Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Joint Failure Probability Of Dams Based On Probabilistic Flood Hazard Analysis, Matthew G. Montgomery

Masters Theses

Probabilistic risk methods are becoming increasingly accepted as a means of carrying out risk-informed decision making regarding the design and operation of structures such as dams. Probabilistic risk calculations require the quantification of epistemic and aleatory uncertainties not investigated through deterministic methodologies. In this hydrological study, a stochastic sampling methodology is employed to investigate the joint failure probability of three dams in adjacent, similarly sized watersheds within the same Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC) 6 basin. A Probabilistic Flood Hazard Analysis (PFHA) framework is used to simulate the hydrologic loading of a wide range of extreme precipitation events across the combined …

On A New Framework For Detecting, Classifying, And Forecasting Floods For Large-Scale Flood Risk Analysis, Equisha Glenn

Dissertations and Theses

Increasing trends in flooding events are projected to continue as climate changes have increased the chance of extreme weather events. Given the significant, damaging impacts of extreme floods, the ability to effectively model floods is crucial for risk management and mitigation of the impacts of these extreme flooding events. This dissertation presents a new framework for detecting and predicting large-scale flood risk in the United States using climate information. This methodology categorizes regional, simultaneous floods into an index that is used to forecast the risk of extreme flooding a season ahead. The index proposed herein, named the Spatial Flood Index …

Stability Of Low Crested And Submerged Breakwaters: A Reanalysis And Model Development, Christopher P. Burgess

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Low-crested and submerged structures (LCS) play an integral part in the stabilization of shorelines for recreational purposes, yet there are a plethora of empirical models and gaps in the understanding of their stability and damage progression. The objectives were: i) to evaluate the present formulae, ii) explore variable importance, iii) formulate a stability model, iv) extend the current datasets and v) explore a new model for LCS. The literature points to an increasing understanding of the initiation of damage of LCS and recent exploration of the shear stress-induced erosion (van Rijn, 2019). Assessment of two existing models (Kramer, 2006 and …

Variance Decomposition Of Forecasted Water Budget And Sediment Processes Under Changing Climate In Fluvial And Fluviokarst Systems, Nabil Al Aamery

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Variance decomposition is the partitioning of different factors affecting the variance structure of a response variable. The present research focuses on future streamflow and sediment transport processes projections as the response variables. The authors propose using numerous climate factors and hydrological modeling factors that can cause any response variable to vary from historic to future conditions in any given watershed system. The climate modeling factors include global climate model, downscaling method, emission scenario, project phase, bias correction. The hydrological modeling factor includes hydrological model parametrization, and meteorological variable inclusion in the analysis. This research uses a wide spectrum of data, …

Modeling Response Of Water Quality To Land-Use And Climate Change In Lake Auburn, Me, Nicholas Messina

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lake Auburn, Maine, USA, is a historically unproductive lake that has experienced multiple algal blooms since 2011. The lake is the water supply source for a population of ~60,000. We modeled past temperature, and concentrations of dissolved oxygen (DO) and phosphorus (P) in Lake Auburn by considering the watershed and internal contributions of P as well as atmospheric factors, and predicted the change in lake water quality in response to future climate and land-use changes. A stream hydrology and P-loading model (SimplyP) was used to generate input from two major tributaries into a lake model (MyLake) to simulate physical mixing, …

Assessing The Impacts Of Super Storm Flooding In The Transportation Infrastructure – Case Study: San Antonio, Texas, Marcio Giacomoni, Francisco Olivera, Cesar Do Lago

Data

Corresponding data set for Tran-SET Project No. 18HSTSA02. Abstract of the final report is stated below for reference:

"Flooding are likely to increase worldwide due to climate change. Large storms, referred here as superstorms, defined as events with return period equal or larger than 100 years, can lead to an increase of property damages and loss of life. The ability to predict and plan for the impacts of superstorms on transportation infrastructure is key to mitigate future damages and losses. This study analyzed 51 combinations of future projections for representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, which were used …

Perceptions Of Vulnerability To Flooding, Hurricanes, And Climate Change On Grand Isle, Louisiana’S Only Inhabited Barrier Island, Lauren Miller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study used in-depth interviews of permanent residents on Grand Isle, Louisiana, a remote barrier island, to better understand their perceptions of structural flood measures, non-structural responses to flooding and hurricanes, and perceptions of vulnerability to flooding, hurricanes, and climate change on a remote barrier island-Grand Isle, Louisiana. Residents' perceptions regarding the various structural measures implemented by the federal, state, and local government appeared mixed. Non-structural responses to flooding risks implemented at the household, community, state, and federal level continue to strengthen resiliency on Grand Isle. According to interviewees, aspects of environmental, rural, and economic vulnerability on Grand Isle impact …

