Digital Commons Network^™

Sensitivity Of Different Evapotranspiration Calculation Methods In Different Crop-Weather Models, J. Eitzinger, D. Marinkovic, J. Hosch

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The calculation of evapotranspiration and its components transpiration and evapotranspiration is of crucial importance in dynamic crop-weather models, irrigation models and SVAT models. Although many approaches were developed and adapted for various applications and based on available input data, there is still a remarkable range of uncertainty related for a representative calculation. However, many of the problems are based on weak quality of model input data, but others are related to the method itself and its sensitivity to various environmental conditions. In our study, several methods of evapotranspiration estimation in different crop weather models are compared and tested against data …

M3 Project - Actor Based Simulation In Virtualworlds, Helge Rose, Torsten Asselmayer-Maluga, Peter Frank, Andreas Hoheisel, Walter Bertram

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

M3 Simulation is a simulation approach that actively involves real human actors in a virtual reality environment based on multidisciplinary simulation models. This actor based concept aims at integrated simulation of complex processes belonging to heterogeneous levels of reality, paying specific attention to real human behavior. The entities of the real system under consideration are represented in a consistent object-oriented way by agents simulated by environmental models. This distributed network-capable implementation of the M3 system combines environmental modeling with the intuitive graphic representation, complex communication and interaction structures of virtual worlds in order to support the process of investigation of …

Ontowedss: An Ontology-Underpinned Decision-Support System For Wastewater Management, Luigi Ceccaroni, Ulises Cortés, Miquel Sànchez-Marrè

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research on arti cial intelligence techniques applied to environmental decision-support systems. The architecture's design of OntoWEDSS, a decision support system for wastewater management, is presented. This system augments classic rule-based reasoning and casebased reasoning with a domain ontology. The integration of the newly createdWaWO ontology provides a more exible management capability to OntoWEDSS. The construction of the decision support system is based on a speci c case study but the system is also of general interest, given that its ontology-underpinned architecture can be applied to any wastewater treatment plant and, at an appropriate …

Global And Annex I Emissions Corridors For The 21st Century, E. Kriegler, T. Bruckner

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We analyze global and Annex I emissions corridors for the 21st century. Emissions corridors represent the range of admissible emissions futures which observe some predefined constraints. They are calculated on the conceptual and methodological basis of the tolerable windows approach. We assess the sensitivity of the corridors to limits on the non-intolerable magnitude of climate change, the acceptable rate of emissions reductions and the feasible transition pace towards a decarbonizing economy. In addition we consider the influence of climate sensitivity on the corridors. While we calculate the global emissions corridors for the idealized assumption of a single global emitter, the …

Integrating Mechanistic Modelling And Statistical Learning Theoretic-Methods: Initial Steps Toward A Strategy For Model Evaluation And Structure Selection, A. Guergachi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The traditional model validation procedure has been criticized in many areas of environmentalengineering. In this paper, it is suggested to replace it by a more reasonable procedure: “model evaluation”.A framework for model evaluation and structure selection (FMESS) is presented. Based on statisticallearning theory, this framework considers the model identification step as a learning problem. The modelevaluation process is based on one single criterion: model performance. The latter is measured by amathematical deviation between the model prediction and reality. Although it is an exact measure of modelperformance, this deviation cannot be computed, but can be related to the empirical measure that …

Evaluating Management Strategies In Paraguacu River Basin By Analytic Hierarchy Process, B. Srdjevic, Y. Medeiros, Z. Srdjevic, M. Schaer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

An approach is proposed for evaluating water management strategies in river basins. Reasonably large sets of criterions and objectives are manipulated during a three-phase process by appropriate shrinking and enlarging related decision hierarchies. In the first phase an unrestricted set of management interests are grouped into (1) long-term, and (2) middle- and short-term decision context by creating decision hierarchies and evaluating them by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). After refining the hierarchies by deleting dominated elements, management plans are introduced at their fingertips and so enlarged hierarchies are repeatedly evaluated by AHP in the second phase. Only two bottom levels …

Development Of A Cell-Based Parsimonious Catchment Model, Okan Fistikoglu, Nilgun B. Harmancioglu

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

One of the crucial problems in conceptual rainfall runoff models is over-parameterization. In most cases, as the number of parameters to be calibrated increases, model performance either does not improve or, it may even decrease due to poorly defined parameters. Simple daily-based rainfall-runoff models are generally lumped models that average catchment heterogeneity. To increase the spatial resolution of such models, the computational resolution may be changed from catchment scale to a cell-based scale. This change may require a modification of the model structure by addition of new parameters. Such an approach may lead to two problems: increase in the complexity …

