Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Sensitivity Of A Distributed Watershed Simulation Model To Spatial Scale, Misgana K. Muleta, John W. Nicklow, Elias G. Bekele

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The results of distributed watershed models could be sensitive to spatial and temporal scales at which inputs and model parameters are aggregated. This paper reports findings of a detailed sensitivity analysis conducted on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s distributed watershed simulation model, known as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The Big Creek Watershed, located in southern Illinois, is used for the study. The model is calibrated to improve accuracy of its streamflow and sediment concentration predictions using observed data at two locations in the study watershed. Streamflow and sediment concentrations that are simulated by the calibrated model at …

Estimating The Probability Of Failure And Associated Risk Of The California Bay Delta Levee System, Robb E.S. Moss, J. Michael Eller

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Recent events in New Orleans have shown the magnitude of life loss and property damage that can occur due to the failure of man-made levees. The California Bay Delta and Sacramento levee systems in California pose a similar or greater level of risk to life and property. In order to effectively mitigate the hazard associated with levee failure a systematic evaluation of risk must be carried out. This paper presents preliminary research into the risk associated with the California Bay Delta. A comprehensive list of failure modes for man-made levees is presented. Preliminary empirical data on the temporal frequency of …

Final Report: Production Of Biodiesel From Algae Applied To Agricultural Wastewater Treatment, Yarrow M. Nelson, Adam Feffer, Andrew Kean, Tryg Lundquist, Walter Mark, Linda Vanasupa, Sam Vigil, Ian Woertz

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Multiple-Model Framework For Assessment Of Real-Time Crash Risk, Anurag Pande

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This study is based on real-time models of risk assessment for rear-end and lane-change-related crashes on freeways. These models were developed in recent studies on the basis of historical crash data and corresponding traffic data collected through underground loop detectors on Interstate-4 in Orlando, Florida. In this study the potential of these models was explored for identification of crashes that were not part of the database used to develop the models. These crashes include single-vehicle crashes that might result from evasive actions taken by drivers to avoid vehicles in front (i.e., a rear-end crash) or in a neighboring lane (i.e., …

Crash Data Analysis: Collective Vs. Individual Crash Level Approach, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Anurag Pande

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Introduction

Traffic safety literature has traditionally focused on identification of location profiles where “more crashes are likely to occur” over a period of time. The analysis involves estimation of crash frequency and/or rate (i.e., frequency normalized based on some measure of exposure) with geometric design features (e.g., number of lanes) and traffic characteristics (e.g., Average Annual Daily Traffic [AADT]) of the roadway location. In the recent past, a new category of traffic safety studies has emerged, which attempts to identify locations where a “crash is more likely to occur.” The distinction between the two groups of studies is that the …

Application Of Data Mining Techniques For Real-Time Crash Risk Assessment On Freeways, A. Pande, M. A. Abdel-Aty

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Data mining is the analysis of large "observational" datasets to find unsuspected relationships that might be useful to the data owner. It typically involves analysis where objectives of the mining exercise have no bearing on the data collection strategy. Freeway traffic surveillance data collected through underground loop detectors is one such "observational" database maintained for various ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) applications such as travel time prediction etc. In this research data mining process is used to relate this surrogate measure of traffic conditions with rear-end crash occurrence on freeways. Crash and dual loop detector data from 36.25-mile instrumented Interstate-4 corridor …

Assessment Of Freeway Traffic Parameters Leading To Lane-Change Related Collisions, Anurag Pande, Mohamed Abdel-Aty

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This study aims at ‘predicting’ the occurrence of lane-change related freeway crashes using the traffic surveillance data collected from a pair of dual loop detectors. The approach adopted here involves developing classification models using the historical crash data and corresponding information on real-time traffic parameters obtained from loop detectors. The historical crash and loop detector data to calibrate the neural network models (corresponding to crash and non-crash cases to set up a binary classification problem) were collected from the Interstate-4 corridor in Orlando (FL) metropolitan area. Through a careful examination of crash data, it was concluded that all sideswipe collisions …

Cpt-Based Probabilistic And Deterministic Assessment Of In Situ Seismic Soil Liquefaction Potential, Robb E.S. Moss, Raymond B. Seed, Robert E. Kayen, Jonathan P. Stewart, Armen Der Kiureghian, K. Onder Cetin

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This paper presents a complete methodology for both probabilistic and deterministic assessment of seismic soil liquefaction triggering potential based on the cone penetration test (CPT). A comprehensive worldwide set of CPT-based liquefaction field case histories were compiled and back analyzed, and the data then used to develop probabilistic triggering correlations. Issues investigated in this study include improved normalization of CPT resistance measurements for the influence of effective overburden stress, and adjustment to CPT tip resistance for the potential influence of "thin" liquefiable layers. The effects of soil type and soil character (i.e., "fines" adjustment) for the new correlations are based …

