Digital Commons Network^™

Data-Driven Hybrid Approach To Short-Term Predictions Of Hydrological Events, Marina G. Erechtchoukova Prof., Peter A. Khaiter Prof., Dennis Khaiter

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Application of supervised classification to short-term forecasting of hydrological events demonstrated that combining outputs of several individual learners into a final judgement improves the accuracy of predictions and creates more robust models. Given that predictions are generated as categorical values corresponding to a class label of a future hydrological event, the ensembles perform better when they incorporate black box models which disagree on the same subsets of data. To further extend the ‘diversity of opinions’ of ensemble members, black box models of a different type can be added to an ensemble of classifiers. Given that regression methods are aimed at …

Policy Instruments In Support Of The Management Of Numerical Models In Public Sector Organizations: A Case Study Of Ontario, Thorsten Arnold, Mason Marchildon

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Numerical models have become central tools for public sector environmental decision making. While modelling has been the foundation of environmental assessment in academia, its literature reflects little concern for how the operational aspects of numerical models are governed as part of the organizational workflows by the public sector. Organizations continue to face governance challenges in the lack of procedural guidance. Based on a review of academic findings on modelling processes, this research report outlines the watershed management context of the Province of Ontario and its rural/urban divide that is reflected in institutional capacity. Based on five interviews with watershed managers …

Modelling Microbial Water Quality Across Multiple Temporal Scales, Andrew R. Slaughter, Sukhmani K. Mantel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Microbial water quality can have profound effects on human health. Microbial water quality modelling can be a useful tool for water quality management in catchments. Since flow drives water quality, water quality models rely on estimates of flow from hydrological and systems models. However, these different hydrological and systems models operate over different time steps, which may be mismatched to those of flow processes affecting microbial water quality. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the accuracy of microbial water quality modelling across different time steps, thereby assessing which flow time steps are suitable for driving microbial water …

Patterns Of Persistent, Bioaccumulative, And Toxic Pollutant Co-Contamination In Marine And Freshwater Fish, Kimberly Bourne, Mark E. Borsuk, Celia Chen, Amanda Curtis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The risk incurred from exposure to multiple contaminants in fish tissue is largely unknown due to a lack of understanding of toxicokinetic relationships and of the combinations of contaminants to which people are exposed. This knowledge gap could be detrimental to human health through possibly inadequate contaminant-specific fish advisories. The co-occurrence of various persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic pollutants (PBTs) has not been systematically explored. In this study, we utilize the wealth of fish tissue data from available EPA datasets to quantitatively characterize the patterns of contaminant co-occurrence using a new approach called generalized joint attribute modeling (GJAM). This approach allows …

Energy Consumption Prediction For Recreation Facilities Using Hybrid Neuro-Fuzzy Inference Systems, Paul Banda, Muhammed Bhuiyan, Guomin Zhang, Andy Song

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Leisure centers are growing in popularity as health and physical fitness awareness is becoming an integral part of human society. Leisure centers consume more energy compared to most office buildings but are less studied in the area of non-residential energy consumption prediction. This work presents an energy consumption prediction effort for a leisure center using a class of two ANFIS based adaptive networks: ANFIS GP and ANFIS SC and multi-linear regression. Climatic, periodicity and energy use data collected over a period of eight months were pre-processed, normalized and split into training and testing sets before being presented to the adaptive …

Simulating Ammonia Emission From Fertilizer Application To Canadian Farmland, Jingyi Yang Dr, Craig F. Drury Dr, Xueming Yang Dr

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

An ammonia emission model was developed based upon the European Environmental Agency Tier 3 modelling approach. This ammonia model was integrated into the Canadian Agricultural Nitrogen Budget (CANBv4.0) model at the soil landscapes of Canada (SLC) 1:1 M scale. Simulations of ammonia emissions by fertilizer type and crop type were performed for the period from 1981 to 2011. Data for annual nitrogen fertilizer sales for eight fertilizer types was obtained from the Canadian fertilizer industry. Fertilizer N application rates were based upon the agronomic recommendations for crops and these varied by soil type. These fertilizer N addition rates were adjusted …

Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps To Model The Impacts Of Autonomous Vehicle Technology On Communities: An Illustration Of The Process, Pei Zhang, Antonie Jetter