Evaluating Policy And Climate Impacts On Water Resources Systems Using Coupled Human-Natural Models, Hassaan Furqan Khan

Doctoral Dissertations

Extensive human intervention in the terrestrial hydrosphere means that virtually every river basin globally reflects the interaction between human and natural hydrologic processes. Thus, sustainable watershed management needs to not only account for the diverse ways humans benefit from the environment but also incorporate the impact of human actions on the natural system. Informed policy making to address our water challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of these feedbacks and how they might be affected by future changes in climate. This work develops coupled human-natural models for improved surface water and groundwater management in water-scarce regions under future changes in climate. …

Rainwater Harvesting System Scenario Analysis On Runoff Reduction Potential In Surabaya, Indonesia: A Geospatial Analysis For Brantas Hilir Watershed, Putri Sukmahartati

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Global warming has become an environmental concern over the past several decades and its impact on the water cycle is very crucial to the well-being of the human population. In the hydrological cycle, water evaporates by the heat of the sun and atmosphere, where it is accumulated in the atmosphere via clouds and it then falls as rain. With warmer temperatures, more intensive evaporation and downpours occur. In addition, impervious surfaces are increasing as a result of urban development. Those surfaces cause more water to flow faster into open water bodies, creating more extensive flooding, and additionally reducing water quality. …

Uncertainty Modeling In The Assessment Of Climate Change Impacts On Water Resources Management, Sohom Mandal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Climate change has significant impacts on water resource systems. The objective of this study is to assess climate change impacts on water resource management. The methodology includes (a) the assessment of uncertainty introduced by choice of precipitation downscaling methods; (b) uncertainty assessment and quantification of the impact of climate change on projected streamflow; and (c) uncertainty in and impact of climate change on the management of reservoirs used for hydropower production. The assessment is conducted for two future time periods (2036 to 2065 and 2066 to 2095). The study area, Campbell River basin, British Columbia, Canada, consists of three reservoirs …

Proactive Assessment Of Climate Change And Contaminant Spill Impacts On Source Water Quality, Lillian C. Jeznach

Doctoral Dissertations

Managing the water quality of surface drinking water sources has become an increasingly difficult task for water suppliers due to increased watershed urbanization and climate change. Changes in source water quality may affect public perceptions, treatment effectiveness, and ultimately costs to treat water to drinking standards. Although there are increased threats to current and future drinking water quality, current approaches to managing these threats are typically reactionary. Prior detailed modeling efforts of hypothetical events that may impair raw water quality allow for an understanding of constituent fate and transport, including potential maximum concentrations and travel times to the drinking water …

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 …

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 …

Informing Adaptive Strategies For The Colorado Basin, David Groves, Robert Lempert, Jordan Fischbach, Evan Bloom

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Colorado River is the single most important source of water in the southwestern United States, providing water and power for nearly 40 million people and water to irrigate more than five million acres of farmland across seven states and for 22 Native American tribes. A vast physical and institutional infrastructure exists to provide water, as well as hydropower, recreational opportunities, environmental services, and other benefits to all these users. However, increasing demand, a decade of drought, and expectations of a significantly changing future climate have put the system under significant and deeply uncertain stress. This paper employs and extends …

Water Resource Management With The Management Software Manuela, Monika Von Haaren

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The impact of climate change with increasing droughts will lead to an increase of water consumption in agriculture. Even in Germany, agricultural land is already irrigated intensively to secure harvests at a higher level. The demand for additional irrigation will lead to conflicts between agriculture, water management and nature conservation. This paper shows a new way for the evaluation of water use in agricultural farming. With the developed method stakeholder can assess the water consumption for irrigation in agriculture, which is transferable, regionally applicable and comparable. The water-module is available as a new plug-in in the management software MANUELA and …

Modelling Adaptive Behaviour In Spatial Agent-­Based Models: Coastal Cities And Climate Change, Tatiana Filatova, Erik Horstman, Suzanne J.M.H. Hulscher, Ju-­Sung Lee, Johan De Waard

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A major part of world population lives in coastal and delta areas threatened by adverse consequences of climate change (increasing probabilities or severity of floods and hurricanes). It might lead to a forced displacement of up to 187 million people in coastal zones. Still, exposure and vulnerability in coastal areas rapidly escalate due to the clustering of population and growth of property values in flood-­prone areas. Land markets driven by individual location preferences are crucial in the formation of spatial patterns of activities and the economic value they receive. Under the conditions of uncertainty where probabilistic disasters and rich amenities …

