Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Plant Trait-Based Assessment Of The Pasture Simulation Model, Anne-Isabelle Graux, Katja Klumpp, Shaoxiu Ma, Raphaël Martin, Gianni Bellocchi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We used a functional trait-based plant classification to improve the plant module of the biogeochemical grassland model PaSim. Based on four main classes (A, B, C, D) and two derived types (b, d) covering a gradient from high to low productive/fertile grassland vegetation types, we derived new classes of model plant parameters representing an evolution of a previous parameterization obtained by calibration without considering any plant diversity. Illustrative results are presented for the French grassland site of Laqueuille, by comparing two grazing management treatments: high animal stocking rate and fertilisation “intensive” (type B) and low animal stocking rate “extensive” (type …

Big Data In Environmental And Human Health Risk Assessment: Opportunities And Challenges, Vikas Kumar

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Big Data is broad term for large data sets arriving from multiple sources with typological and structural complexities which presents integrational, analytical and visualization challenge to extract meaningful information. In the human health risk assessment, the amount of data is exploding from basic science to clinically based omics, High Throughput Screening (HTS) to biosensors, large scale biomonitoring to multigenerational individual and population based studies. The scattered “Big Data” captures the opportunities as well as challenges in accessing, integrating, managing and analysing the datasets of diverse data types. The aim of this study is to perform a systematic review of the …

Reconciling Information From Climate-Economic Model Ensembles, A. Shchiptsova, D. Kovalevsky, E. Rovenskaya

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

To date, no model building process can guarantee full representation of the complex climate-economic processes and narrow down the uncertainty associated with future climate projections. Multiple highly detailed models are developed by individual research groups to capture various known aspects of the climate processes. Normally, these models represent only a part of the climate-society system due to its complexity. On the other hand, a number of the simplified integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been put forward in the attempt to introduce the full causal loop between accumulated emissions, economy and climate, and study associated uncertainty. We present a simplified system …

Comparison Of Parametric And Non-Parametric Disaggregation Models For The Top-Down Generation Of Water Demand Time Series, S. Alvisi, N. Ansaloni, M. Franchini

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This study presents a “top-down” procedure for generating synthetic time series of hourly nodal water demands from time series of the total water demands in the area that includes the nodes considered, based on the application of disaggregation models already presented in the literature in the field of hydrology. More specifically, a parametric and a nonparametric disaggregation model are compared to assess their performance in reproducing, on a nodal level, the main statistics of the time series of historically observed water demands. Moreover, with regard to the nonparametric model, two variants of the original formulation are proposed with the aim …

Measuring Household Vulnerability: A Fuzzy Approach, Gautam Sethi, Molly Gilligan, Amy Richmond

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This research develops an index of vulnerability for Ugandan households using a variety of economic, social and environmental variables with two objectives. First, there is only a small body of research that measures household vulnerability. Given the stresses faced by households susceptible to water, environment, food, livelihood, energy, and health security concerns, it is critical that they be identified in order to make effective policy. We draw on the socio-ecological systems (SES) framework described by Ostrom (2009) and adapt the model developed by from Giupponi, Giove, and Giannini (2013) to develop a composite measure. Second, most indices in the literature …

Web Service Based Approach To Link Heterogeneous Climate-Energy-Economy Models For Climate Change Mitigation Analysis, Getachew F. Belete, Alexey Voinov, Tatyana Bulavskaya, Leila Niamir, Kishore Dhavala

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Climate change mitigation analysis requires understanding the causes and identifying the possible alternative actions that could be taken. We linked heterogeneous models that focus on climate, energy, and economy for the purpose of climate change mitigation. The models were originally developed to serve as standalone tools for some specific purposes. The models operate at various levels of complexity, different temporal and spatial scales, from individual to global. They were developed using quite different assumptions and modeling paradigms and tools. One of them is a Computable General Equilibrium model, the second is an Integrated Assessment Model, and the third one is …

Uncertainty Quantification With Polynomial Chaos Expansion In Ensemble Based Data Assimilation Framework, N. El Mocayd, S. Ricci, M. Rochoux, N. Goutal, S. Boyaval, C. Goeury, D. Lucor

