Engineering Commons^™

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Impacts Of Climate Change On The Evolution Of The Electrical Grid, Melissa Ree Allen

Doctoral Dissertations

Maintaining interdependent infrastructures exposed to a changing climate requires understanding 1) the local impact on power assets; 2) how the infrastructure will evolve as the demand for infrastructure changes location and volume and; 3) what vulnerabilities are introduced by these changing infrastructure topologies. This dissertation attempts to develop a methodology that will a) downscale the climate direct effect on the infrastructure; b) allow population to redistribute in response to increasing extreme events that will increase under climate impacts; and c) project new distributions of electricity demand in the mid-21^st century.

The research was structured in three parts. The first …

Irrigation Demand In A Changing Climate: Using Disaggregate Data To Predict Future Groundwater Use, Calvin R. Shaneyfelt

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The paper estimates an irrigation water demand function using disaggregate climate and well data over a 33 year time period. Aggregating climate information over long periods, like a year, causes a loss of detail on temporal climatic variation, while aggregating climate information over space causes a loss of detail on spatial variation. This analysis uses disaggregate climate variation at a temporospatial level to determine the effects of climate on groundwater use. Results show that increased heat, measured in cooling degree-days, correlates with increased water use, while increased precipitation correlates with decreased water use. However, the effects are generally magnified for …

Projections Of Future Us Design Wind Speeds Due To Climate Change For Estimating Hurricane Losses, Fangqian Liu

All Dissertations

Hurricane is among the most dangerous and costliest natural hazards that affect the coastal environment of the United States (U.S.) every year. Hurricane activities have been observed to change in many aspects since the last century including the changes in both intensity and annual storm frequency. The extent to which aspect of climate change contributes to the variation in hurricane activities from long-term historical statistics is still not clearly understood at this point. This study examines the impacts of two climate change effects (change in annual storm frequency and sea surface temperature) on future U.S. design wind speeds for the …

Coupled Simulation Of Human-Driven And Natural Land Cover Change In The Front Range Corridor, Co, Zhihua Liu, Michael C. Wimberly, Aashis Lamsal, Terry L. Sohl, Todd J. Hawbaker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Colorado Front Range Corridor is a mixture of urban, agricultural, grassland, and diverse forest types, making it an ideal natural laboratory to investigate feedbacks and interactions of coupled human and natural systems. We explored future scenarios of human-driven land use change and natural vegetation dynamics using the CHANGE model, which integrates a demand-allocation land use change module, a succession module for natural vegetation dynamics, and a spatially explicit fire initiation and spread module. We used the model to project landscape change over an approximately 48000 km² study area from 2005 through 2050 under A2 and B1 emission scenarios. …

An Overview Of The Nevada Climate Change Portal, Sergiu Dascalu, Frederick C. Harris Jr., Michael Mcmahon Jr., Eric Fritzinger, Scotty Strachan, Richard Kelley

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Created with support from an NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) grant completed in 2013, the Nevada Climate Change Portal (NCCP) serves as a cyberinfrastructure hub that provides data and computing resources for scientists studying the effects of climate change in Nevada. In particular, the NCCP has been designed for data acquisition, storage, access, and processing in support of long-term assessment of climate variability in Nevada and its impact on the state’s ecological and hydrological systems. The NCCP also serves as a central repository of climate-related information for other stakeholders, including educators, students, and the public. In this paper we …

An Integrative Modeling Framework To Evaluate Wheat Production Systems: Fusarium Head Blight, Willingthon Pavan, José Maurício Cunha Fernandes, Alexandre Lazzaretti, Josué Toebe, Jorge Luis Bavaresco, Alex C. Ruane, Rodrigo Yoiti Tsukahara

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper describes a practical, integrated, web-based and user friendly analysis tool for crop model users that provides quality control of input data, tracks user selections in model parameterization, and enables visual analysis of model outcomes using a single graphical user interface. This allows the user to undertake numerous steps in crop modeling and analysis in a seamless and integrated environment. The analysis and visualization components of the system were enabled utilizing R (pl/r) and the robustness of the underlying data structures and coupling point between crop and disease models were achieved through use of PostgreSQL database management system. The …

Slides: Regulating Oil And Gas Emissions In The Denver Julesberg Basin, Garry Kaufman

Water and Air Quality Issues in Oil and Gas Development: The Evolving Framework of Regulation and Management (Martz Summer Conference, June 5-6)

Presenter: Garry Kaufman, Deputy Director, Colorado Air Pollution Control Division

25 slides

Reduction Of Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions To Mitigate Climate Change Impacts, Mary Snow, Richard Snow

Publications

Weather affects almost all modes of transportation in a modern society, and likewise, transportation has an enormous impact on the weather. Transportation greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) impact climate change, which impacts transportation in return. Reduction of transportation impacts on climate change can mitigate the reverse climate change impacts on transportation. This paper examines the relationship between transportation and climate change and establishes prospective solutions to reduce transportation greenhouse gas emission impacts on climate change and mitigate the reverse climate change impacts on transportation.

