Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Evolutionary Computation And Case-Based Reasoning Interoperation In Iedss Through Gesconda, Miquel Sànchez-Marrè, Gibert Karina, Radha K. Vinayagam, Beatriz Sevilla-Villanueva

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Interoperability of Intelligent Environmental Decision Support Systems (IEDSS) is one open challenge in the IEDSS field. This paper shows the interoperability of Evolutionary Computation, concretely Genetic Algorithms (GA), and Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) in IEDSS through the GESCONDA tool. GESCONDA is a tool for the deployment of Intelligent Decision Support Systems. This interoperability has been tested with several domains with different purposes like classification tasks, predictive tasks, etc. In the paper, the application in one environmental domain is described and analysed. The experimentation results indicate that this interoperation of both methods can improve the results of the application of one single …

Proposing A Framework For Crowd-Sourced Green Infrastructure Design, Samuel Rivera, Lawrence E. Band, Jong S. Lee, Kenton Mchenry, Arthur R. Schmidt, Jack Snoeyink, William C. Sullivan, Mary C. Whitton, Barbara Minsker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Green stormwater infrastructure (GI) (e.g., rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs, etc.) are decentralized systems that have gained recent attention for their ability to reduce stormwater management problems while significantly benefiting human and ecosystem well-being. Available GI design methodologies lack a participatory framework that considers community-specific social, cultural, economic, and political constraints, critical components for widespread acceptance and effective implementation and maintenance of such systems. A project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation seeks to develop a novel, computational, GI design framework that integrates interactive, neighborhood-scale, collaborative design by multiple stakeholders ("crowd-sourced" design) with multi- scale models of ecosystem and …

The Smarth2o Project And The Role Of Social Computing In Promoting Efficient Residential Water Use: A First Analysis, A. E. Rizzoli, A. Castelleti, A. Cominola, P. Fraternali, A. Diniz Dos Santos, B. Storni, R. Wissmann-Alves, M. Bertocchi, J. Novak, I. Micheal

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

SmartH2O is an EU funded project which aims at creating a virtuous feedback cycle between water users and the utilities, providing users information on their consumption in quasi real time, and thus enabling water utilities to plan and implement strategies to reduce/reallocate water consumption. Traditional metering data, usually gathered twice a year, can be used to model consumers' behaviour at an aggregate level, but the motivations and individual attitudes of consumers are hidden. The advent of smart water meters allows gathering high frequency consumption data that can be used to provide instantaneous information to water utilities on the state of …

A Spatial Framework For Regional-Scale Flooding Risk Assessment, Yun Chen, Damian Barrett, Rui Liu, Lei Gao, Mingwei Zhou, Luigi Renzullo, Susan Cuddy, Irina Emelyanova

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The mining sector in Australia and globally has always been vulnerable to extreme weather with excess water due to flooding and deficient water through drought. Estimating flood inundation risk at a regional scale is essential for understanding sustainable mine water management, such as the Bowen Basin in Queensland, Australia. In this region, many coal mines have been facing a major challenge of increasing risk of flooding caused by intensive rainfall events. This research develops a spatial multi-criteria decision making {SMCDM) framework to assess flooding risk at regional scale using part of the Bowen Basin as a case study. Spatial data, …

Automated Data Quality Assessment: Dealing With Faulty On-Line Water Quality Sensors, Janelcy Alfreres, Peter A. Vanrolleghem

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Compared to traditional grab sampling modern measurement systems enable continuous water quality monitoring of water systems at high frequency. However, in real world applications on-line sensors are still subject to functional, technical and operational constraints. Challenges thus remain associated with the automation of data collection and especially data validation to ensure proper use and interpretation of the data and avoid the danger of building data graveyards. Poor quality data could drastically affect the results of their application, e.g. water quality models for river basin management, model-based control, WWTP control rules, decision making, etc. For practical fault detection purposes, in this …