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In hydraulic simulations, water level calculations suffer from uncertainty in various physical and numerical parameters that translate into uncertainty in simulated water level. Usually, a classical Monte-Carlo method sampling is used to quantify uncertainty, but this approach is quite expensive as it requires a large number of the forward model integrations. This study aims at developing a cost- effective stochastic approach adapted to open-channel flows assuming that the uncertainty is mostly due to roughness coefficient and input discharge. We investigate the ability of a polynomial chaos expansion to evaluate the probabilistic features of the water level with the same accuracy …

Up In The Air: Understanding Vulnerability When Toilets Fly, Amy Krakowka Richmond, Suzanne Pierce, Sethi Gautam

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Across sub-Saharan Africa, both natural and social factors contribute to household level vulnerability. This case study focuses specifically on Uganda, which has made progress towards meeting the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, most notably halving the proportion of the population that is below the poverty line. Despite these impressive achievements, many households remain vulnerable to multiple social and environmental stressors. A better understanding of the drivers of household level vulnerability will assist stakeholders and policy-makers in determining what drives vulnerability at a household level, where vulnerable populations are, and suggest what type of aid to target specific locations to be …

Big Data In Land Change Science: Challenges And Implications Of Advanced Technologies, Hichem Omrani, Amin Tayyebi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Big data has received a lot of attentions during last decade. Dealing with big data is a complex task as it is challenging to analyse, store, model and make sense of big data. Using big data in land change science (LCS) is a new area of research. One of the main challenges in LCS is using big data for model calibration effectively. In this study, we propose using clustering technique, based on k-means approach, to handle big land-use data and overcome the limitation of model calibration. With clustering, data are partitioned into smaller subsets and are t hen analysed …

Developement Of Data Fusion Methods For An Improved Estimation Of Soil Moisture, Felix Linde

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This talk presents recent work on data fusion methods applied to the estimation of soil moisture by means of remote sensing. Particularly in research dealing with landscapes and agriculture there is a need for spatially and temporally resolved estimation of soil moisture from local to regional level and beyond. The methods to evaluate the water content of the soil range from direct measurements, optical and microwave remote sensing to modeling based on precipitation measurements. Usually the availability of the specific data defines the used method. The uncertainties connected to each way of estimation vary with weather conditions, region and data …

Developing A Stochastic Simulation Model For The Generation Of Residential Water End-Use Demand Time Series, A. Cominola, M. Giuliani, Andrea Castelleti, A. M. Abdallah, D. E. Rosenberg

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Smart metering technologies allow for gathering high resolution water demand data in the residential sector, opening up new opportunities for the development of models describing water consumers’ behaviors. Yet, gathering such accurate water demand data at the end-use level is limited by metering intrusiveness, costs, and privacy issues. In this paper, we contribute a stochastic simulation model for synthetically generating high-resolution time series of water use at the end-use level. Each water end-use fixture in our model is characterized by its signature (i.e., its typical single-use pattern), as well as frequency distributions of its number of uses per day, single …

Planning Complex Agro-Ecosystems: The Case Of Analog Forestry, F. Recanati, Giorgio Guariso, M. Saini, Sergio Vilchez Mendoza

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Traditional agroecosystems, aimed at maximizing the short term productivity, are characterized by oversimplification of ecological structure and dependence on the use of external inputs. Moreover, intensive agriculture is one of the main cause of deforestation. The main consequence of traditional agriculture is the loss of natural ecosystems and of their precious services. Analog forestry has emerged as a sustainable productive model able to be integrated in forest contexts, without degrading their ecological functions. The obtained agro-ecosystem is characterized by an ecological structure similar to the one of forest, and by the presence of several productive species in the same area. …

Participatory Simulation And Learning Process: Technology Matters!, Nicolas Becu, Pierre Bommel, Christophe Le Page, François Bousquet

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Participatory modelling (PM) is an approach under constant renewal due to its close link to available technologies and evolution of learning habits of citizens. Since the years 2000 many PM research projects leapt into the breach of hybrid simulation to produce new modes of interaction between PM session’s participants. This paper reports on the advances of participatory simulation (PS) – the branch of PM that focuses on learning by interacting with a collective simulation – on using different projection technologies for participants’ interfaces. The use of two types of technologies is analyzed in this paper: ultra-short throw projector and distribution …

