stocker, Mauno Rönkkö, Mikko Kolehmainen

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Situation assessment, i.e. the process of achieving situation awareness, is common in environmental monitoring, where assessment occurs predominantly on sensor data and awareness is for the state of environmental phenomena. For a particular location, an environmental monitoring system may measure and compute mean hourly PM2.5 concentration to acquire knowledge for situations of unhealthy exposure by humans to ambient air; it may measure aerosol particle size distribution to acquire knowledge for situations of atmospheric new particle formation; it may measure road-pavement vibration to acquire knowledge for traffic. The process can be divided in four generic sub processes, namely data acquisition, data …

Modeling And Implementation Of A Geospatial Database For Environmental Niches And Potential Geographic Distributions, Gerardo José Zárate, Jugurta Lisboa-Filho, Carlos Frankl Sperber, Flavia Maria Da Silva Carmo

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The ecological niche of a species is defined by an array of biotic and abiotic requirements that allow organisms to live and reproduce in a geographic region. Abiotic data from the ecological niche in combination with occurrence data can be used to predict the potential geographic distribution of a species in different regions. Potential geographic distributions are useful in predicting the extent of invasive species, predict distributions as preparation for climate change and find appropriate regions for endangered species, among others. Geographic entities and environmental variables can be represented with a high-level abstraction in diagrams using formalism dedicated to model …

Eliciting Stakeholder Preferences Through Nonmarket Valuation Techniques, Marit E. Kragt

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

To successfully predict the impacts of environmental change, modellers need to incorporate analyses of human behaviour into their predictions. The engagement of stakeholders, including participatory model development, is now widely advocated as an approach to account for stakeholder preferences. While participatory approaches are suitable to involve targeted stakeholder groups and technical experts, it is typically prohibitively expensive to engage a wide range of communities in the model development process. Many environmental modellers may be aware of social science research methods to participatory research. Socio-economic approaches to elicit stakeholder preferences are, however, less commonly used. This paper presents three stated preference …

Essential Elements For Participatory Modelling: Using Deliberative Engagement And Gesture-Enabled Interfaces To Implement Energy-Mineral-Water Solutions In The Atacama Desert, Chile, Suzanne A. Pierce, Eugenio Figueroa B.

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Sound science and adequate models of systems are necessary for environmental decisions, yet frequently it is insufficient. The ENCOMPASS and ECOGES projects aim to create science-based deliberation among diverse stakeholders about water-energy-mineral use and choices in the Atacama Desert region of Chile. The projects seek to improve levels of understanding and open possibilities for collaborative problem solving by engaging industry, academics, and indigenous communities in a long- term participatory modeling process.

Since 2009 the initiative has brought people into collaborative discussions, building technical knowledge and bridging across sectors that are often at odds over management of earth resources. Today, participants …