Detection Of Structural Changes In River Dynamics By Radar-Based Earth Observation Methods, Edith Stabel, P. Fischer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Today, river dynamics is strongly influenced by human activities in the catchment affecting the hydrological behaviour, but also by activities in the floodplain. The knowledge in recent and historical river dynamics and the related morphological and structural changes in the Earth’s surface (e.g. sedimentation, accumulation, river bed movement) is one essential point regarding the flood risk estimation and the vulnerability of resources and structures. Operational Earth Observation (EO) systems provide data to monitor and to analyse both, the river dynamics and the small surface changes. Especially the radar-based systems and the interferometric data analysis approach are of high interest because …

Spatial Correlation Analysis Of Nitrogen Dioxide Concentrations In The Area Of Milan, Italy, Grégoire Dubois, M. Saisana, A. Chaloulakou, N. Spyrellis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Monitoring atmospheric pollution in urban areas frequently involves mapping techniques that assist the researcher and/or the decision-maker to describe and quantify the pollution at locations where no measurements are available. The preparation of these pollution maps is a complex task, which is only feasible if a spatial correlation of the variable of interest is identified. Furthermore, the spatial correlation may not only change in time and space, but also according to the pollution levels. To illustrate this point, this paper investigates the fractal dimension of the spatial correlation of different levels of annual nitrogen dioxide concentrations [NO2] in the greater …

Integrating Structural Changes In Future Research And Modelling On The Seine River Basin, H. Kieken

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

For years policy makers and researchers involved in the management of the Seine river basin haveshared a common representation of the system's structure and behaviour: Paris, in the centre, divides thewatershed into two very unequal parts, a "clean" upstream and the downstream where environmentalproblems occur due to Paris sewage. This representation resulted in both (1) a focus of the attention and theefforts of policy makers on the downstream area and (2) the structuring of scientific research on the SeineRiver in a very dissymmetric way, including the features of the models developed within the 12-year old andstill ongoing research programme dedicated …

On Line Simulation System For Industrial Accidents, R. Bellasio, R. Bianconi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Mathematical models are important tools to evaluate the consequences of possible industrialaccidents. These models are often difficult to apply because they require trained users, and graphical userinterfaces can be of great help. An on line simulation system has been developed and is installed as a serversideapplication on the internet at www.enviroware.it. The system currently contains two models, EXPSYSis suitable to carry out consequence analysis and allows the user to evaluate the area impacted by industrialaccidents such as explosions, fires and releases of toxic or flammable gases. TOXFLAM is an analytic modelsuitable for simulating the atmospheric dispersion of gases lighter than …

Multi-Agent Simulations As A Tool For The Assessment Of Urban Microclimate And Its Effect On Pedestrian Behaviour, Michael Bruse

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The urban canopy layer is characterised by a specific climate which significantly differs from theaverage regional climate conditions. Especially inside urban structures such as street canyons, shopping mallsor public places, the local microclimate depends directly on the physical properties of the surrounding surfacesand objects, producing well-known effects such as wind speed decrease, local jets, increased turbulence orincreased thermal loads. These phenomena can have a strong influence on the comfort of pedestrians usingthese areas for different tasks of urban life or leisure activities. Assessing urban climate means to answer thequestion, how the citizens feel under the given circumstances and to decide, …

An Artificial Neural Networks Modeling Approach Applied To The Probabilistic Management Of Water Resources Systems, J. C. Ochoa-Rivera, R. García-Bartual, J. Andreu

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A multivariate non-linear model for synthetic generation of monthly discharge series is presented. The time series generator is built upon a multilayer feedforward neural network with an added multivariate random component normally distributed. The usual error backpropagation algorithm is used to train the network, with a sequential training scheme using shuffled patterns for a stochastic search in the weight space. The proposed model generates inputs to a wider methodology developed for simulation of the probabilistic managing of the upper Tagus River system in Spain. The model is validated in terms of its ability to reproduce some relevant statistics directly related …

A Metadata-Based System For Urban Transportation Data Provision And Analysis, Vivian Salim, Gerardo Trinidad, Nariida Smith, Leorey Marquez

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Cities are presently faced with increasing pressure from population and activities leading tocongestion, pollution and degradation of the living environment. In order to assist decision-makers to assessthe changing state of important amenities in a city such as clean air, energy and transport, a metadata-basedsystem for automated data assembly along with a Web-based suite of applications is proposed. This wouldform the basis for identifying the most effective technology and practice requirements in line with changingneeds. Metadata can be defined as structured data, such as access and content details, about data sets.Metadata sets were designed to allow a more efficient use of …

Process-Based Ecohydrological Modelling At The River Basin Scale And Options For Regionalisation, Valentina Krysanova, Fred Hattermann, Frank Wechsung

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The paper discusses the importance of physical basis and level of complexity in ecohydrological models at the catchment scale, their spatial structure and temporal resolution, and preconditions for regional applications of models of that kind. As an example, the process-based ecohydrological model SWIM developed for integrated modelling of interrelated hydrological processes, vegetation dynamics and nutrient cycling at the river basin scale is presented along with examples of its validation and a regional climate impact case study.