Estimation Of Evapotranspiration In Heterogeneous Landscape Using Simplified Surface Energy Balance Operational, T. Alemayehu, A. Van Griensven, G. Senay, Willy Bauwens

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Evapotranspiration (ET) has important practical significance in water resources planning and management, irrigation scheduling and environmental issues as well as hydrological model parameterization. The objective of this study is to map ET using thermal-based Simplified Surface Energy Balance Operational (SSEBop) model across a heterogeneous landscape in the Mara basin. We used level three clear sky Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature at 1km spatial scale. Since the study area has poor weather monitoring network, the weather parameter required to derive the reference evapotranspiration and evaporative fraction is retrieved from Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) dataset. The analyses …

Influence Of Multi-Temporal High Resolution Remote Sensing Products On Simulated Hydrometeorological Variables In The South-West Of France, Jordi Etchanchu, Vincent Rivalland, Simon Gascoin, Jérôme Cros, Tiphaine Tallec, Claire Marais-Sicre

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agricultural landscapes are often a patchwork of crop fields whose seasonal evolution depends on specific crop rotation and phenologies. This temporal and spatial heterogeneity have an impact on surface hydrometeorological processes. Accurately evaluating its effect remains a challenge for water management agencies in a context of drought and irrigation supply. The satellite remote sensing products from the Sentinel-2 mission will allow the monitoring of the land cover and the vegetation dynamics. The unprecedented spatial-temporal resolution (5 days, 20m) is fully compatible with heterogeneous agricultural landscapes. In our study we proposed to evaluate the contribution of these remote sensing data on …

A Mathematical Procedure To Estimate Variations Between Grain-Size Distributions, Laura Calcagni, Bianca Di Lorenzo, Rossella Di Mento, Ornella Nonnis, Anna Maria Cicero

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Grain-size is the most fundamental property of sediment particles, its analysis is essential to understand sediment provenance, transport history and depositional conditions. In the ambit of environmental monitoring a key point is often the study of the variations of sediments composition in terms of variation of their grain-size distributions. In this work it is presented a procedure based on the computing of easy mathematical indexes useful to perform in an effective way the comparison of grain-size distributions. The developed procedure consists in two steps of analysis to quantify the dissimilarities between grain-size distributions and to characterize the typology of occurred …

Modeling Herding Behavior On Financial Markets Affected By Exogenous Climate-Related Shocks, Dmitry V. Kovalevsky

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In many economic models (including many models from economics of climate change) the agents make decisions solely on the basis of ‘objective’ information (e.g., the market price level). However, a number of alternative modeling frameworks have been developed, where individual economic agents, when making decisions, take into account the observed behavior of other economic agents. One of pioneering contributions to this research area was the Kirman’s ‘ant model’ (Kirman, 1993). While initially the model was applied to describing the collective behavior of social insects (ants), later it was extensively used for describing the ‘herding behavior’ in economic systems. Particularly, ‘herding …

Comparison Of Flood Modeling Approaches In Semi-Arid Mountainous Catchments (High-Atlas, Morocco), El Mahdi El Khalki, Yves Tramblay, Mohamed El Mehdi Saidi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In semi-arid regions such as the Mediterranean basin, floods usually represent a large contribution to water resources. In addition, climate scenarios indicate a possible increase in extreme events in the Mediterranean region. Therefore, it is necessary to model floods to better understand the processes involved and predict these risks. The Moroccan catchments flowing downstream of the High-Atlas Mountains are among the areas most vulnerable to flooding. The Issyl catchment (170km²) is located at the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains, with altitudes ranging from 632 to 2295m, and producing floods that directly affect the city of Marrakech. The Rheraya catchment …

Faraway, So Close: An Agent Based Model For Climate, Energy And Macroeconomic Policy, Francesco Lamperti, Giovanni Dosi, Mauro Napoletano, Andrea Roventini, Alessandro Sapio

