Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Slides: Oil Shale Water Use: Upsetting The Apple-Cart Of River Habitat, Irrigation And Existing Water Rights?, Bart Miller

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Bart Miller, Western Resource Advocates, Boulder, CO

13 slides

Slides: Integrated Policy, Planning, And Management Of Water Resources, Robert Wilkinson

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Robert Wilkinson, Ph.D., Director of the Water Policy Program, Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California-- Santa Barbara

60 slides

South Burlington Vt: New Urbanist South Village, Jack Kartez, Richard Barringer

Planning

The 220 acre master plan for South Village, the largest project in the City of South Burlington’s history, encompasses multiple housing types and innovative provisions for affordable housing. It integrates housing with open space and natural resource conservation, including a major Community Supported Agriculture project developed by a nonprofit partner, the Intervale Foundation. While not a mixed-use project (that is, commercial as well as residential development), South Village nonetheless represents a qualitative change in approach for South Burlington by incorporating large-scale open space preservation as part of development and multiple housing-types in one project. The case study recounts events leading …

The Influence Of Carbon Source Types And Nitrate On The Performance Of The Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal Systems, Shamim Ara Begum

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research focuses on two issues in enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR). The first issue encompasses the effect of the type of carbon sources (i.e. volatile fatty acids and non volatile fatty acids) on the microbiology of EBPR. The second issue deals with the influence of denitrification on EBPR. Few studies have been performed to investigate these two issues. The recent findings on these areas are summarized below to establish the knowledge gaps this dissertation attempted to address. Details on the specific findings can be found in the literature review portion of this proposal.

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2009, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

The senior design competition helps to focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects …

Sustainability And Civil Engineering, Jeremy D. Rodgers

Ohio Valley Regional Student Conference

No abstract provided.

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 2, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

The Portland Municipal Climate Change Working Group prepared a report in March 2008 that outlined several recommendations as a commitment by the City to address greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) produced during daily municipal operations. The Municipal Climate Action Plan was written in partnership with Clean Air – Cool Planet and Portland officials, and acknowledges under Recommendation #2 that an employee energy efficiency program would provide significant positive impact on the City’s reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Best practices from three cities show that focus on the greening of City Hall is critical in developing a program that promotes partnerships, community …

Computational Simulation Of Strain Localization: From Theory To Implementation, Shouxin Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Strain localization in the form of shear bands or slip surfaces has widely been observed in most engineering materials, such as metals, concrete, rocks, and soils. Concurrent with the appearance of localized deformation is the loss of overall load-carrying capacity of the material body. Because the deformation localization is an important precursor of material failure, computational modeling of the onset and growth of the localization is indispensable for the understanding of the complete mechanical response and post-peak behavior of materials and structures. Simulation results can also be used to judge the failure mechanisms of materials and structures so that the …

A Hurricane Evacuation Route System Real-Time Monitoring And Distribution Of Load, Anup Khanal

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Hurricane evacuation is one of the major steps in diminishing the devastating effects of hurricanes on lives and properties. The challenge in evacuating a large number of people in a short time is the severe congestion faced in the transportation network, leading to long delays and shortages. Standard hurricane evacuation plans focus on how to best utilize the main arteries. The research challenge is to not overload the fastest routes and to utilize all the routes efficiently. The evacuation routing system proposed in this thesis focuses on distributing the traffic load throughout the network, utilizing alternative routes not considered in …

Using Oceanic-Atmospheric Oscillations For Long Lead Time Streamflow Forecasting, Ajay Kalra, Sajjad Ahmad

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

We present a data-driven model, Support Vector Machine (SVM), for long lead time streamflow forecasting using oceanic-atmospheric oscillations. The SVM is based on statistical learning theory that uses a hypothesis space of linear functions based on Kernel approach and has been used to predict a quantity forward in time on the basis of training from past data. The strength of SVM lies in minimizing the empirical classification error and maximizing the geometric margin by solving inverse problem. The SVM model is applied to three gages, i.e., Cisco, Green River, and Lees Ferry in the Upper Colorado River Basin in the …

Ohio River Denial As A Transportation Corridor And Its Economic Impacts On The Energy Industry, Caglar Utku Guler