Invisip: Establishment Of A Context Repository To Support The Site Planning Process, S. Göbel, J. Haist, C. Kares, U. Jasnoch

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The EU-funded project INVISIP1 aims to create a framework to support all involved parties in thesite planning process: Municipal authorities and departments, planning offices, data suppliers and citizens.This paper describes the INVISIP approach, global aims and objectives as well as the current state of theproject. Here, from the technical point of view first results achieved within the analysis phase of the projecthave shown different possibilities to enhance data mining and visualization tasks by informationvisualization techniques using metadata and familiar metaphors. On the other hand, from the applicationdrivenpoint of view the necessity to establish an integrated framework for the site planning …

A Model For Urban Stormwater Improvement Conceptualisationq, T. H. F. Wong, D. Fletcher, H. P. Duncan, J. R. Coleman, G. A. Jenkins

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Catchment urbanisation leads to increased hydraulic and pollutant loadings into receiving waterbodies. Issues concerning pollution that endangers the sustainable utilisation of water resources have focused government authorities towards integrated catchment management, where both causes and effects of pollution are addressed. Recent research has provided a platform for improving urban stormwater management. The CRC for Catchment Hydrology (CRCCH) has recently developed a Model for Urban Stormwater Improvement Conceptualisation (MUSIC), which serves as a decision support system (DSS) that packages the results of many research activities undertaken at the CRCCH and other organisations into an easily used tool. MUSIC enables urban catchment …

Integrated Simulation Of Urban Drainage System And Receiving Water Body During Rainfall Events For Both Quantity And Quality Aspects, Marco Maglionico

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This work describes a mathematical model for the integrated simulation of the urban drainage system and the receivingwater body during rainfall events.The developed model, UPSIM (Maglionico, 1998), is a simplified conceptual model that schematised the sewernetworks in several sub-catchments and the river in several stretch, each one simulated with linear canals and reservoirs.For the sewer network, starting from the data recorded by the rain gauges, the model evaluates the net rainfallconsidering the hydrological losses on the catchment; the flow entering in the network through the gully pots isevaluated considering the catchment as a linear reservoir. The network is assumed to …

A Comparison Between The Uncertainties In Model Parameters And In Forcing Functions: Its Application To A 3d Water Quality Model., R. Pastres, S. Ciavatta

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents the application of both local and global sensitivity analysis techniques to anestimation of the uncertainty of the output of a 3D reaction-diffusion ecological model, which describes theseasonal dynamics of dissolved Nitrogen and Phosphorous, and that of the phytoplanktonic andzooplanktonic communities in the lagoon of Venice. Two sources of uncertainty were taken into account andcompared: 1) uncertainty concerning the parameters of the governing equation; 2) uncertainty concerning theforcing functions. The mean annual concentrations of Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen, DIN, was regarded asmodel output, as the current Italian legislation sets a quality target for Total Dissolved Nitrogen in the lagoonof …

Implementing Soil And Water Conservation Production Systems At The Farm Level, Ted L. Napier, Silvana M. Napier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Factors influencing adoption of soil and water conservation production systems at the farm level arediscussed in the context of their influence for motivating land owner-operators to adopt and to use conservationtechnologies and practices. Research focused on United States (US) farmers are examined to assess how social,economic, farm structure, and conservation program-participation factors affect adoption behaviors at the farmlevel. Research findings suggest that contemporary conservation programs that place emphasis on the provision ofinformation, education, technical assistance, and economic subsidies probably will not be successful in achievingsocietal conservation goals. Study findings basically demonstrated that factors commonly argued to influenceadoption of conservation production …

The Facilitator - An Open Source Effort To Support Multiobjective Decision Making, P. Heilman, Greg Davis, Paul Lawrence, Jerry L. Hatfield, John Huddleston

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Multiobjective Decision Support technology has matured to the point where new efforts should incorporate components of existing systems, rather than build everything from scratch. To help such efforts, the Java source code to a multiobjective decision support system called “The Facilitator” has been revised and released under the Mozilla Public License. This open source effort will be of interest to three groups. First, anyone needing a tool for multiobjective decision support can use the Facilitator. Users familiar with Java can now see how actions in the Facilitator are implemented or modify the user interface. Second, the open source approach might …

An Enterprise-Based Grid Resource Management System, Mark J. Clement, Joseph Ekstrom, Quinn O. Snell, Kevin B. Tew