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM), as a future-study and fuzzy-front management research tool, could help the decision-makers to get the future scenarios on decisions of new technology application in real life, with a direct capture of stakeholders' cognitions on the decision-making subjective. Currently, the Southwest Corridor Plan (connecting with Southwest Portland, from Tualatin and Sherwood to Tigard) for the city of Portland, is one of the on-going urban planning projects which is focusing on improve the on-ground passenger transit system of the City. Regarding this real-life project, the opinions from stakeholders on future scenarios on potential usage of autonomous vehicles (AV) …

An Agent-Based Approach To Evaluating Sustainable Drought Adaptation Policy, Mike Johnson, Marthe Wens

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Droughts are an increasingly prevalent and costly hazard that impact urban populations, agricultural production, and natural ecosystems. As climate becomes more variable, drought-prone regions are working to adapt through policy measures that address the diverse needs of urban centers, irrigation districts, farmers, governments, and NGOs. Developing policy pathways is a useful way to design such drought policies, however, their development requires an understanding of how human and biophysical systems interact and respond to a variety of climate and policy scenarios. In our research, we link a distributed hydrologic model with an agent based model to simulate the emergent, heterogeneous drought …

Simulating Toxicant Concentrations In Surface Waters And Sediments: Advances In The Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (Wasp8), Christopher D. Knightes, Brian Avant, Yanlai Han, Richard Zepp, Dermont Bouchard, Brad Acrey, Tim Wool, Robert B. Ambrose Jr

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Toxicant concentrations in surface waters and sediments are of environmental concern due to their potential impacts on ecological and human receptors. Numerical, process-based, mass balance models are one way to understand a system and its governing processes, assist in supporting management decisions, and evaluate different toxicant release scenarios. The US Environmental Protection Agency has developed and continues to improve the Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP), which is one of the more widely used water quality models in the US and the world. WASP is a modeling framework with which the user can develop a water quality model for nutrients …

Spatiotemporal Bayesian Modeling Of West Nile Virus In Mosquitoes, With A Focus On Ecological Predictors, Mark H. Myer, Scott R. Campbell, John M. Johnston

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Mosquito-borne disease is a growing threat to public health, with the spread of invasive arboviral vectors and expansion of habitat zones due to changing climates driving an increased interest in predicting disease patterns. We worked with the Suffolk County, New York vector-borne disease surveillance team to develop a spatiotemporal model of West Nile virus (WNV) prevalence in Culex pipiens-restuans mosquitoes. Suffolk County has experienced 55 human cases of WNV since 2010, resulting in 3 deaths. Our model narrowed down a list of over 40 potential predictors of WNV including ecological, weather, and built-environment covariates. Spatial and temporal random error structure …

Empiric And Semi-Empiric Modelling Of Radionuclide Long-Term Dynamics In The Soil-Water Environment: Fukushima And Chernobyl, Aleksei Konoplev, Yoshifumi Wakiyama, Yasunori Igarashi, Vladimir Kanivets, Gennady Laptev, Sergii Obrizan, Leonid Bogdan, Yuliya Balashevska, Kenji Nanba, Yuichi Onda

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Today, 7 years after the Fukushima accident, when emergency and short-term phases are over, the most relevant issue is long-term dynamics of radiocesium in the environment. Detailed analysis of Chernobyl data covering an extended period can become a foundation for long-term prediction of changes in environmental radioactive contamination in Fukushima. In our studies of the irrigation ponds in Okuma town, radiocesium (r-Cs) showed a persistent behavior and was characterized by regular seasonal variations: the r-Cs concentrations tend to grow in the summer and decrease in the winter. Similar behavior of r-Cs was observed in Chernobyl cooling pond for 30 years …

Are Interactive Web-Tools For The Public Worth The Effort? An Experimental Study On The Electricity Supply Transition In Switzerland, Georgios Xexakis, Evelina Trutnevyte

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Interactive web-tools are a recent trend in decision support and participatory modeling. They are often regarded as powerful methods to familiarize the public with complex problems and allow for more active and enjoyable learning. They have been even suggested to have potential in lifting barriers to communicate uncertainty. Nevertheless, including interactivity is much more resource consuming than traditional methods and, in some cases, may even undermine or complicate the communication further. Although studies exist on how to design and assess interactive web-tools, there is little empirical evidence whether they can be more effective, in comparison with a static medium. We …

Health Impacts Of Air Quality Measures Across Sectors And Spatial Scales, Emanuela Peduzzi, Enrico Pisoni, Philippe Thunis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Poor air quality and related health impacts are still an issue in cities and regions which exceed the guidelines set by the World Health Organisation. In order to reduce the impacts of air pollution it is necessary to abate emissions of precursors through measures across sectors and spatial scales.