Explicit Cost Accounting For Adaptation, Mitigation And Ecosystem Service Provision In Agriculture, Franz Sinabell, Karin Heinschink, Christoph Tribl

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Farmers, policy makers and scientists are well aware of this problem: obtaining sound cost information for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in agriculture or ecosystem service provision by agriculture is burdensome. In most cases, data sets are developed for a specific region with a given set of management variants for a baseline period. Adapting such information to another region or adjusting costs to expected future price scenarios requires additional efforts and frequently done an ad-hoc and case by case. A new tool is presented that can be used to identify and analyze the entangled effects of future climate and …

Autoflow© - A Novel Application For Water Resource Management And Climate Change Response Using Smart Technology, Khoi Anh Nguyen, Oz Sahin, Rodney Anthony Stewart, Hong Zhang

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Urban areas are increasingly at risk from climate change, with negative impacts predicted for human health, the economy and ecosystems. These risks require responses from cities to improve their resilience. Several analysis platforms have been developed worldwide to help effectively control and response to these impacts from different angles, including water resources management, energy production and consumption management, air pollution control, or other natural resources management. To contribute to this goal, Griffith University in Australia has developed Autoflow^©, a smart application for water demand analysis and carbon emission monitoring and prediction. Various advanced mathematical models have been …

Hydrological Water Resources Assessment Of Cega-Eresma-Adaja Watershed System Using Swat Model, David A. Rivas, Angel De Miguel, Bárbara Willarts

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the hydrological assessment of water bodies, modeling is a key fact in water management strategies of watersheds and serves as a tool for decision making considering environmental issues as the core of sustainable development in the region. In this direction, SWAT model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) was used to assess the water availability related with agricultural management in the watersheds of the tributary rivers Cega, Eresma and Adaja of Duero’s River in Spain both in the current and future climate change scenarios. To define the HRUs, land use maps from remote-sensing processes were used, extracting the agricultural uses …

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 …

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 …

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.

Climate Change Adaptation Chapter: Marshfield, Massachusetts, Joshua H. Chase, Jonathan G. Cooper, Rory Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Filipe Antunes Lima, Sally R. Miller, Toni Marie Pignatelli

Sally Miller

Climate change, understood as a statistically significant variation in the mean state of the climate or its variability, is the greatest environmental challenge of this generation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Marshfield is already being affected by changes in the climate that will have a profound effect on the town’s economy, public health, coastal resources, natural features, water systems, and public and private infrastructure. Adaptation strategies have been widely recognized as playing an important role in improving a community’s ability to respond to climate stressors by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Based on review of climate projections for the …

Identifying Changes In Climatic Trends And The Fingerprints Of Landuse And Landcover Changes In The High Plains Of The Usa, Denis Mutiibwa

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Human activities such as conversion of natural ecosystem to croplands and urban-centers, deforestation and afforestation impact biophysical properties of land surface such as albedo, energy balance, and surface roughness. Alterations in these properties affect the heat and moisture exchanges between the land surface and atmospheric boundary layer. The objectives of this research were; (i) to quantitatively identify the High plains’ regional climate change in temperatures over the period 1895 to 2006, (ii) detect the signatures of anthropogenic forcing of LULC changes on the regional climate change of the High Plains, and (iii) examine the trends in evolving regional latent heat …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 3, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

This report is the third in a series of efforts by students at the Muskie School of Public Service, Community Planning and Development Master’s program, in a core class called “Sustainable Communities.” In this course students seek to understand principles of sustainability and how efforts to implement Sustainability programs can become more successful. The report assembles term papers students completed on particular efforts by municipalities, universities, and other groups to achieve sustainability goals. Students worked on each project in a service learning format with real world clients. They were asked to fashion their papers around lessons learned by other organizations …

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 …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 1, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

When the Sustainable Portland Task Force Report was released in November 2007, under the leadership of Mayor Jim Cohen, Portland Councilor Kevin Donoghue had the idea that students at the Muskie School of Public Service might be able to help implement recommendations from the report. It may have helped that Kevin was himself a graduate of the Community Planning and Development Master’s program at the Muskie School, but it was a good idea nevertheless. He approached Professor Sam Merrill in the CPD program, who spoke with the new Mayor Ed Suslovic about a possible partnership between the City and the …