Faculty Publications

As the Internet began its exponential growth into a global information environment, software was often unreliable, slow and had difficulty in interoperating with other systems. Supercomputing node counts also continue to follow high growth trends. Supercomputer and grid resource management software must mature into a reliable computational platform in much the same way that web services matured for the Internet. DOGMA The Next Generation (DOGMA-NG) improves on current resource management approaches by using tested off-the-shelf enterprise technologies to build a robust, scalable, and extensible resource management platform. Distributed web service technologies constitute the core of DOGMA-NG’s design and provide fault …

Machine-Learned Contexts For Linguistic Operations In German Sentence Realization, Eric K. Ringger, Simon Corston-Oliver, Michael Gamon, Robert Moore

Faculty Publications

We show that it is possible to learn the contexts for linguistic operations which map a semantic representation to a surface syntactic tree in sentence realization with high accuracy. We cast the problem of learning the contexts for the linguistic operations as classification tasks, and apply straightforward machine learning techniques, such as decision tree learning. The training data consist of linguistic features extracted from syntactic and semantic representations produced by a linguistic analysis system. The target features are extracted from links to surface syntax trees. Our evidence consists of four examples from the German sentence realization system code-named Amalgam: case …

Institutional And Member News, Wil Frost, Frank J. Shulman

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

Nl-Soar And Lg-Soar: Ongoing Work, Deryle W. Lonsdale

Faculty Publications

Goals:

Expand Soar knowledge and explore possible uses on-campus

Provide and support an NL capability to the Soar research community

Toolkits, resources, knowledge repositories

Carry out research into the cognitive modeling of linguistic performance

Validation Of Sea Ice Motion From Quikscat With Those From Ssm/I And Buoy, David G. Long, Yunhe Zhao, Antony K. Liu

Faculty Publications

Arctic sea ice motion for the period from October 1999 to March 2000 derived from QuikSCAT and ocean buoy observations. Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) data using the wavelet analysis method agrees well with ocean buoy observations. Results from QuikSCAT and SSM/I are compatible when compared with buoy observations and complement each other. Sea ice drift merged from daily results from QuikSCAT, SSM/I, and buoy data gives more complete coverage of sea ice motion. Based on observations of six months of sea ice motion maps, the sea ice motion maps in the Arctic derived from QuikSCAT data appear to have smoother …

Autonomous Hierarchical Control Of Multiple Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (Ucavs), Timothy Mclain, Randal W. Beard, Sai-Ming Li, Jovan D. Boskovic, Sanjeev Seereeram, Ravi Prasanth, Jayesh Amin, Raman K. Mehra

Faculty Publications

In this paper we present a hierarchical control scheme that enables multiple UCAVs to achieve demanding missions in hostile environments autonomously. The objective is to use a swarm of UCAVs for a SEAD type mission: fly the UCAVs in a formation to an enemy territory populated with different kinds of threats, collect enemy information or destroy certain targets, and return to the base, all without human intervention. The scheme is an integration of four distinct components, including: (1) high level Voronoi diagram based path planner to avoid static threats; (2) low level path planner to avoid popup threats; (3) differential …

Elasticity In Microstructure Sensitive Design Through The Use Of Hill Bounds, Benjamin L. Henrie

Theses and Dissertations

In engineering, materials are often assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic; in actuality, material properties do change with sample direction and location. This variation is due to the anisotropy of the individual grains and their spatial distribution in the material. Currently there is a lack of communication between the design engineer, material scientist, and processor for solving multi-objective/constrained designs. If communication existed between these groups then materials could be designed for applications, instead of the reverse. Microstructure sensitive design introduces a common language, a spectral representation, where both design properties and microstructures are expressed.

Using Hill bounds, effective elastic properties …

Network Simplification Through Oracle Learning, Tony R. Martinez, Joshua Menke, Adam Peterson, Michael E. Rimer

Faculty Publications

Often the best artificial neural network to solve a real world problem is relatively complex. However, with the growing popularity of smaller computing devices (handheld computers, cellular telephones, automobile interfaces, etc.), there is a need for simpler models with comparable accuracy. The following research presents evidence that using a larger model as an oracle to train a smaller model on unlabeled data results in 1) a simpler acceptable model and 2) improved results over standard training methods on a similarly sized smaller model. On automated spoken digit recognition, oracle learning resulted in an artificial neural network of half the size …

Flood Flows And Population Dynamics Of Arizona Sycamore (Platanus Wrightii), Juliet C. Stromberg

Western North American Naturalist

Platanus wrightii is a pioneer tree species of warm-temperate riparian deciduous forests in southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Dendrochronological analysis of populations in central and southern Arizona indicated that P. wrightii seedlings establish episodically. Long intervals (10–40 years) elapsed with no apparent establishment. Seedling establishment years were positively associated with winter flood size and annual flow rate, and weakly negatively associated with summer flood size. Large floods sometimes preceded multi-year establishment waves. During the past 2 decades an abundance of winter floods and very wet springs has allowed frequent establishment of P. wrightii. For example, plants established at many …