The approach developed in this study aims at quantifying the variability of the health outcomes that can be obtained by applying emissions reductions with priority to specific sectors (e.g. transport) and/or in specific areas (e.g. in urban areas) in comparison to reductions applied per precursor at the national level. Emission reductions …

User-Friendly Decision Support For Integrated Water Management: Epa’S Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (Wmost), Naomi Detenbeck, Alyssa Le, Amy Piscopo, Timothy Stagnitta, Jeff White, Shannon Mckenrick, Annie Brown, Marilyn Ten Brink

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Communities, utilities, and watershed organizations have multiple goals for water resource management; these include meeting regulatory requirements but may extend to economic, supply, siting, recreation, and other goals. The Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool, WMOST, allows stakeholders to identify the most cost effective suite of management options across stormwater, drinking water, wastewater, and land conservation programs that will meet their identified goals and constraints. Instructions to guide the user through data entry, selection of potential management practices and constraints, optimization, and display of results are embedded in a Microsoft ® Excel spreadsheet. WMOST reads in baseline hydrology (runoff, recharge) and …

Spatio-Temporal Modelling Of Air Pollutant Exposure At Population And Individual Scale – Where Space And Time Matters, Stefan Reis, Massimo Vieno, Tomas Liska, Rachel Beck, Edward Carnell, Mathew Heal

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We are applying an atmospheric chemistry transport model (ACTM) - EMEP4UK (http://www.emep4uk.ceh.ac.uk) - in combination with high-resolution census data for residential and workday populations for the UK to identify the difference in potential exposure to air pollution taking into account general mobility at population level. Analyses at population level revealed that the potential exposure calculated for three key air pollutants (nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter and ground level ozone) was only marginally different, when taking the variation of population densities during workday hours and the remaining time of the week into account. However, exploratory simulations for individual level …

Combining Modelling With Clustering Analysis To Characterise Exceedances Of No2 Concentrations In The Metropolitan Area Of Buenos Aires, Andrea L. Pineda Rojas, Emilio Kropff, Julie A. Leloup, Nicolas A. Mazzeo

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Ground-level air pollutant concentrations are known to present marked spatial variations in the urban atmosphere. In large urban areas, air quality models can contribute to assess potential exposure concentration levels. The Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (MABA), the third mega-city of Latin America, concentrates around 13 million inhabitants in approximately 3830 km². However, despite of its extension and the potential impact of air quality on human health, only a few monitoring campaigns have measured ground-level nitrogen dioxide (NO₂). In this work, an urban scale atmospheric dispersion model (DAUMOD-GRS) is applied in the MABA, considering three years …

Exploratory Participatory Modeling With Fcm To Overcome Uncertainty: Improving Safety Culture In Oil And Gas Operations, Ahmed Alibage, Antonie J. Jetter, Payam Aminpour, Steven A. Gray, Steven Scyphers

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This work combines qualitative text analysis, participatory modeling with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) with Exploratory Modelling and Analysis (EMA). FCM is suitable for modeling in data-poor environments when the system under study is not well described in quantitative terms. A case in point is safety culture, which describes the values, routines, and work processes that allow an organization to prevent disasters by avoiding and quickly bouncing back from mistakes. The concept is particularly relevant in oil and gas industry, where initially small errors have potentially devastating environmental, social, and economic impacts. In this setting relevant quantitative data on safety culture …

Simulating Reactive Nitrogen In Canadian Farmland From 1981 To 2011, Jingyi Yang Dr, Craig F. Drury Dr, Xueming Yang Dr

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A reactive nitrogen (N) model has been developed to estimate reactive N for Canadian agricultural land at a soil landscape of Canada polygon 1:1M scale. The N inputs include fertilizer N, biological N fixation, N deposition and N mineralization from previous organic residues. The N output contains crop N removal for food and feed, N losses from gaseous forms including N₂O and NH₃, surface runoff and leaching of NO₃^-, and residual inorganic N left in the soil. Manure N was considered as part of the internal N cycle. The inputs of the model …