Investigation Of The Performance Of The New Orleans Flood Protection System In Hurricane Katrina On August 29, 2005: Volume 1, Raymond B. Seed, Robert G. Bea, Remon I. Abdelmalak, Adda G. Athanasopoulos, Gordon P. Boutwell, Jr., Jonathan D. Bray, Jean-Louis Briaud, Carmen Cheung, Diego Cobos-Roa, Julien Cohen-Waeber, Brian D. Collins, Luke Ehrensing, Dan A. Farber, W. Michael Hanneman, Leslie F. Harder, Kofi S. Inkabi, Anne M. Kammerer, Deniz Karadeniz, Robert E. Kayen, Robb E.S. Moss, Jennifer Nicks, Seshu Nimala, Juan M. Pestana, Jim Porter, Keunyong Rhee, Michael F. Riemer, Karlene Roberts, J. David Rogers, Rune Storesund, Anand V. Govindasamy, Xavier Vera-Grunauer, Joseph E. Wartman, Conor M. Watkins, Ed Wenk, Jr., Solomon C. Yim

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This report presents the results of an investigation of the performance of the New Orleans regional flood protection system during and after Hurricane Katrina, which struck the New Orleans region on August 29, 2005. This event resulted in the single most costly catastrophic failure of an engineered system in history. Current damage estimates at the time of this writing are on the order of $100 to $200 billion in the greater New Orleans area, and the official death count in New Orleans and southern Louisiana at the time of this writing stands at 1,293, with an additional 306 deaths in …

Investigation Of The Performance Of The New Orleans Flood Protection System In Hurricane Katrina On August 29, 2005: Volume 2, Raymond B. Seed, Robert G. Bea, Remon I. Abdelmalak, Adda G. Athanasopoulos, Gordon P. Boutwell, Jr., Jonathan D. Bray, Jean-Louis Briaud, Carmen Cheung, Diego Cobos-Roa, Julien Cohen-Waeber, Brian D. Collins, Luke Ehrensing, Dan A. Farber, W. Michael Hanneman, Leslie F. Harder, Kofi S. Inkabi, Anne M. Kammerer, Deniz Karadeniz, Robert E. Kayen, Robb E.S. Moss, Jennifer Nicks, Seshu Nimala, Juan M. Pestana, Jim Porter, Keunyong Rhee, Michael F. Riemer, Karlene Roberts, J. David Rogers, Rune Storesund, Anand V. Govindasamy, Xavier Vera-Grunauer, Joseph E. Wartman, Conor M. Watkins, Ed Wenk, Jr., Solomon C. Yim

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Placement Conditions On Decomposition Of Municipal Solid Wastes In Cold Regions, James Hanson, Nazli Yeşiller, K. A. Howard, Wei-Lien Liu, S. P. Cooper

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The effects of placement practices on decomposition of wastes were investigated at Anchorage Regional Landfill (Anchorage, Alaska) since 2002. Temperatures and gas concentrations of wastes placed at various seasons were monitored. Wastes were placed at sub-freezing temperatures during cold seasons. Waste temperatures generally increased upon placement. High variation was observed in waste temperatures near the surface whereas steady temperatures were obtained at depth. High maximum stable temperatures resulted from warm placement conditions. Steady temperatures between approximately –1 to +35°C were observed. The central portion of a frozen waste band (with a total initial thickness of 7 m at placement, currently …

Recyclability Index For Automobiles, Alexander Tsuji, Yarrow Nelson, Andrew Kean, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

A rating system was developed to quantify the environmental impacts of light-duty motor vehicles at the end of their life-cycle based on recyclability, toxic material content and ultimate disposal. Each year, 10-11 million vehicles are retired from service in the United States. The vehicle material not recycled is called automotive shredder residue (ASR). About 4.5 to 5 million tons of ASR are disposed in U.S. solid waste landfills annually. The volume of this residue is likely to increase as vehicle manufacturers continue to use more plastics and composites in their designs to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency. The rating …

An Innovative Geocentric Decision Support Solution To Comprehensive Planning, Design, Operation, And Management Of Urban Drainage Systems, Paul F. Boulos, Misgana K. Muleta, Chun-Hou Orr, Jun Je Ro

