Digital Commons Network^™

Spatial Planning For Small Scale And Local Renewable Energy - Integrated Land Use Models Or Digital Decision Support Tools?, Richard J. Hewitt, Cheryl De Boer, Johannes Flacke

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Participatory decision support tools have been developed to support the implementation of many areas of environmental policy, but are less common in energy contexts. At the same time, a new wave of social innovation in small-scale and local Renewable Energies (SLRE) is emerging in response to problems with conventional energy systems including the climate crisis, rising energy prices, lack of democratic participation, energy poverty and many more. This emerging phenomenon calls for additional support for spatial planning of land use at the community level. Here, we discuss the process of participatory development of two different types of digital support tools …

Scheduling The Energy Consumption Of Residential Loads, The Impact Of Missing Data, Matteo Salani, Marco Derboni, Andrea Emilio Rizzoli

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We consider the problem of dispatching domestic power loads in presence of renewable energy sources. Renewables are largely and quickly fluctuating according to weather conditions, thus the imbalance between production and consumption may cause overvoltage, and overload of grid components. One of the technical measures for controlling these unbalances is the smart management of available flexibility in the grid. In order to let the distribution system operators face this challenge, we developed, in the context of the Optiflex project, a solution aimed to actively control domestic heat pumps and electric heaters. The main challenge of the project is that we …

Airborne Contaminant Urban Localization By The Hybrid Stochastic Artificial Neural Network System., Anna Wawrzynczak, Piotr Kopka, Monika Berendt-Marchel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

One of the tasks of early response groups to threats, especially in urban areas, is to quickly trace the source of the danger and take appropriate steps to prevent its effects. For example, in the case of atmospheric contamination, the first thread indicators are the concentrations of the dangerous substance reported by a network of sensors in a given area. Thus, the dedicated emergency system should localize the source of contamination based on the data from the sensors. Moreover, such a system should work in realtime. The paper presents the reconstruction system pointing to the most probable source of the …

Cib - Where Are We And Where Are We Going?, Wolfgang Weimer-Jehle

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Cross-Impact Balances (CIB) was proposed in 2006 as a method for qualitative systems and scenario analysis. Fifteen years and about 300 published application cases later, the time has come to discuss the state of the art and future avenues of the method with method theorists and practitioners from all application domains. Looking back can help to understand which direction we should take in the further development of the method. Hence, a preparatory step of reflecting on CIB’s future can be to comprehensively review the past and current method practice and investigate, what benefits CIB users appreciate, what challenges they see, …

Application Of Generic Model Components For Environmental Policyanalysis, Jean-Luc De Kok, Peter Viaene, Erika Palmer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A powerful combination of stakeholder engagement, scenario analysis and System Dynamics (SD) modelling was adopted in the EU funded project COASTAL (https://h2020-coastal.eu) to generate evidencebased policy recommendations for sustainable development of regions at the land-sea interface. The project is organized around six case areas or Multi-Actor Labs. Stakeholders and domain experts interacted to design Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) capturing land-sea interactions and feedback mechanisms. Quantification of these CLDs allowed further analysis, such as the pinpointing of ‘tipping points'. Typical questions answered are: why do certain businesses fail and others not under similar circumstances? Why do certain management strategies work in …

A Valley Lost To Time, Washington C. Pearce

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis delivers a playable and functional module for the 5 th Edition of the World’s Greatest Role-Playing Game. The Critical Introduction uses reader response and performance theory to create a framework for reading role-playing games as literature, explains some of the recent scholarship surrounding role-playing games, and details the creative process and work of the creative thesis.

In A Valley Lost to Time, Adventurers recruited by the Trellin Prime Minister are sent westward, over the Drazlin mountain range, with a mission to discover the fate of a decades-lost failed colony. The route is long and treacherous, passing through a …

Visualizing Abm Submodels To Promote Stakeholder Participation: A Look Into Sustainable Forest Operations, Zenith Arnejo, Benoit Gaudou, Nathaniel Bantayan, Leonardo Barua

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Over the years, there has been an accumulation of different agent-based models (ABM) dedicated to forest resource management. However, only a few have been used in the implementation of real-world decision-making applications. One reason for this is the low level of stakeholder engagement in model development. There is still a significant gap between the stakeholders' understanding of the socioecological system and its corresponding representation as a process in a simulation model. In order to bridge this gap, it is necessary to communicate to the stakeholders the actual processes taking place in the simulation model. In this study, we developed an …