Prediction Of Climate Change Effects On Streamflow Regime Important To Stream Ecology, Sulochan Dhungel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Streamflow is expected to change with climate change, but a general understanding of how climate change will affect the characteristics of streamflow important to stream ecosystems is lacking. This thesis focused on specific characteristics of streamflow, or the streamflow regime, that are important to stream ecosystems. The need to evaluate the potential impacts of climate change on stream ecosystems makes it important to study how streamflow regime may change. This work has identified 16 characteristics of daily streamflow time series that quantify the patterns and span the aspects of streamflow regimes important for stream ecosystems. Principal component analysis objectively identified …

Water At The Centre Of Environmental Issues – Research At The Ucd Dooge Centre For Water Resources Research, Zeinab Bedri, Eva M. Mockler, Michael Bruen, Yaqian Zhao, Pj Purcell, John O'Sullivan, M. Alsaji, Aisling Corkery, Liam Doherty, M. Dzakpasu, M. Martins, A. Rymszewicz, L. Willuwet

Conference papers

Since 1988, the UCD Dooge Centre for Water Resources Research has been conducting research in a wide range of water topics including hydraulics, hydrology, coastal dynamics and wastewater with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaboration. This paper presents an overview of this research, both past and present, and provides an outlook to the future research directions of the Centre.

Understanding The Global Energy Crisis, Eugene D. Coyle, Richard A. Simmons

Purdue University Press Books

We are facing a global energy crisis caused by world population growth, an escalating increase in demand, and continued dependence on fossil-based fuels for generation. It is widely accepted that increases in greenhouse gas concentration levels, if not reversed, will result in major changes to world climate with consequential effects on our society and economy. This is just the kind of intractable problem that Purdue University’s Global Policy Research Institute seeks to address in the Purdue Studies in Public Policy series by promoting the engagement between policy makers and experts in fields such as engineering and technology.

Major steps forward …

Bias Correction Can Modify Climate Model Simulated Precipitation Changes Without Adverse Effect On The Ensemble Mean, Edwin P. Maurer, David W. Pierce

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering

When applied to remove climate model biases in precipitation, quantile mapping can in some settings modify the simulated difference in mean precipitation between two eras. This has important implications when the precipitation is used to drive an impacts model that is sensitive to changes in precipitation. The tendency of quantile mapping to alter model-predicted changes is demonstrated using synthetic precipitation distributions and elucidated with a simple theoretical analysis, which shows that the alteration of model-predicted changes can be controlled by the ratio of model to observed variance. To further evaluate the effects of quantile mapping in a more realistic setting, …

Responses Of Hydrological Processes And Water Quality To Land Use/Cover (Lulc) And Climate Change In A Coastal Watershed, Ruoyu Wang

Ruoyu Wang

Climate And Landscape Controls On Seasonal Water Balance At The Watershed Scale, Xi Chen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The main goal of this dissertation is to develop a seasonal water balance model for evaporation, runoff and water storage change based on observations from a large number of watersheds, and further to obtain a comprehensive understanding on the dominant physical controls on intra-annual water balance. Meanwhile, the method for estimating evaporation and water storage based on recession analysis is improved by quantifying the seasonal pattern of the partial contributing area and contributing storage to base flow during low flow seasons. A new method for quantifying seasonality is developed in this research. The difference between precipitation and soil water storage …

Integrated Remote Sensing And Forecasting Of Regional Terrestrial Precipitation With Global Nonlinear And Nonstationary Teleconnection Signals Using Wavelet Analysis, Lee Mullon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Global sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies have a demonstrable effect on terrestrial climate dynamics throughout the continental U.S. SST variations have been correlated with greenness (vegetation densities) and precipitation via ocean-atmospheric interactions known as climate teleconnections. Prior research has demonstrated that teleconnections can be used for climate prediction across a wide region at sub-continental scales. Yet these studies tend to have large uncertainties in estimates by utilizing simple linear analyses to examine chaotic teleconnection relationships. Still, non-stationary signals exist, making teleconnection identification difficult at the local scale. Part 1 of this research establishes short-term (10-year), linear and non-stationary teleconnection signals …

On Target For People And Planet: Setting And Achieving Water-Related Sustainable Development Goals, Julie Van Der Bliek, Peter G. Mccornick, James Clarke

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Our specific focus in this book is on securing water for sustainable food production. This links to sustainable water resources management, delivering on the water supply and sanitation requirements and provisioning water for energy and the urban sector. A specific intent is to ensure that the realities in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia are recognized and to provide practical pathways to change that fit these realities and the aspirations of those countries. This will help to prepare for the next step in the SDG [sustainable development goals] process: devolving the SDGs to the national level. It will …

The Sun Also Rises: Prospects For Solar District Heating In The United States, Adam L. Reed, John S. Mccartney

Kevin L Doran

Renewable thermal energy remains a largely untapped resource in the United States, despite its low costs and growing popularity in many other countries and the pressing need to rapidly deploy and scale carbon-free energy sources in order to mitigate anthropogenic climate change. In this article, an energy attorney and a civil engineer collaborate to examine the prospects in the United States for solar district heating (SDH), a thermal technology that leverages economies of scale to provide zero-carbon, round-the-clock space and water heating (on average, the two largest components of building energy demand) to neighborhoods and commercial zones at costs competitive …