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents an agent based model for the study of coupled economic and climate dynamics that endogenously co-evolve across a range of different scenarios. The model offers a flexible laboratory to test various combinations of macroeconomic, industrial and climate policies both in the context of long run economic growth and medium run transition towards a greener economy. Furthermore, we propose a stochastic description of the feedbacks stemming from a warming and more volatile climate and study how such negative shocks propagate through the economy. For this reason, the model is particularly well suited for the study of extreme climate …

Investing In Adaptation: Flood Risk And Real Option Application To Bilbao, Luis M. Abadie, Elisa Sainz De Murieta, Ibon Galarraga

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Investment decisions in adaptation are usually made under significant uncertainty due to climate change and socio-economic trends. Extreme events cause damage and may become more frequent over time. In this study we propose three ways to incorporate climate and socioeconomic uncertainty into the assessment of adaptation infrastructures in the city of Bilbao. The first suggestions is to use stochastic modelling, which makes it possible at any given time to estimate the present value of expected damage over a time period, considering that extreme events will increase in the future due to climate and socio-economic conditions. An analytical solution for the …

Learning On The Relationships Between Respiratory Desease And The Use Of Traditional Stoves In Bangladesh Households, Camila Vergara, Iñigo Arregui, Alain Balaguer, Tamia Gómez, Carmen Sandoval, Miquel Sànchez Marrè, Karina Gibert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

More than 4 million people die prematurely every year by deseases related to indoor air pollution produced by solid fuels used in cooking (WHO, 2016, Jones 1999), fifty thousand of them in Bangladesh (News Medical, 2012), being women and children the most affected. Risk of pneumonia is high due to the irritants, toxins and carcinogens realeased into air by the incomplete combustion of solid fuels (biomass) used in traditional stoves (WHO 2016), which produce PM10 (particulate matter, small enough (≤10μm) to get into lungs). An open data base from the World Bank (WHO, 2016) (Dasgutpa et al 2006) describing a …

Online Processing Of Energy And Water Consumption Data To Deliver End Use Characterisation, Andrea Vescovi, Dario Piga, Andrea Cominola, Matteo Giuliani, Andrea Castelleti, Andrea Emilio Rizzoli

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Monitoring the household end-use energy and water consumption is essential to design efficient resource management programs and to provide personalized feedback to consumers, so that: (i) users are aware of how much energy/water each appliance is consuming, and personalized hints for reducing their consumption can be given; (ii) household’s occupants can be informed on potential savings in deferring the use of some appliances to off-peak hours; (iii) water utilities can test the impact of different management strategies. In this work, we present a Java Web Service implementation of a recently-developed algorithm for decomposing the aggregate (energy or water) household consumption …

Balancing Trade-Offs Among Aquatic Ecosystem Services While Navigating Through Regime Shifts, Romina Martin, Maja Schlüter

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Eutrophication can cause shallow lakes to experience regime shifts from the clear to the turbid state which impairs multiple dependent ecosystem services (such as drinking water or sites for recreational activities). While in most cases the clear state is seen as favorable, once it shifted to the turbid, its restoration is difficult and the costs often outweigh the expected benefits. While in some places costly restorations are under way, e.g. through biomanipulation and wetland construction, it remains challenging to implement measures that are able to support multiple ecosystem services simultaneously without compromising other connected services. More precisely, lake managers need …

On Spatial Complexity Of Parameters In Agro-Ecosystem Watershed Models: Confounding Or Illuminating?, Timothy R. Green, Robert H. Erskine, Patrícia P. N. Da Cruz, Ricardo De O. Figueiredo, Holm Kipka, James Ascough, Gregory S. Mcmaster, Olaf David

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Increased confidence is often sought by adding spatial complexity to watershed models and model parameters; does increasing complexity improve the results or just make us feel better about the modeling effort? The answer to this question can depend upon the dominant biophysical properties of a watershed, knowledge of different types or layers of spatial variability, and the information content of the measured responses. The context for this study comprises a large literature base, particularly in the field of hydrology, some of which will be discussed. A balance of “lumping” and “splitting” is proposed in a conceptual framework, where lumping (spatial …

Modelling For Reproducibility, Transparency, And Continuous Learning: Revisiting Jakeman’S 10 Steps, Thorsten Arnold