Theses and Dissertations

What if the Ohio River is disrupted or denied partially or completely as a transportation corridor? A disruption may be either a natural or man-made disaster or a planned outage on the river’s lock and dam structures. Recent history is full of water transport disruption events having significant economic effects on the waterside industries. To assess coal-based economic impacts, we developed a network flow model to represent waterside coal-fired power plants situated along the Ohio River, their respective coal supplying mines, and the various transportation modes that connect them. We show that significant transportation-centric insights can be derived by using …

Role Of Forward Model In Surface-Wave Studies To Delineate A Buried High-Velocity Layer, Xiaohui Jin, Barbara Luke, Carlos Calderon-Macias

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Procedures are tested and compared for processing Rayleigh surface wave data to obtain one-dimensional shear wave velocity profiles for a hypothetical site that contains a buried high-velocity layer (HVL). The main purpose of such an investigation would be to discriminate and characterize the HVL. When target dispersion curves are derived from synthetic time histories, for the most part, the HVL is better identified when profiles are inverted using only the fundamental mode of Rayleigh wave propagation, rather than a more compatible but more complex forward model. The outcomes imply that in practice, a simple forward model might be more successful …

Preserving Assets In At-Risk Municipalities: Financial Strategies For Climate Change Adaptation, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

A large share of America's population, businesses and economic activity now occurs in coastal areas. At the same time, during this century many coastal communities are likely to be severely impacted by sea level rise and increased storm surge and tidal flooding.

“What to do” about this vulnerability is the subject of this brief. It is intended to help municipalities identify courses of action and steps they might take toward increasing their resilience, especially regarding financial resources that will need to be allocated toward the various strategies identified.

Demonstrating Sustainable Farm Management Systems. Final Report For Rcg05-Ord13, Tara Slaven, Francis Bright, Jodie Hawley, Joe Sherrard

Natural resources research reports

The Ord River Irrigation Area (ORIA) has a 'flow through' irrigation system. That is, irrigation water is diverted from Lake Kununurra and any waste water from the irrigation system and farms flows directly back into the river downstream. This means that any sediment, nutrient or chemicals in tailwater from farms flows straight into the river.

The Ord Land and Water Management Plan 2000 specifies goals to improve surface water quality. The goals are to reduce the load of chemical and nutrient contamination and sediment in tailwater by 40 per cent.

The aim of this project was to develop and demonstrate …

Nanofiltration Membrane Pilot Studies For Disinfection By-Product Control, Eric J. Lynne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Watertown, South Dakota currently uses conventional softening to treat ground water to remove hardness, iron and manganese, and natural organic matter. The distribution system has experienced elevated concentrations of disinfection by-products, which will require additional treatment to comply with future limits set by the Stage 2 Disinfectant/Disinfection By-Products Rule. A nanofiltration membrane system has been proposed to remove additional natural organic matter from the softened water. Removing the natural organic material disinfection by-product precursors should reduce the concentration of disinfection by-products. The use of nanofiltration membranes has been previously documented to reject total organic carbon, while allowing desirable levels of …

Silica Removal From Brine By Using Ion Exchange, Carlos R. Acevedo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Local governments have been forced to look for additional water sources to satisfy the ever increasing demand for fresh water. Very often, the new water sources such as the underground water in continental territories have high salt content. Currently, reverse osmosis technology (RO) is one of the most common processes for water desalination. However, this process is limited by high silica and salt concentrations in water. At high concentrations silica clogs the membranes used in the RO process, reducing their life and increasing operational costs. In this study, quaternary ammonium resins and sulfonic acid resins were used to remove silica …

Sustainable Development Extension Plan (Sudex): Community Mobilization Through Proactive Participation And Synergistic Alliance To Alliviate Poverty And Achieve Sustainable Self Sufficiency, Stephen Forbes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation describes a sustainable development extension plan (Sudex Plan) to help communities in developing countries achieve Goal 1 of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Goal 1 focuses on reducing poverty and hunger by 50% by the year 2015, but all the MDG are interrelated and one can not be achieved without considering the others, and to attain any is an empty accomplishment without ways to ensure that they can be sustained and continuously improved with the means to pass on the information, knowledge and lessons learned from community to community, generation to generation. The Sudex Plan is …

Risk Indexes For Draft Ccl3 Chemicals, J. Alan Roberson, Matthew Lueders, Craig Adams, Jeffrey S. Rosen

