Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Simulating The Sensitivity Of Residential Wildfire Risk To Land Use Policy, Tony Prato, Travis Paveglio, Micheal Hardy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

An integrated model is used to simulate the sensitivity of expected residential losses from wildfire [E(RLW)]) and growth of the wildland urban interface (WUI) to three land use policies in Flathead County, Montana, during the period 2010–2059. The model accounts for the complex socio-ecological interactions among climate change, economic growth and associated residential development, land use policy, homeowners’ wildfire loss mitigation actions, and forest treatments by various land management agencies. E(RLW) depends on the number of developed residential properties, the total value of residential properties, the probability that parcels containing residential properties burn, the conditional probability of residential wildfire losses, …

Sea Level Rise Effects On Acidic Pollution In A Coastal Acid Sulphate Soil Area, Ngo Dang Phong, Chu Thai Hoanh, To Phuc Tuong, Reiner Wassmann

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Bac Lieu is a coastal province in the Mekong River Delta (MRD), Vietnam. Aside from salinity intrusion from the sea, the province is strongly affected by acidic pollution as 58% of the area (250,000 ha) is overlaid with acid sulphate soil (ASS). Previous studies showed that the eminent sea level rise (SLR) would influence the hydrology and salinity of the canal networks in the province. This study, using the previously validated hydraulic and water quality model CRSAP-ACIDITY (Vietnam River Systems And Plains, coupled with ACIDITY Module), aimed at quantifying impacts of different SLR scenarios (SLR=17, 30, 50, or 75 cm) …

Open Source Map Based Software For Photovoltaic System Layout Design, Daniel P. Ames, Kasem Pinthong, Michael Scott, Rohit Khattar, David Solan, Randy Lee

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents a new free and open source GIS-based software package, PVDesktop, for designing large or small photovoltaic (PV) energy production systems with the goal of increasing use of alternative energy. PVDesktop considers numerous factors to better reflect the characteristics of landscape specific to the area including site location, time zone, sun path, nearby weather station data, tilt and azimuth angle of the solar panels, and nearby objects such as trees and buildings that may obstruct or shadow solar radiation over the panels. PVDesktop enables the design of a solar panel layout, assesses the solar shade that could reduce …

Residential Mobility And Model Complexity - An Agent-Based Modelling Experiment On A Small Shrinking Town In Eastern Germany, Carsten M. Buchmann, Nina Schwarz

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Residential mobility is one of the major drivers of urban land use change. For urban planning it is therefore essential to understand patterns of population distribution and residential mobility in cities. Agent-based modelling has been found to be the most suitable method to investigate the complex interplay of processes, including individual location decisions. While numerous of such models have been developed in recent years, the challenge of adequate model complexity is still a hot topic. In this talk we present an agent-based model on residential mobility in the shrinking town Delitzsch in eastern Germany. The model is parameterized by a …

Ocean Acidification And Fisheries - A Bayesian Network Approach To Assessing A Wicked Problem, Russell Richards, Jan-Olaf Meynecke, Oz Sahin, Rachel Tiller, Yaije Liu

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Increased carbon dioxide emissions are driving changes in the chemistry of seawater in a process termed 'ocean acidification' (OA). Globally, this is predicted to impact on coastal fisheries, especially those consisting of calcifying organisms (e.g. mollusks and crustaceans). The impact might also depend on synergistic co-stressors such as a concomitant increase in seawater temperature and the resilience of other biota. However, the framing of OA as a future problem coupled with the complexity of coastal systems means that assessing fisheries vulnerability to OA is characterised by strong variability and uncertainty. It is further characterised by strong socio-economic dimensions given the …

Uncovering Urban System Interrelations Using Land-Use Scenario Modelling, Steffen Lauf, Birgit Kleinschmit, Dagmar Haase

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

For the conservation as well as the improvement in life quality of human beings, today’s political decision makers are challenged to tackle the complex interactions between human activities and the natural environment. In order to better understanding these interactions, we applied a well- validated land-use change model that integrates demographic and residential dynamics, including a preference-driven choice algorithm to enable the simulation of simultaneously occurring growth and shrinkage processes. We introduce 13 scenarios that combine different assumptions based on demographic and economic development, residential preferences, short-range transit accessibility preferences and planning restrictions. They are applied to test the respective effects …