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Numerical modelling has become the standard tool to evaluate vast amounts of data, both for the public management of natural resources by government agencies and to understand environmental interactions within academia. While an ever-increasing amount of software tools is being developed and approaches are formulated how modellers should interact with stakeholders, the modelling community has not yet addressed criteria how these tools and approaches are applied cost effectively. Across the board, public agencies and academia continue to experience budget and time overruns that are systematic and need to be addressed if environmental modelling shall provide the benefits that modellers claim. …

Climate Change Impacts On Precipitation Extremes, Flows And Flash Floods In Mediterranean Mesoscale Catchments, Antoine Colmet Daage, Sophie Ricci, Emilia Sanchez-Gomez, Valérie Borrell Estupina, Eric Servat, Cécile Llovel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Mediterranean meso-scale river catchments are submitted to extremes floods events linked to intense convective precipitation and local hydrologic features (karst, soil moisture, land use).The Mediterranean region is known to be one of the most affected areas by global warming, and it is likely that changes can be expected in the hydrological cycle. The aim of this study is to assess the climate change impacts on extreme precipitation events using a so-called “futurization” method, in which a transfer function is built by comparing the quantiles of distribution for both present and future climate precipitation. A number of historical flood events, previously …

Collaborative Modelling Of The Renewable Energy Transition: The Collage/Apolus Framework, Cheryl De Boer, Johannes Flacke, Richard Hewitt, Veronica Hernandez-Jimenez

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Transition to a low-carbon economy requires a complete transformation of the energy sector. The replacement of traditional energy sources with renewables implies extensive changes to socio-ecological systems and existing structures. Simply replacing fossil fuels with renewables in a large-scale producer-controlled commercial system is unlikely to be successful. Rather, local, decentralized, publicly supported renewable energy initiatives are predicted to play a major role in this transition.

These increasingly popular projects involve new actors and dynamics and have impacts that are insufficiently understood. There is a need for new tools and approaches to support co-design of integrated regional spatial planning and land …

How Can Farmers‘ Decisions And Policy Actions On Novel Bioenergy Feedstocks Affect The Supply Of Ecosystem Service Bundles?, Jule Schulze, Karin Frank, Joerg A. Priess, Markus A. Meyer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Meeting the world’s growing energy demand through bioenergy production involves land-use change which could have severe environmental and social impacts. In this context, decision-making problems in agricultural management need to be informed by comprehensive impact assessments of novel bioenergy feedstocks that consider multiple ecosystem services (ESS). In this study, we assess the expansion of short rotation coppices (SRCs) in the Mulde watershed in Central Germany. We model cultivation decisions of profit-maximizing farmers under different economic scenarios based on a spatially explicit agent-based model. In addition, we assess two policy scenarios, in which SRCs are cultivated to fulfil the requirements of …

Understanding Alternatives For The Swiss Electricity Sector Transition Under Deep Uncertainty, Philip Berntsen, Evelina Trutnevyte

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Widely used energy system models have been shown to underestimate the deep uncertainty inherent in the real-world energy transition. The models generate a small set of scenarios, too sparse to cover the broad range of alternatives for the future energy transitions. This presentation introduces the EXPANSE model (EXploration of PAtterns in Near-optimal energy ScEnarios) and reveals how it can be used to facilitate a systematic selection and learning about alternative future energy system transitions under deep uncertainty. The model will be demonstrated by applying it to the Swiss electricity sector in 2035 and 2050. EXPANSE is a deterministic bottom-up, technology-rich …

Using Text Mining And Ontology Tools To Identify Important Factors For Modelling Long-Term Carbon Sequestration, Rebekka Hüfner

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Human induced land-use changes and land-cover changes (LUCC) are a major driving force of global environmental change. To develop an improved scientific understanding of the mechanisms and effects of LUCC models and scenarios are important tools. The integrated model LandSHIFT was developed to study LUCC under different biophysical and socio-economical scenarios. It is a spatially explicit modelling system that aims at simulating and analysing land use dynamics and their impacts on the environment at global and regional level. Land-use activities in LandSHIFT are allocated depending on processed demands and suitability values for every land-use activity. In order to study the …