Where Are We In Wastewater Treatment Plants Data Management? A Review And A Proposal, Manel Poch, Joaquim Comas, José Porro, Manel Garrido-Baserba, Lluis Corominas, Maite Pijuan

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are comprised of complex processes that need to be optimally managed. To attain that, in the last years an impressive effort has been made to incorporate monitoring devices able to provide from several hundred to more than ten thousand signals. With the aim to take benefit of those data, different data mining techniques have been applied to transform them into information and knowledge in order to help WWTP's managers. Furthermore, several mathematical models have been developed intending to simulate process behaviour including biomass and pollutants transformation. However, it is recognized that this it is not enough …

Biofilm Susceptibility In A Drinking Water Distribution System Regarding 24 Hours Demand Curve, Eva Ramos-Martínez, Manuel Herrera, Joaquín Izquierdo, Rafael Pérez-García

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Biofilm leads to various undesirable problems in drinking water distribution systems (DWDSs), representing a critical paradigm in the management of these systems. Biofilm depends on a complex interaction of water quality, operational factors, and infrastructure associated to DWDSs. Although, it is known that all these factors do influence biofilm development, they have not been studied to the same extent. Those associated with the design and operation of DWDSs have been the most unconsidered. Besides, the joint influence of these factors has been scarcely investigated due to the complexity of the community and the environment under study. In order to bridge …

Accept'hydro: A Tool For Evaluating Potential Wetland Areas At Floodplain Scale., Adrien Bonneu, Grégory Espitalier-Nöel, Patrice Torguet, Jean-Pierre Jessel, José-Miguel Sanchez-Pérez, Vervier Philippe, Sabine Sauvage

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Alluvial wetlands have the functions of hydrological regulation and water purification, but are also of interest for preventing flooding and improving the water quality of the natural environment that serves as a reserve for drinking water and biodiversity.

Delimiting these areas is often difficult because it involves both the physical characteristics (topography, river morphology etc.) and hydrodynamic characteristics of the porous medium (permeability etc.) The proposed tool, Accept’Hydro, includes a hydrodynamic simulation of the river, the alluvial aquifer and their interaction, and produces maps of alluvial wetlands with using hydrological criteria. The tool’s primary step consists …

Investigating Possible Climate Change And Development Effects On Water Quality Within An Arid Catchment In South Africa: A Comparison Of Two Models, Andrew R. Slaughter, Sukhmani K. Mantel, Denis A. Hughes

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The water quality degradation of fresh water resources has become an increasingly urgent global problem which is predicted to be exacerbated by future development and climate change. Since water quality is to a large extent driven by water quantity, it is useful for a model to incorporate a rainfall-runoff component (natural hydrology), reservoir storage, return flows and abstractions (systems modelling), and a water quality component. One such model that meets these requirements is the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) Model. During 2012, WEAP was applied to the Buffalo River within the Eastern Cape, South Africa, to investigate the effect on …

2d Hydrodynamic Based Logic Modelling Tool For River Restoration Decision Analysis: A Quantitative Approach To Project Prioritization, David J. Bandrowski, Yong G. Lai, D. Nathan Bradley, Josh Murauskas, Dave Gauman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the field of river restoration sciences there is a growing need for analytical modelling tools and quantitative processes to help identify and prioritize project sites. Two-dimensional (20) hydraulic models have become more common in recent years and with the availability of robust data sets and computing technology, it is now possible to evaluate large river systems at the reach scale. The Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP) - Bureau of Reclamation in Northern California is now analyzing a 40 mile segment of the Trinity River to determine priority and implementation sequencing for its Phase II channel rehabilitation projects. A comprehensive …

Assessing The Relative Value Of Stereoscopic 3d Versus Head Tracking In Large Scale Immersive Visualization, Derrick Turner, Daniel P. Ames