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Geographic Information System (GIS) is quickly becoming a critical component to develop and sustain asset management for today’s wastewater utilities as most of their data is geographically referenced. This technology offers sophisticated data management and spatial analysis capabilities that can greatly improve and facilitate urban drainage infrastructure modeling and analysis applications. This paper presents a comprehensive GIS-based decision support system that integrates several technologies for use in the effective management of urban stormwater collection systems. It explicitly integrates ESRI ArcGIS geospatial model with advanced hydrologic, hydraulic, and water quality simulation algorithms, nature-based global optimization techniques including genetic algorithms for design …

Using Genetic Algorithms And Particle Swarm Optimization For Optimal Design And Calibration Of Large And Complex Urban Stormwater Management Models, Misgana K. Muleta, Paul F. Boulos, Chun-Hou Orr, Jun Je Ro

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Computer models are vital for the evaluation and management of urban drainage systems. Usefulness of these models, however, depends on how well they are calibrated. Properly calibrated models can be used to conceive, evaluate and compare various design improvement alternatives. Unfortunately, calibration and design of urban stormwater models, especially with the commonly used trial-and-error approach, are an expensive, time-consuming process and normally represent the most painful step of a modeling exercise. Their success depends mainly on the engineering expertise of the modeler and budget availability. The effort is complicated by the fact that these models normally necessitate the evaluation of …

Biotreatment Of Synthetic Drill-Cutting Waste In Soil, Laleh Rastegarzadeh, Yarrow Nelson, Todd G. Ririe

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Oil and gas drilling operations create drill cutting wastes around the world. Drill cutting waste includes synthetic drilling fluids typically consisting of petroleum-based compounds mixed with clay-type materials and water. Biological treatment is an effective means of disposing of drill cutting wastes, but proper biodegradation conditions are critical. In this study biological treatment of drill cutting wastes containing Saraline® (synthetic paraffin mineral oil) was examined using a variety of amendments to study the effect of different conditions on the biodegradability of synthetic drill cutting wastes. Soil was collected from a drilling site in Southeast Asia and soil microcosms were incubated …

Biodegradation Of Hydrocarbons Assisted By Arroyo Willows In Controlled Mesocosms Conducted At The Former Guadalupe Oil Field, Kevin Crossley, Yarrow M. Nelson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Abstract of paper presented at conference.

Biodegradation And Toxicity Of Hydrocarbons Along Vertical Transects In A Groundwater Plume, Yarrow M. Nelson, Andrew Lassen, Christopher L. Kitts, Paul Lundegrad, Gonzalo Garcia

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Abstract of paper presented at conference.

Tsunamigenic Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazard Analysis For Subduction Zones, Robb E.S. Moss, Thaleia Travasarou

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The recent Sumatra earthquake and subsequent tsunami has provoked greater awareness of the hazard posed by coseismic fault displacement associated with sea-floor subduction zones. This catastrophic event has focused renewed efforts on tsunami forecasting, modeling, and detection. Yet the mechanism that causes this type of tsunami, coseismic fault displacement of a sea-floor subduction zone, is still treated deterministically. This paper describes a methodology for probabilistic fault displacement hazard analysis (PFDHA) for a sea-floor subduction zone, and presents example displacement hazard curves for the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The goal of this probabilistic methodology is to quantify the uncertainty and associated hazard …

Incorporating Parameter Uncertainty Into Attenuation Relationships, Robb E.S. Moss, Armen Der Kiureghian

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Strong ground motion attenuation relationships estimate the mean and variance of ground shaking as it decreases with distance from an earthquake source. Current relationships use “classical” regression techniques that treat the input variables or parameters as exact, neglecting the uncertainties associated with the measurement of ground acceleration, moment magnitude, site-to-source distance, shear wave velocity, etc. This leads to a poorly constrained estimate of the uncertainty of strong ground motions. This paper discusses the work in progress on; a) estimating the statistics of parameter uncertainty, and b) incorporating the parameter uncertainty into the regression of strong motion attenuation data using a …

Cpt-Based Probabilistic Assessment Of Seismic Soil Liquefaction Initiation, Robb E.S. Moss, R. B. Seed, R. E. Kayen, J. P. Stewart, Armen Der Kiureghian

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The correlation of seismic field performance with in situ index test results has been proven to be a reliable method for defining the threshold between liquefaction and non-liquefaction. The objective of this research was to define, in the most accurate and unbiased manner possible, the initiation of seismic soil liquefaction using the cone penetration test (CPT). Contained in this report are the results of this research.