Physically Based Landslide Susceptibility Models With Different Degree Of Complexity: Calibration And Verification, Giuseppe Formetta, Giovanna Capparelli, Riccardo Rigon, Pasquale Versace

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Rainfall induced shallow landslides cause significant damages involving loss of life and properties. Predicting shallow landslide susceptible locations is a complex task that involves many disciplines: hydrology, geotechnical science, geomorphology, statistics. Usually to accomplish this task two main approaches are used: a statistical model or a physically based model.

In this paper, three physically based models for landslide susceptibility analysis were integrated in the Object Modelling System (OMS) and tested in real world applications. Models presented have an increasing degree of complexity. Effects of three different hydrological components connected to the stability model and of model parameters optimization were investigated. …

Modeling Of Urban Planning Actions By Complex Transactions On Semantic 3d City Models, Maximilian Sindram, Thomas H. Kolbe

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Decision support for environmental planning requires the impact analysis of envisaged actions. These actions often are adapted from measures specified in regulations or other legal doc­uments given in natural language. Their realization involves (possibly complex) changes to specific parts of the environment. For example, the energetic retrofitting of a building typically comprises the insulation of the faҫade and replacement of the windows. In general, different actions or combinations of actions can be chosen for the optimization of certain key performance indicators (KPI) like the over­ all energy demand or C0₂ emission of a city district. This requires the assessment …

Using Genetic Algorithms To Fit Species And Habitat Parameters For Modelling The Effect Of Climate Change On Species Distributions With Stochastic Patch Occupancy Models, Gary Polhill, Alessandro Gimona

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Standard approaches to modelling the effect of climate change on species distributions model a direct link between climatic and other biophysical variables and species occupancy. Though these provide a reasonable estimate for the effects of climate change on species distributions in the future, there are a number of issues with these approaches that fail to account for dynamic landscape interactions. For example, the mass occupancy effect means that species may be observed in unsuitable habitat patches surrounding a well-populated area of highly suitable patches. Conversely, a highly suitable area may be too disconnected from other suitable patches to allow long-term …

Modeling Of Co2 Solubility In Salty Aqueous Solutions At Geological Sequestration Conditions, Lu Wang, Qingchun Yu, Lu Xia, Yinhe Zheng

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Injecting CO₂ into deep saline aquifers possesses the highest potential capacity for geological carbon storage (GCS) in order to mitigate climate change. CO₂ solubility in salty aqueous solutions plays a key role in GCS. However, the models of CO₂ solubility are scanty when the mixture of K⁺, Na⁺, Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ in aqueous solution is included. In this study, a simple model for CO₂ solubility is proposed covering conditions typically encountered in geological sequestration. Effect of the property and concentration of K⁺, Na⁺, Ca²⁺ and …

Linking Bayesian Belief Networks And Gis To Assess The Ecosystem Integrity In The Brazilian Amazon, Peter Verweij, Margareth Simoes, Andrei Alves, Rodrigo Ferraz, Anouk Cormont

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Deforestation and climate change heavily impact the ecosystem of the Amazon rainforest threatening its resilience and the sustainability of many human activities. Land protection may prevent ecosystems and their services to deteriorate from the pressures of agricultural expansion, population growth and wood harvesting. In the Brazilian Amazon land protection occurs in several forms such as environmental conservation, setting biodiversity priority areas and the delineation of indigenous lands. Still, the effects are not clear as understanding of the ecosystems is incomplete and responses to human actions are highly uncertain. Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) are models that probabilistically represent correlative and causal …

Object-Based Analysis Of Multispectral Rs Data And Gis For Detection Of Climate Change Impact On The Karakoram Range Northern Pakistan, Waquar Ui Hassan Chaudhary, Åke Sivertun

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Changing climate has a great impact on northern area of Pakistan's environment and is more prone to environmental change impacts than the rest of the country due to its high elevation. However, the results of melting glaciers effect not only the local environment but also the whole country with frequent and heavy floods. Although recent technological development provided solutions of many problems to mankind, the pace of development in the field of environmental preservation technologies are much slower than needed.