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The use of large-scale stereoscopic immersive visualization environments is growing globally as a supplement to field work in environmental science and engineering. Such systems typically include large-scale stereoscopic displays and head/hand tracking to facilitate an immersive user experience. These components can add significant cost and complication to such a system that may not be warranted if the components do not significantly improve the user experience. This paper presents a study conducted in a large-scale visualization environment called the VuePod, to help determine the relative value of head-tracking and stereoscopic technologies in terms of improved data interpretation. Forty-eight individuals were recruited …

The Use Of Object-Oriented Programming Concepts For Documenting A Model Ensemble, Georgii A. Alexandrov

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The spread of cloud computing services gives community modelling a reasonable opportunity to become a reality in scientific research. However, even if models will be deployed in clouds, and model codes will be open for re-use, there will be little progress in community modelling in the lack of consensus standards for model documentation. This paper is to discuss a conceptual framework for developing such standards. The proposed conceptual framework is based on the idea that a new model is often a modification of an old one, and hence, the similarities between the models of the same environmental process could be …

Modeling With Citizen Scientists: Using Community- Based Modeling Tools To Develop Citizen Science Projects, Steven Gray, David Mellor, Rebecca Jordan, Alycia Crall, Greg Newman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Although model-based reasoning is often at the center of environmental science and management, the process of constructing, refining and empirically validating scientific models is not often made explicit to participants in many citizen science programs. The lack of attention that modeling receives in citizen science programs is likely attributable to resource constraints, given that scientific modeling often requires considerable training and scientific software tools are not easily accessible to members of the general public. To address these constraints, we describe the development and use of a fuzzy-logic cognitive mapping software called Mental Modeler (http://www.mentalmodeler.org/), embedded within a citizen science …

Problem-Specific Rule Extraction For Better Performance Of Evolutionary Algorithms, Joaquin Izquierdo, Idel Montalvo, Enrique Campbell, Rafael Pérez-García

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are ubiquitous to many environmental issues. Typically, most evolutionary techniques use just a small part of the solutions evaluated at a time. Thus, many of the solutions evaluated during the search process are "forgotten" after one generation, and combined experience of several generations is typically not well exploited. Data mining (DM) techniques can enable deeper insight into the many "good" solutions that have been just simply glimpsed and have been rapidly disregarded because they were dominated by better solutions during an ephemeral moment in the evolution process. Based on a database obtained by suitably recording certain of …

Enhancing The Link Between Surface And Groundwater Models For Climate Change Assessment Of Water Supply And Demand In Northwest Mexico, George Whitten, Matthew Hann, Agustin Robles-Morua, Alex S. Mayer, Enrique R. Vivoni

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The integrated use of surface and groundwater models is critical for analyzing water resources sustainability. We have applied surface and groundwater models to the Sonora River basin (SRB) in Northwest Mexico within the context of participatory modeling with stakeholders to explore alternative futures under climate change impacts. The models are used to assess the hydrologic consequences of temperature and precipitation scenarios generated through the dynamical downscaling using the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model for historical, near-future and far- future study periods. WRF is used to downscale two global circulation models (GCMs), HadCM3 and MPI-ECHAM5. Improved representation of surface-groundwater interactions …

Environmental Fluid Mechanics At Iemss Conferences (2002-2014), Carlo Gualtieri, Dragutin T. Mihailoviĉ

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Environmental Sciences encompass issues such as climate change, conservation, biodiversity, water quality, groundwater contamination, soil contamination, use of natural resources, waste management, sustainable development, disaster reduction, air pollution, and noise pollution. Within this broad and inherently interdisciplinary field, Environmental Fluid Mechanics (EFM) is the scientific study of naturally occurring fluid flows of air and water on our planet Earth, especially of those flows that affect the environmental quality of air and water, with scales of relevance, which are ranged (i) spatially from millimetres to kilometres, and (ii) temporally from seconds to years.