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

To supplement the processes used for developing the draft third Contaminant Candidate List (CCL3) and better inform decisions made by the US Environmental Protection Agency on future CCLs, the authors offer an evaluation tool for efficiently synthesizing, visualizing, and organizing data for effective comparisons among contaminants. Graphical presentations of health effects-occurrence indexes were developed for more than 300 chemical contaminants, including those on the draft CCL3. a risk indexes framework was then used to elucidate the extent of available data, the data quality, and the underlying uncertainties for occurrence and toxicity. Choosing the appropriate contaminant for regulation is a complex …

Estimating Variation In Stiffness And Volume Change Of Clays From Geochemical And Index Properties, Cynthia Roxanna Zuniga

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Clayey soils from six different locations in Texas were analyzed and evaluated with respect to their expansion and shrinkage and change in stiffness associated with moisture content variation. These soils consist of five high plasticity-index (PI) clays (PI greater than 25) and one low-PI clay (PI = 17). The behavior of the clays changes dramatically with moisture content fluctuation, thus causing stiffness and volume changes throughout the year. Total or differential volume movements caused by swell or shrinkage strains of expansive soils and reduction in modulus can exert enough pressure to damage the pavements and cause maintenance problems.

The intent …

Treatment Of Ro Concentrate Using Vsep Technology, Guillermo Guadalupe Delgado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The city of El Paso has the largest inland brackish desalination plant in the world. The Kay Bailey Hutchison (KBH) Desalting plant produces 15 million of permeate water every day. Due to the excellent quality of the water, the permeate water is blended with brackish water producing a final volume of 27.5 million gallons of water every day. With an average recovery rate of 80%, the KBH plant produces an average of 3 million gallons of concentrated brackish water that is disposed of via injection wells 23 miles from the plant.

Conventional reverse osmosis (RO) systems are not capable of …

Transition Metal Catalysts For Hydrodesulfurization Reactions Applied To Petroleum Industry, Brenda Torres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Catalysis plays a fundamental role in petroleum refining and basic petrochemical industries creating new routes in the development of industrial processes. Moreover, catalysis has become indispensable to the solution of environmental pollution problems and therefore on public health. World wide concerns for preservation of the environment has motivated the development of "Green" catalyst based technologies, to achieve a better utilization of petroleum resources and demands for cleaner transportation fuels. These environmental concerns have led to increasingly drastic regulations on sulfur, nitrogen and aromatics content in fuels. Sulfur content in the motor and diesel fuels is continuously reduced by regulations to …

The Potential Contribution Of Organic Salts To New Particle Growth, Kelley Barsanti, Peter H. Mcmurry, J. N. Smith

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Field and lab measurements suggest that low-molecular weight (MW) organic acids and bases exist in accumulation and nucleation mode particles, despite their relatively high pure-liquid vapor pressures. The mechanism(s) by which such compounds contribute to the mass growth of existing aerosol particles and newly formed particles has not been thoroughly explored. One mechanism by which low- MW compounds may contribute to new particle growth is through the formation of organic salts. In this paper we use thermodynamic modeling to explore the potential for organic salt formation by atmospherically relevant organic acids and bases for two system types: one in which …

An H-Adaptive Finite-Element Technique For Constructing 3d Wind Fields, Darrell Pepper, Xiuling Wang

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

An h-adaptive, mass-consistent finite-element model (FEM) has been developed for constructing 3D wind fields over irregular terrain utilizing sparse meteorological tower data. The element size in the computational domain is dynamically controlled by an a posteriori error estimator based on the L2 norm. In the h-adaptive FEM algorithm, large element sizes are typically associated with smooth flow regions and small errors; small element sizes are attributed to fast-changing flow regions and large errors. The adaptive procedure employed in this model uses mesh refinement–unrefinement to satisfy error criteria. Results are presented for wind fields using sparse data obtained from two regions …

Interpreting Surface-Wave Data For A Site With Shallow Bedrock, Daniel W. Casto, Barbara Luke, Carlos Calderon-Macias, Ronald Kaufmann

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

The inversion of dispersive Rayleigh-wave data has been shown to be successful in providing reliable estimated shear-wave velocities within unconsolidated materials in the near surface. However, in a case where the multi-channel analysis of surface waves method was applied to a site consisting of clay residuum overlying basalt bedrock, inversion for the fundamental-mode Rayleigh wave resulted in shear-wave velocities within the rock that are less than half of expected values. Forward modeling reveals that the fundamental-mode dispersion curve is hardly sensitive to bedrock velocity perturbations over a practical range of wavelengths, leading to poorly constrained solutions. Standard surface-wave methods can …