Linking Models With Actions: The Need For Transparency In The Public Modeling Process, Kenneth M. Bryden, Scott Ferguson

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We are confronted by a number of environmental challenges (perhaps crises) that require societal action. These include climate change, plastics in the environment, and environmental justice as well as many others. All of these require building a shared vision of the future and our actions. However, building a societal vision is a messy process requiring some form of shared narrative between various stakeholders who have different and often conflicting interests with limited, incomplete, and uncertain information. These interests are defined by each stakeholder’s current narrative, constructed by people asking themselves ‘what is going on here?,’ and answered by drawing on …

Experiences And Challenges In Developing A Decentralized, Michael Berg-Mohnicke

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

For many years the amount of available data as well as computing power is increasing if not even accelerating. Naturally there is a high desire to use these powers and possibilities also in our environmental research field. Unfortunately at the same time the diversity in hardware (mobile/desktop/cloud/HPC) and software (languages/frameworks) is growing as well let alone because of the increasing amount of legacy to deal with. One common way to manage these challenges is to centralize storage and computational power and via central authority impose restrictions on useable hardware and software. Another possibility could be to leverage the ubiquitous connectedness …

Gamified Process Of Conceptual Model Development With Stakeholders, Elena Bakhanova, Jaime Garcia, William Raffe, Alexey Voinov

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Despite the positive influence of gamification on increasing engagement and motivation, there are a limited number of cases when the participatory modeling (PM) process has been gamified. In this research we focused on gamifying the stage of Conceptual Model Development because there are almost no examples when it has been gamified in any way. At the same time, this stage is very important for the overall PM process because it is associated with the first workshops where the stakeholders might experience difficulties in learning the modeling language and interacting in a group with diverse views. Hence, there is a need …

Leveraging Modern Programming Languages To Streamline Coastal Engineering Decisions: The Development Of The Usace Coastal Engineering Toolkit (Ucet), Theresa R. Coumbe, Amanda R. Catlett, Scott D. Christensen, Mary A. Bryant

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Automated Coastal Engineering System (ACES) is an interactive, computer-based design and analysis system for coastal engineering applications. Even though it was designed in the 1990s and is built on legacy software, making it cumbersome to use by today’s standards (e.g, DOS-based with keystroke inputs), ACES continues to be actively applied in the coastal engineering community for planning and finding simple estimates. Using Python, and modern open-source libraries like Param and Panel, we developed the USACE Coastal Engineering Toolkit (UCET), an intuitive, web-based interface that will enable the broader coastal engineering community, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the general public access …

A Cross-Sectoral Look At The Use Of A Frame Game To Set Strategic Agendas For Urban Resilience, Carissa Champlin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The ability to integrate knowledge that is distributed across a broad range of research disciplines and professions is crucial to responding effectively to the grand challenges pressing our societies. Urban resilience being one of these challenges requires coordinated responses to the shocks and stresses that threaten our highly interconnected social, technical and environmental systems in cities and regions. Using the Weblinx strategy-making frame game, a group of resilience engineering assistant professors and other academics prioritized key topics of urban resilience originating from their various domains of expertise. The adaptable frame game methodology also proved to be effective in an online …

Perceptions, Information Prioritizations, Decision Making – Can They Be Modeled And Gamified?, Pierre Glynn, Payam Aminpour, Scott Chiavacci, Kristan Cockerill

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A multitude of behavioral and social factors control how people/institutions/collectivities (i.e., hereafter called actors) perceive, process, value, communicate, and use (or not) information in decision making. These factors include various forms of discounting, in-group/out-group processes, biases, beliefs, heuristics, values (including moral and social norms) – as well as information perception, processing and communication issues. Game theory, metagame theory, drama theory, decision theory, agent-based modeling, role-playing and other experimental games are some of the ways that have been used to model and predict how different actors react to information and use it in decision making. Some of these techniques may be …

The Environmental Fate, Transformation, And Speciation Of Nano Copper Oxide In A Freshwater Environment, Bianca N. Ross, Christopher D. Knightes

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The use and production of engineered nanomaterials have grown rapidly over the past few decades due to their unique properties and versatility. As a result of widespread industrial applications, nanomaterials have evolved into their own unique class of emerging contaminants. However, the full extent of nanomaterials’ impact on the environment is currently unknown. In this study, we use the Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP, version 8.32) to investigate the fate, transformation, and speciation of nano copper oxide (nanoCuO), a common component of antifouling boat-bottom paints, in a freshwater environment over the course of 101 years. WASP serves as a …