Remote sensing (RS) from Satellites and Airplanes used in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are technologies that can aid in understanding …

Modelling Spatial Relationships Between Ecosystem Services And Agricultural Production In An Agent- Based Model, Changxing Dong, Mark Brady, Yann Clough, Ullrika Sahlin, Christoph Sahrbacher, Martin Stjernman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The collective impacts of farmers’ land management decisions on above ground ecosystem services (ES) and their implications for agriculture are poorly understood. Managing habitat to provide ES is costly but at the same time it can support higher yields through, e.g., pollination or natural pest control. Due to the mobility of ES-providers (bees, natural enemies) farmers providing habitat might also benefit their neighbours, creating interdependencies among their decisions. Interdependencies among farmers’ land-use decisions and the flow of ES in space can be considered by integrating agent-based modelling and evidence-based ES models. Such integration requires a trade-off between the land-use details …

Web Applications That Share Level-12 Huc Data And Models Of The Conus, Lorne Leonard, Christopher J. Duffy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

HydroTerre web applications and services provide the Essential Terrestrial Variable (ETV) datasets to create common hydrological models anywhere in the continental United States (CONUS). This service allows web users to download data for their own purposes in their own computing environment. The datasets are provided using standard Geographic Information System formats and the data transformation is dependent on the users own needs, goals, and computing environment. In this article, we demonstrate three web applications and web services that share data and models with users via web interfaces, which automate the data-transformations for United States Geological Survey level-12 Hydrological Unit Codes …

Supporting Environmental Modelling With Taverna Workflows, Web Services And Desktop Grid Technology, Ferenc Horváth, Péter Ittzés, Dóra Ittzés, Zoltán Barcza, Laura Dobor, Dóra Hidy, Attila Marosi, Alex Hardisty

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Ecosystem functioning, climate change, and multiple interactions among biogeochemical cycles, climate system, site conditions and land use options are leading-edge topics in recent environmental modelling. Terrestrial ecosystem models are widely used to support carbon sequestration and ecosystem studies under various ecological circumstances. Our team uses the Biome-BGC model (Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana), and develops an improved model version of it, called Biome-BGC MuSo. Both the original and the improved model estimate the ecosystem scale storage and fluxes of energy, carbon, nitrogen and water, controlled by various physical and biological processes on a daily time-scale. Web services were …

A Simple And Effective Approach To Global Sensitivity Analysis Based On Conditional Output Distributions, Francesca Pianosi, Thorsten Wagener

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Predictions of environmental models are affected by unavoidable and potentially large uncertainty. When models are applied to understand dominant controls of the system under study, uncertainties will reduce our ability to choose between competing hypotheses. When they are used to support decision-making, uncertainties will reduce our ability to discriminate between different management options and undermine the defensibility of the decision-making process. Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) provides quantitative information about the contribution to the uncertainty in the model output arising from different input factors like, for instance, model parameters, boundary conditions or forcing data. GSA thus provides insights into the model …

Are The Driving Forces Of Hydrological Models Really Driving The Model Output?, Jiri Nossent, Willy Bauwens, Fernando Pereira, Toon Verwaest, Frank Mostaert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Rainfall is very often considered as the driving force of hydrological models. If the rainfall changes, the model output (i.e. flow) is also expected to change. In principal, as long as the values of the model parameters are fixed, rainfall will indeed determine the model output. Yet, uncertainties on the input, the model(parameters) and the output lead to variations of the actual values and can disrupt this rigid hypothesis. Hence, the question could be raised if it would be possible to maintain exactly the same initial model output when the model input changes, by varying the model parameter values? Or, …

Activated Sludge With Total Solids Retention: Modified-Asm1 Modelling And Simulation, Cheikh Fall, Anabel Jimenez-Zarate, Ericka Millan-Lagunas, Yves Comeau