Presentation Title: Spatio-Temporal Quantification Of Wastewater Irrigation Impacts In Agricultural Systems Towards Suitable Development: An Example From The Mezquital Valley, Mexico, Karla E. Locher-Krause, Serena Cauccu, Stefan Huelsman, Hiroshan Hettiarachchi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Unsustainable use of natural resources reduces socioecological systems resilience and impairs their ability to provide benefits and services to communities. An integrated management approach to complex agricultural land-use systems can address not only food security but also improve the nexus between water, soil and ecosystems services management towards a sustainable development. In water-scarce areas, irrigation is a valuable management practice that could benefit from strategies such as wastewater reuse. However, the use of untreated wastewater is widely recognized as a threat to public as well as environmental health. This is the case for the Mezquital Valley in Mexico, an area …

Decision Support For Control Of Salt And Methylmercury Export From Managed Seasonal Wetlands, Nigel Wt Quinn Phd, P.E., D.Wre, Stefanie Helmrich, Joel Herr, Katie Van Werkhoven

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Monomethylmercury (MeHg) is a toxic mercuric compound that, even at very low concentrations, can lead to mercury (Hg) bioaccumulation within the aquatic food web and cause high levels of MeHg contamination in fish and humans. The behavior of Hg in the environment depends on numerous chemical, physical, and biological factors that vary in time and space driven by biogeochemical and hydrodynamic processes. Managed seasonal wetlands are a major source of both MeHg and salinity to the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta which discharges into San Francisco Bay and is the source of drinking water for 2/3 of California’s citizens. Whereas …

Towards A Semantic Approach For Environmental Timeseries Data Fusion, Argyris Samourkasidis, Ioannis N. Athanasiadis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Environmental timeseries acqusition, integration and transformation into a consistent data format is becoming more and more challenging in the Internet of Things era, but also for managing legacy model data files. To date, data transformation from diverse sources into one data format requires significant efforts to tackle semantic heterogeneity. In this work we present a declarative approach for environmental timeseries data transformation using semantics. We use a template to annotate environmental data files with terms from a vocabulary. We demonstrate how a reasoner may be employed to resolve synonyms across different vocabularies. This enables to annotate each data file once; …

Standardizing Cropping System Data For Integrated Agricultural Resource Assessment, Jack R. Carlson, Lucas Yaege, Joel Poore, Larry E. Wagner, James R. Frankenberger, Olaf David

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Approximately 40 percent of the land in the United States is farmland, about 370 million hectares. Farmers cultivate 158 million hectares, making daily decisions to improve the productivity of their land. Through technical assistance program providers and agricultural retail consultants, they use several tools to assess the sustainability of their operations, analyzing soil health, water management, agricultural chemical inputs, energy use, among other concerns. These tools currently provide more than 1 million assessments annually on farm fields across the country, including models and metamodels estimating water and wind erosion, soil organic matter trend, farm fuel use, nutrient and pesticide loss …

Integrating Epa Models And Data In Open Scenario Planning Tools, Allen Brookes

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Environmental and health modeling results can be beneficial to communities, especially when making decisions about changes in land use, transportation, buildings and infrastructure, and waste. Often communities do not have knowledge of these models, capacity to use them, or even the expertise to use them. Building models into processes that communities are already using alleviates the problems of knowledge, capacity, and expertise. Many communities employ scenario planning tools to model consequences of possible decisions for changing the communities built environment. Some of these tools provide open architectures that allow additional analytic capabilities as part of these scenarios. This talk discusses …

Moving Toward A Real-Time Model Of Groundwater/Surface Water Interactions In Two Heavily Irrigated Systems, Daniel Abrams, Shelby Ahrendt, Daniel R. Hadley

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The drought of 2012 taught us two things about water supply in Illinois: 1) many areas in the state had at-risk water supplies, while others were remarkably resilient and 2) there was a need for more rapid analyses of water resources in periods of extreme stress. To this end, we have established a real-time monitoring network of both groundwater and surface water elevations in the most heavily irrigated county in the state, which also happens to be one of the most resilient water supplies. Furthermore, we have established a monitoring network near the Illinois State Water Survey campus where transducer …

Numerical Model Chain Of Radionuclide Transport In “Watershed – River – Reservoir” Systems: Development And Implementation At Chernobyl And Fukushima -Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants, Mark Zheleznyak, Sergii Kivva, Oleksiy Boyko, Yasunori Igarashi, Aleksey Konoplev, Oleksandr Pylypenko, Maksym Sorokin, Yoshifumi Wakiyama