Design And Development Of Datalabs For Environment Data Science, Maria Salama, Gordon S. Blair

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Research in Environmental Data Science is trans-disciplinary, where scientists and practitioners from different disciplines create data-driven solutions to environmental challenges, often using a large amount of data along with analytical methods. DataLabs, in continuous development by UKCEH using the agile approach, is a cloud-based virtual research platform that advocates open science by providing the infrastructure and software tools for collaborating scientists to explore big data, develop and share new methods, and communicate their results to stakeholders and decision-makers. The architecture of DataLabs follows the principles of service-oriented architectures, to enable selecting the most appropriate technology for each component and exposing …

Including Varying Degrees Of Stakeholder Input In The Optimisation Of Integrated Water Management Planning And Design, Holger R. Maier, Michael Di Matteo, Graeme C. Dandy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Sustainable integrated water management (IWM) requires collaborative planning and design approaches. The complex engineering systems involved can have a large number of options and multiple benefits and costs to multiple stakeholders. Understanding trade-offs between options with respect to these diverse benefits and costs can increase decision-maker buy-in to negotiated outcomes on IWM performance requirements and engineering solutions. Optimisation frameworks using evolutionary algorithms (such as genetic algorithms) can be tailored to the level of stakeholder interaction required to encourage buy-in into the modelling process and adopted solutions. This paper presents a series of three (3) IWM planning and design evolutionary optimisation …

Scalable Orchestration Of Containerized Science Applications, Deron Smith, Kurt Wolfe, Rajbir Parmer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Scientific computing applications can be complex to design, difficult to deploy, and expensive computationally. Using the latest advances in software engineering and cloud technologies, we can greatly mitigate these challenges while also providing new opportunities to pursue research with increased flexibility. Our Hydrologic Micro Services (HMS) technology stack has been developed as a containerized set of components, orchestrated through Kubernetes, that can be managed, updated, and deployed with relative ease to any cloud platform. The general framework can be applied to a variety of different scientific software applications, that can be containerized, providing the ability to quickly create complete technology …

Model-Data Marriage Counselling: Resolving The Age-Old Conflict Between Models And Data (And Between Those Who Model And Those Who Measure), Felix Egger, Maria P. Vilas, Matthew P. Adams, Hayley Langsdorf

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Models and data (and those who generate them) have an important but sometimes uneasy relationship. Effective integration of information from models and data is the “holy grail” for decision-makers and those seeking to understand environmental systems. Data provide snapshots of what is happening in the system, which is essential for thorough model calibration, validation, and testing. In contrast, models can explore the underlying processes driving the observed behaviour. Thus, models and data provide complementary information about a system. In cases where model predictions do not agree with observations, resolving any discrepancies is essential for model-data integration and can be a …

Making Sense Of Scenario Techniques And Robustness Metrics For Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty, Cameron Mcphail, Holger Maier, Seth Westra, Leon Van Der Linden

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Decision-making under deep uncertainty often requires consideration of which scenarios and which robustness metric(s) to use. However, there are many different approaches for generating scenarios and many different robustness metrics in literature, often creating confusion and decision paralysis for the decision-makers. How can decision-makers determine which sets of scenarios to use and does it matter? Which robustness metric(s) are the best for the environmental system under consideration and does it matter which one is selected? To answer these questions and address other points of potential confusion, we introduce a guidance framework to assist with the identification of the most robust …

A Mixed Method Approach To Understanding Team Members' Perspectives After Receiving Problem-Solving Training And Performance Feedback, Alexander Mark Julian

Theses and Dissertations

While countless studies have collected data on the effectiveness of various problem- solving models, few have attempted to identify which components of the training process are helpful to participants. Two teacher teams consisting of seven participants were trained in an adapted version of the Team-initiated Problem Solving (TIPS) model, observed each meeting, and provided performance feedback regarding how well they had adhered to the model. A mixed method approach was used to collect quantitative data in the form of the teams' adherence to the TIPS model and qualitative data once successful adherence to the model had been shown. Researchers interviewed …

Predicting The Topographic Zonation Of Vegetation In A Salt Playa In Utah, Usa, Roger T. Koide, Jakob Garlick, Spencer Klatt, Noah Boekweg, Augustine Tambe, Katherine Jensen, Emily Weatherhead