Case histories of occurrence and non-occurrence of soil liquefaction were collected from seismic events that occurred over the past three decades. These were carefully processed to develop improved CPT-based correlations for prediction of the …

Soils Magic: Bringing Civil Engineering To The K–12 Classroom, David J. Elton, James Hanson, David M. Shannon

Civil and Environmental Engineering

An investigation was conducted to assess the effectiveness of a series of kindergarten through 12th grade (K–12) educational outreach activities related to civil engineering. In particular, a program called Soils Magic that contains a series of simple geotechnical engineering experiments was delivered in various formats to K–12 students. This paper provides an overview of the Soils Magic program and provides further details of selected experiments from the program. This paper highlights the experiences of various civil engineering professors bringing the program to school children to promote the excitement and accessibility of the engineering profession. Suggestions are provided for conducting successful …

Normalizing The Cpt For Overburden Stress, Robb E.S. Moss, Raymond B. Seed, Richard S. Olsen

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Effective overburden stress can have a significant influence on cone penetration test (CPT) measurements. This influence can lead to an incorrect assessment of soil strength/resistance for such purposes as liquefaction triggering analysis. For an accurate measurement of tip and sleeve resistance, unbiased by overburden stress, it is essential to normalize these index measurements appropriately. Presented herein is a comprehensive study reviewing all aspects of CPT normalization. A result of this study is a variable normalization procedure for the CPT that is based on both empirical results and theoretical analysis. This paper presents these results in the form of an improved …

Atms Implementation System For Identifying Traffic Conditions Leading To Potential Crashes, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Anurag Pande

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Predicting a crash occurrence is the key to traffic safety. Real-time identification of freeway segments with high crash potential is addressed in this paper. For this study, historical crashes and corresponding traffic-surveillance data from loop detectors were gathered from a 36-mi corridor of Interstate 4 for 4 years. Following an exploratory analysis, two types of logistic-regression models (i.e., simple and multivariate) were developed. It was observed that, although the simple models have the advantage of being tolerant in their data requirements, their classification accuracy was inferior to that of the final multivariate model. Hence, the simple models were used to …

Renewable Materials And Construction Waste Management, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Renewable Energy, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Comprehensive Analysis Of The Relationship Between Real-Time Traffic Surveillance Data And Rear-End Crashes On Freeways, Anurag Pande, Mohamed Abdel-Aty

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Rear-end collisions are the single most frequent type of crash on freeways. Their impact on freeway operation is also most noticeable because almost all of them occur during periods of medium to heavy demand. Preliminary explorations of average traffic speeds before a crash measured at loop detector stations surrounding the crash location showed that rear-end crashes can be placed into two mutually exclusive groups: first, those that occur under extended congestion and, second, those that occur with relatively free-flow conditions prevailing 5 to 10 min before the crash. With loop detector data preceding these two groups of rear-end crashes contrasted …

Water Conservation And Wastewater Treatment, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Potential For Real-Time Traffic Crash Prediction, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Anurag Pande, Liang Y. Hsia, Fathy Abdalla

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The development of freeway crash prediction models using intelligent transportation systems (ITS) archived data could be a substantial advancement in the field of real-time traffic management. Such models not only are expected to improve safety but also may go a long way to improve freeway operations by reducing incident-related congestion.

Because there is a need to use real-time traffic data emanating from loop detectors, the approach differs distinctly from previous studies estimating crash frequencies or rates on a certain freeway section through aggregate measures of flow (such as average daily traffic or hourly volumes).

Although the authors try to establish …

Role Of Higher-"Mode" Pushover Analyses In Seismic Analysis Of Buildings, Rakesh K. Goel, Anil K. Chopra

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The role of higher-“mode” pushover analyses in seismic analysis of buildings is examined in this paper. It is demonstrated that the higher-“mode” pushover curves reveal plastic hinge mechanisms that are not detected by the first-“mode” or other FEMA-356 force distributions, but these purely local mechanisms are not likely to develop during realistic ground motions in an otherwise regular building without a soft and/or weak story. Furthermore, the conditions necessary for “reversal” of a higher-“mode” pushover curve are examined. It is shown that “reversal” in a higher-“mode” pushover curve occurs after formation of a mechanism if the resultant force above the …

Heat Generation In Municipal Solid Waste Landfills, Nazli Yesiller, James Hanson, Wei-Lien Liu

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This study was conducted to investigate thermal aspects of municipal solid waste landfills as a function of operational conditions and climatic region. Spatial and temporal distributions of waste temperatures were determined at four landfills located in North America (Michigan, New Mexico, Alaska, and British Columbia). Temperatures of wastes at shallow depths (extending to 6 to 8 m depth) and near the edges of a cell (within approximately 20 m) conformed to seasonal temperature variations, whereas steady elevated temperatures (23 to 57°C) with respect to air and ground temperatures were reached at depth and at central locations. Waste temperatures decreased from …