Development Of Measurement And Modeling Techniques To Quantify Atmospheric Deposition Of Persistent, Bioaccumulative And Toxic Chemicals In The Great Lakes, Mark D. Rowe

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Measurement and modeling techniques were developed to improve over-water gaseous air-water exchange measurements for persistent bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals (PBTs). Analytical methods were applied to atmospheric measurements of hexachlorobenzene (HCB), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). Additionally, the sampling and analytical methods are well suited to study semivolatile organic compounds (SOCs) in air with applications related to secondary organic aerosol formation, urban, and indoor air quality.

A novel gas-phase cleanup method is described for use with thermal desorption methods for analysis of atmospheric SOCs using multicapillary denuders. The cleanup selectively removed hydrogen-bonding chemicals from samples, including much of …

Modeling Integrated Decisions For A Municipal Water System With Recourse And Uncertainties: Amman, Jordan, David E. Rosenberg, Jay Lund

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Stochastic mixed-integer optimization is used to identify a portfolio of long- and short-term supply and conservation actions for a municipal water system to cost-effectively accommodate a distribution of water shortages. Alternative robust, grey-number, and best/worst case formulations systematically explore implications of uncertainties in action costs, life spans, water volumes gained or saved, shortage levels, and shortage probabilities. A detailed example for Amman, Jordan considers 23 potential actions. Results show: (1) remarkable consistency occurs across the different modeling approaches. (2) Conserving water—reducing leakage and targeting select customers to install water efficient appliances—plays an important and growing role over time. (3) A …

Soil Moisture And Water Stage Estimation Using Precipitation Radar, Sumit Puri

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In south-western United States, soil moisture data is important for drought studies in the region which is experiencing a drought for many years, whereas in South Florida, water stage data is required by hydrologists to monitor the hydrological flow in wetlands. Soil moisture data and water stage data are not sufficiently available due to sparse monitoring stations. Installation of dense measuring stations over an extended area is costly and labor intensive. Therefore, there is a need to develop an alternative method of measuring soil moisture and water stage. Microwave remote sensing has proven to be a useful tool in the …

Integrated Remote Sensing And Gis Techniques For Groundwater Exploration In Semi-Arid Region: A Case Of Karamoja Region – Uganda, Lubang Nobert

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Groundwater is a precious resource that covers wide geographical extent. Proper evaluation is required in order to ensure prudent use of groundwater resources. The current groundwater assessment in Karamoja region, as in many parts of the world, uses Apparent Resistivity and Vertical Electrical Sounding, which has limited coverage to some localized usually predetermined areas. Comprehensive groundwater development program needs a wide area coverage and large volume of multidisciplinary data. In the present study, an integrated remote sensing and GIS based methodology is developed and tested for the evaluation of groundwater resources of Karamoja Sub Region, Northeastern Uganda. The components of …

The Multivariate Statistical Analysis Of Abiotic Parameters Of The Lake Tanganyika Sub Catchment, Hudson Nkotagu

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Results from multivariate statistical analysis of abiotic parameters conducted during the dry season at 20 accessible sites on 8 rivers, 2 lakes and a dam covering the Lake Tanganyika sub catchment are discussed. Standard methods were used to determine the levels of abiotic parameters from water samples. Physical parameters including DO, EC, Eh, turbidity, temperature, pH and secchi transparency were measured in situ while chlorophyll a was determined in the laboratory. Nutrients such as NO3-, SiO2, PO4 3- and Fe2+ were determined along with HCO3-. Factor analysis resulted in four factors including increased primary productivity, redox conditions, dissolution, and reduction …

An Equation For Estimating The (R) Usle Slope Steepness Factors, Mathew Mulemgera

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Abstract Currently three equations are used for calculating slope steepness factor for the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE); one for slopes less than nine percent, the second for slopes equal or greater than nine percent, and the third equation that has been proposed for use in China for slopes equal or greater than 17 %. The three equations have linear relationships between slope steepness factor, S and the sine of the slope angle, θ. The three equations under predict the factor, S when used on slope steepness beyond the data sets used to develop them. In addressing this problem …