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

There are many new strategies put forward for minimizing excess sludge generation in biological wastewater treatment. Some of them were developed within the context of dynamic activated sludge modelling (ASM). A number of means can be used to eliminate the traditional waste activated sludge flow and the build-up of inert solids in the aeration tanks. This includes the use of fine screens to remove the inert particulate organic fraction (X_I), hydrocyclones to lower the inorganic suspended solids (ISS), and different kinds of on-line digesters to further biodegrade the endogenous residues (X_P), via the return activated sludge …

Qmra Of Intestinal Nematode Infection Via Multimedia Exposure Pathways, Arti Kundu, Hugo R. Poma, Mimi W. Jenkins, Veronica B. Rajal, Stefan Wuertz

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The human health risks associated with multimedia exposure pathways of Ascaris lumbricoides (A. lumbricoides) are poorly understood including use of surface water contaminated with untreated wastewater in agriculture, consumption of uncooked raw vegetables irrigated with polluted stream-water, and incidental ingestion of fecally contaminated water by recreators. We analyzed a total of 65 water samples for the presence of helminthes collected from 5 monitoring locations in Salta City over a 13-month period on the Arias-Arenales river in the northwestern region of Salta province in Argentina. The average density of A. lumbricoides in the surface water was 5 eggs/liter. A. lumbricoides was …

Probabilistic Mapping With Bayesian Belief Networks: An Application On Ecosystem Service Delivery In Flanders, Belgium, Dries Landuyt, Seven Broekx, Katrien Van Der Biest, Peter Goethals

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Ecosystem services are gaining more and more attention in decision support applications. Nevertheless, modelling and mapping ecosystem services to support landscape planning decisions remains challenging. Recently, Bayesian belief networks (BBNs), a probabilistic modelling technique, has been introduced in ecosystem service modelling. Major advantages of this modelling approach include high model transparency which enables stakeholder involvement in model development and evaluation, the ability to incorporate expert knowledge on top of data and the possibility to take into account uncertainties. To combine the advantages of BBNs and spatially explicit modelling in the context of ecosystem service modelling, we developed a Quantum GIS …

Norovirus Dose-Response In Sewage-Related Qmra: The Importance Of Virus Aggregation, Graham B. Mcbride

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Norovirus infection and illness are increasingly used as end-points in sewage-related health risk assessments, especially as data from clinical trials outbreak studies have recently become available. The authors of a very recent clinical trial have inferred that the human median infectious dose is higher than previous estimates and similar to that of other RNA viruses. This finding has the potential to cause a revision of previous risk assessments. However, in reaching this conclusion, the potential role of aggregation of these viruses seems not to have been accounted for, although it was accounted for in an earlier trial. In fitting (hypergeometric) …

A Model Component For Simulating The Seasonal Cycle Of Heterotrophic Respiration, G. A. Alexandrov

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Heterotrophic respiration, an important item in ecosystem carbon balance, is the process which is addressed in the global carbon cycle models and Earth system models. The seasonal cycle of the het- erotrophic respiration is determined by seasonal changes in climatic conditions and in the storage of litter (i.e., in the amount of organic substrate available as a food source for organisms composing the heterotrophic community). The model component presented in this paper is focussing at effects produced by seasonal depletion in litter storage. The seasonal changes in litter storage are modelled by ordinary differential equa- tions, which are solved analytically …

Global Sensitivity Analysis In Environmental Water Quality Modelling: Where Do We Stand?, Giorgio Mannina, Alida Cosenza, Manandraitsiory Randrianantoandro, Franҫois Anctil, Marc B. Neumann, Peter A. Vanrolleghem

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Global sensitivity analysis (GSA) is a valuable tool to support the use of mathematical models for environmental systems. During the last years the water quality modelling field has embraced the use of GSA. Environmental water quality modellers have tried to transfer the knowledge and experience acquired in other disciplines. The main objective of this paper is to provide an informed problem statement of the issues surrounding GSA applications in the environmental water quality modelling field. Specifically, this paper aims at identifying, for each GSA method, the potential use, the critical issues to be solved and the limits identified in a …

Morphing Techniques For Creating And Representing Spatiotemporal Data In Gis, José Moreira, Paulo Dias, Pedro Mesquita