Western North American Naturalist

Vegetation in salt playas—iconic landforms in the Great Basin of the western United States—exhibits a striking topographical zonation that has remained unexplained. In particular, a distinctive pattern is exhibited by salt-succulent species in the Amaranthaceae wherein Allenrolfea occidentalis occurs in monospecific stands at the highest topographic position in the playa, Sarcocornia utahensis occurs in monospecific stands in the middle position, and Salicornia rubra occurs in monospecific stands at the lowest topographic position. Because salt playas feature a shallow, temporary winter lake that recedes as it evaporates throughout the summer and because vegetation zones closely follow the contours of the temporary …

100+ Resources For Nonprofits

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Here’s a list of over 100 nonprofit resources to help organizations in their marketing, fundraising, social media and more. The list is in alphabetical order by the name of organization. Each item has the name of the organization, the online link to help them learn more about the resource, and whether the resource is FREE to nonprofits, or whether a FREE option is available.

Majority of nonprofits are small, creating an increased need to find supportive resources and tools.

Womans Exponent Transcription File For Download, Lula Greene Richards, Emmeline B. Wells, Annie Wells Cannon, Harold B. Lee Library

The Woman’s Exponent Transcription

No abstract provided.

Emphasizing The Importance Of Long-Term Marketing Strategies For Nonprofits Utilizing Social Media, William Baumert

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

In order for nonprofit organizations to tackle complex societal issues, support from public or private sectors is generally required. Marketing to these sectors through social media channels is highly beneficial due to the inexpensive and adaptable nature of the platforms, however creating and deploying an effective marketing campaign through these mediums can be challenging. This piece will aim to emphasize important points for nonprofits to consider when creating long-term marketing strategies revolving around social media.

Social Media Statistics For Charities And Nonprofits In 2022

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

According to the Giving Report, 29% of people consider social media to be the communication tool that most inspires giving.

Thrive Online: Supporting Students In Learning To Learn Online, Layne Nyman West

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

The purpose of this project was to design and develop a 2 to 4 week online course intended to improve the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and self-efficacy of all students (with special emphasis on first-year, first-generation, multicultural, and non-traditional students) to effectively learn online.

Hpv Infection And Vaccination: A Question-And-Answer Guide For School Nurses, Mendi England, Karlen E. Luthy, Michael S. Robinson

Student Works

This paper provides school nurses with a quick question-and-answer format guide to common HPV-related questions that are often asked by school aged children's parents.

Ataruz Archaeological Field School Preparation Class, Jacob Fuge

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

The purpose of this project was to prepare students who will participate in an archeological excavation in Ataruz, Jordan. Typically, the directors invite anywhere from five to eight BYU students to go on the excavation, which takes place in July during the summer term of Brigham Young University. The client for the project is a professor in the Ancient Scripture Department at Brigham Young University and a co-director of the dig. Normally, the students who participate have had no experience or formal training in archeological fieldwork. The time to work on the excavation is usually limited to two to four …

Automated Pre-Play Analysis Of American Football Formations Using Deep Learning, Jacob Deloy Newman

Theses and Dissertations

Annotation and analysis of sports videos is a time consuming task that, once automated, will provide benefits to coaches, players, and spectators. American football, as the most watched sport in the United States, could especially benefit from this automation. Manual annotation and analysis of recorded video of American football games is an inefficient and tedious process. Currently, most college football programs focus on annotating offensive formation. As a first step to further research for this unique application, we use computer vision and deep learning to analyze an overhead image of a football play immediately before the play begins. This analysis …

Efficient And Adaptive Decentralized Sparse Gaussian Process Regression For Environmental Sampling Using Autonomous Vehicles, Tanner A. Norton

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I present a decentralized sparse Gaussian process regression (DSGPR) model with event-triggered, adaptive inducing points. This DSGPR model brings the advantages of sparse Gaussian process regression to a decentralized implementation. Being decentralized and sparse provides advantages that are ideal for multi-agent systems (MASs) performing environmental modeling. In this case, MASs need to model large amounts of information while having potential intermittent communication connections. Additionally, the model needs to correctly perform uncertainty propagation between autonomous agents and ensure high accuracy on the prediction. For the model to meet these requirements, a bounded and efficient real-time sparse Gaussian process …