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Turbulent two-phase flows drive transport of radionuclides released into the water systems, - rivers, reservoirs, coastal areas. Radiation exposure of the population via aquatic pathways by radiocesium and some other radionuclides should be modeled taking into account the sorption-desorption exchange of these elements between water, suspended and bottom sediments. The chain of Environmental Fluid Mechanics (EFD) models of different scale of the resolution were developed to simulate the radioactive contamination of the water systems at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) after April 1986 accident and the Fukushima- Daiichi NPP (FDNPP) after March 2011 accident. Two models were applied for …

Hybrid Service Simulation Model For Circular Economy Implementation, Edna Guevara-Rivera, Roberto Osorno-Hinojosa, Victor Hugo Zaldívar-Carrillo

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Circular economy (CE) aims to redefine products and services to design waste out by using renewable energy sources. In Europe and the United States, many industries have implemented circular economy in one or more of its product cycles. However, in the literature, there are no reported cases from Mexico. In this article, we review service-dominant (S-D) logic and ecosystem services (ES) to define the value cocreation between the elements in a CE cycle. On the other hand, we propose to model each one of those elements, their interactions and behaviors using Agent-based Modelling (ABM) and System Dynamics (SD) aiming at …

Modelling Curtain Weirs And Its Effects On Controlling Algal Blooms In A Subtropical Reservoir Of China, Ranojit Kumar Dutta, Jun Ma, Defu Liu

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Curtain Weirs (CWs) is a hydraulic structure which acts as a barrier to flow and diffusion of heat across the width of the water body. Algal blooms occurred frequently in Xiangxi Bay (XXB), one of the largest tributaries of the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR). A laterally averaged two-dimensional hydrodynamic and water quality model (CE-QUAL-W2) was used to simulate the curtain weirs including hydrodynamics and chlorophyll-a concentrations in XXB. The developed model was calibrated using data collected in XXB from January to December in 2010. Results indicated that the maximum chlorophyll-a concentrations were observed 154 mg/m³ according sampling sites such …

Embers: An Approach For Igniting Participatory Learning And Synthesis, Deana Pennington, Emily Bondank, Jennifer Clifton, Alexander Killion, Katalina Salas, Aaron Shew, Kelley Sterle, Bradley Wilson

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many of humanity’s most pressing issues are socio-environmental, and as such, are ill-structured, “wicked” problems. Wicked problems require a participatory process that includes researchers from different disciplines and key stakeholders to collaboratively identify science needs. A key challenge in working on these problems is that the problem scope is typically unbounded, the issues are complex and interwoven, and the modeling approach can be framed in a multitude of ways. Because each wicked problem is unique, there exists a plethora of examples of participatory processes used to gain traction on modeling such problems, along with an equally extensive list of tools …

An Integrated Swat-Modflow Model For Estimating Nitrate Transport From Agricultural Practices For A Watershed In North Carolina, Riyana Ayub, Gnanamanikam Mahinthakumar

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Understanding the interaction between groundwater and surface water in watersheds is essential for assessment of long-term anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems due to agricultural farming practices. Nitrate leaching from intensified agricultural farming practices percolates through the surficial aquifer and degrading groundwater quality in many parts of North Carolina. To evaluate the process of nitrate accumulation and leaching in surface and groundwater, we developed an integrated model using SWAT-MODFLOW and simulated the nitrate transport in aquifer using MODFLOW’s reactive transport model, RT3D. This study is applied to the Northeast Cape Fear Watershed (4480 km²) within the Cape Fear River Basin …

Basis Characteristic Of Hydraulic Jump On Pebbled Rough Bed, Farhad Bahmanpouri, Carlo Gualtieri Prof., Hubert Chanson Prof.

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In open channel flows, such as in streams and rivers, the hydraulic jump is a sudden transition from a high-velocity, supercritical flow into a slow-moving, subcritical flow. It is characterized by a sharp rise of the free-surface elevation associated with strong energy dissipation, large-scale turbulence, air entrainment, and spray. Its properties have been extensively studied over the last century. However, only a few studies have focused on the characteristics of a hydraulic jump flow over pebbled rough beds.

This paper reports the results of an experimental study of a hydraulic jump flow over a pebbled rough bed, which is typical …