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

With the development of remote sensing technologies allowing capturing and transmitting geo-referenced data repeatedly along time, there are many applications demanding for efficient tools to deal with spatiotemporal data. However database research on moving objects with extent has mainly focused on spatiotemporal data models and query languages leaving several issues to be solved regarding, for example, the acquisition of spatiotemporal data. This work deals with the application of 2D polygonal morphing techniques to create spatiotemporal data representations of moving objects that may change location, size or shape continuously over time. The aim is to transform a sequence of observations representing …

Swat-Sir Model For Predicting Fate And Transport Of Manure-Borne Pathogens In Fragmented Agriculture-Forest Ecosystems, Andrey K. Guber, David M. Williams, Amy C. Dechen Quinn, Sushil B. Tamrakar, Joan B. Rose, William F. Porter

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The objective of this study was to develop and qualitatively evaluate a model predicting transmission of manure-borne pathogens between co-grazing cattle and wildlife. The developed add- on module SIR that we coupled with SWAT model included the following new components: wildlife population changes, resource selection, dose-response, compartmental susceptible-infectious- recovered (SIR) module and pathogen shedding. Probabilities of the wild and domestic animal infection by pathogens and numbers of infected animals were computed based on a dose-response approach, which included beta-Poisson and exponential models. Land use and plant biomass predicted with watershed-scale model SWAT were used as the input for the deer …

Uncertainty Transfer In Modeling Layers: From Gcm To Downscaling To Hydrologic Surface-Groundwater Modeling, John F. Mejia, Richard G. Niswonger, Justin Huntington

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In this presentation we show how model uncertainty is transferred from GCMs to hydrologic model results for different downscaling strategies. We use a USGS Groundwater and Surface-water FLOW (GSFLOW) model applied to three small catchments in the northeastern Lake Tahoe basin. A framework is developed for assessing the benefits and difficulties associated with using historical and future climate projections from CMIP3 and CMIP5 datasets for hydrologic investigations. Here we downscale 10 km gridded GCM climate data to a 60m grid using daily values from climate stations and PRISM average monthly climate. Hydrologic model results show that an ensemble/probabilistic station- based …

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 …

Managing Mine Water Under Extreme Climate Variability Using A Model Predictive Control Approach, Lei Gao, Damian Barrett, Rui Liu, Mingwei Zhou, Luigi Renzullo, Irina Emelyanova

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In Australia, growing water demand, intensifying competition with other water users, and significant climate variability have brought a pressure of securing water use to the mining industry, especially in years of droughts. However, during heavy rainfall periods, unregulated discharges of mine-affected water may put the livelihood of community and the environment at risk. Therefore, a careful balance needs to be struck between securing mine water use during water limited periods, on one hand, and mitigating environmental risk expressed through unregulated discharges when water is in excess, on the other. This paper designs a model predictive controller (MPC) to address this …

Testing Tales: Selection And Evaluation Of A Framework For Interoperable Freshwater Modelling, Alexander Elliot, Gabriella Turek, Valerie Snow, Daniel Rutledge, Alistair Ritchie, Alexander Herzig

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Recent freshwater policy initiatives in New Zealand have highlighted the need for integrated and interoperable freshwater models and data sources. In response, we evaluated a range of software frameworks for interoperable freshwater modelling. A workshop on user needs identified a spectrum of framework users, ranging from ‘indirect users’ such as policy makers, to ‘developers’ such as software engineers concerned with developing and implementing frameworks. To address calls for clearer information on available models and data sources, we developed databases of models and data sources along with an interactive tool to query the database and illustrate potential data-model and model-model couplings. …

A Sequential Participatory Approach To Adapt Livestock Systems To Climate Change, Marion Sautier, Mathilde Piquet, Michel Duru, Roger Martin-Clouaire

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Livestock systems are and will increasingly be impacted by climate change primarily because the feed supply produced on the farm (pastures, forage crops) depends greatly on the climatic conditions experienced. To adapt grassland-based livestock systems to climate change, some transformational redesign of the fanning system may be required. Redesign is basically a matter of reconfiguring land-use for feed production and management practices set up to cope with weather variability. We present a participatory method to design systems adapted to new conditions. It is based on a pre-existing game-like platform (Forage Rummy) in which various year-round forage production and animal feeding …