The paper presents a comprehensive review of the …

Extending Existing Models To Capture Vegetation Response To Extreme Weather Events: The Modextreme Project, Gianni Bellocchi, Francisco J. Villalobos, Marcello Donatelli, Ole B. Christensen, Oscar Rojas, Roberto Confalonieri, Ioannis N. Athanasiadis, Irina Carpusca, Claudio O. Stöckle

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Extreme weather events are combinations of meteorological drivers that exceed certain thresholds and occur with low frequency, negatively impacting human living conditions and economic systems including agriculture. The three-year European project MODEXTREME (started on November 1st, 2013) aims at improving the predictive capability of biophysical crop and grassland simulation models under extreme weather conditions (mainly high/low temperatures and water deficit/excess). Existing modelling solutions can be improved with re-usable software libraries to capture extreme weather impacts. Estimates from existing and new modelling solutions will be compared on a variety of datasets and evaluated with respect to medium-term trajectories of future climate …

Predicting Impact Of Natural Calamities In Era Of Big Data And Data Science, Carol K. Joseph, Sunil Kakade

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Every year thousands of lives and millions of dollars are lost during natural catastrophic events. Data scientists have recognized the value of employing data mining techniques for evaluating these events to assist in understanding trends, predicting future disasters, and assessing vulnerability of populations. The goal of such analysis is to prepare governments for emergency response and relief efforts as well as to formulate strategies for future disaster mitigation. In addition, increasing pressures from a growing world population further emphasize the need for governments to seek viable solutions for balancing human needs with environmental constraints. Identifying populations vulnerable to environmental calamities …

A Model Component For Simulating Co2 Emissions Growth, Gleb Alexandrov

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Development of comprehensive Earth System models requires a variety of model components related to human feedbacks. Among them are the model components relating energy use to climate change and resource availability. Simulations of the changes in usage of various fuels over the next 25 years are essential for predicting the pathways of CO2 emission reduction needed for climate change mitigation, and considered as a challenging aspect of Earth system modelling (Erickson et al, 2009). Here I present a model component for simulating CO2 emission growth that takes into account the effect of non-renewable resource availability on the rate of consumption …

Discovering Comprehensible Hydrogeological Profiles In The Margarita Island's Aquifers Including Post-Processing In A Data Mining Process, Conti Dante, Gibert Karina

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Groundwater wells are one of the most important water resources in the world. Control and management of these resources are of high importance due to the implicit need of water as the main resource for life. This research focuses on a hydrogeological analysis with clustering, which is one of the most popular data mining methods, including In the classical data mining scheme, last step corresponds to the effective production of knowledge. In this paper, special focus on that part is done, by means of post-processing tools. The main goal is to discover prototypical profiles from the acquifer Pedro González in …

Graph Clustering Based On Social Network Community Detection Algorithms, Enrique Campbell, David Ayala-Cabrera, Joaquín Izquierdo, Rafael Pérez-García

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Graph network clustering has been an important field of investigation in recent years with a wide spectrum of applications, including environmental, genetic and engineering studies. There are two main types of applications; their suitability depends of the modeling context. Cases where the number of subdivisions is a priori known are tackled with different techniques than those where such number is not clearly evident. The second falls within the field of community detection, which has been broadly studied by social network scientists. Traditionally, community detection in graphs has been tackled by means of hierarchical clustering, which groups nodes based on their …

Trustworthiness Modelling On Continuous Environmental Measurement, Mats Neovius, Markus Stocker, Mauno Rönkkö, Luigia Petre

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the domain of environmental sciences, measurement is the process that maps some observed phenomenon to a formal measurement value, the latter being the result of a measurement process. The measurement process relies on data representing physical quantities of possibly continuously changing phenomena. Because of the inherent imprecision of this source data and interpretations made within the measurement process itself, the measurement processes and their measurement values are plagued with quality issues. Many of these quality issues may be parameterised and provided as metadata of the measurement value, e.g. precision, resolution, trustworthiness. Of these, trustworthiness quality parameter is evaluated by …