Computer Engineering Commons^™

Iterative Discovery: A Method For Discovering Feasible Interventions And Targets Conjointly Using Uncertainty Visualisations, Baihua Fu, Joseph Guillaume, Tony Jakeman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Making environmental management and policy decisions is a complex and difficult task when the problem of interest encapsulates pervasive complexity, dynamism and uncertainty. One category of environmental decision making problems may be referred to as “Planning refinements with difficult-to-define objectives”. By our definition, such problems have the following characteristics:

• a current management intervention is already in place, which is known to have limitations, none of which are considered pressing;
• there are significant uncertainties in the systems and models;
• management targets are too complex to satisfactorily explore with optimization tools;
• management targets need to be set that are dependent on what …

Ilmsweb - A Modular, Web-Based Software Platform For Integrated Environmental Modelling, Data Management And Decision Support, S. Kralisch, A. Künne, J. M. Santos, P. Selsam, C. Schwartze

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Integrated water resources management in river basins and related impact assessment of changing climate and landuse typically demand for the integration of a variety of software tools and methods. These often include data management and information systems, classification tools for deriving spatial input data from satellite or airborne imagery, GIS tools for pre-processing and integration of spatial information, hydrological simulation models and multi-criteria comparison methods. While there is a plethora of individual solutions and tools available that address these requirements, their seamless and user-friendly integration in decision support tools remains challenging. We are presenting ILMSweb, a modular, web-based software platform …

Cmfs: A Methodology To Guide The Design Of Conceptual Model Of Farmers’ Decision-Making Processes, Marion Robert, Alban Thomas, Jacques-Eric Bergez

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The agricultural research community uses languages and approaches to model farmers’ decision-making processes but does not clearly detail the steps necessary to build a decision model. We propose an original and easily applicable methodology for modelers to guide data acquisition and analysis, incorporate expert knowledge, and conceptualize decision-making processes in farming systems. It combines decision-making analysis with a modeling approach inspired by cognitive sciences and software-development methods. It is organized into four steps:

1) Problem Definition

• Specify the context and the initial research question.
• Chose the type of data to collect.

2) Case Study Selection

• Select case studies based on …

Understanding The Long-Term Increase Of Flood Risk In Regulated Rivers Through Combined Use Of Cfd, Paleo-Hydrology And Hydrological Data, Patricio Bohorquez, Fernando García-García

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper examines the increase of risk of flooding for a given size flood in urban areas upstream of dam as a consequence of in-channel sedimentation and silted-up reservoir over time. We selected one of the earliest gauged, dammed rivers in Spain: the Guadalquivir River. Our study combines high-resolution shallow water numerical simulations, characterization of paleoflood deposits as sedimentary sequences and botanical high-water marks, as well as hydrological instrumental data taken during large floods with return period of approximately 100 yrs. The co-existence of gauging records and in-situ imagery of water levels for more than one century allows us to …

Chemical Transformation System: Cloud Based Cheminformatic Services To Support Integrated Environmental Modeling, Kurt Wolfe, Nicholas Pope, Rajbir Parmar, Mike Galvin, Caroline Stevens, Eric Weber, Jonathan Flaishans, Tom Purucker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Integrated Environmental Modeling (IEM) systems that account for the fate/transport of organics frequently require physicochemical properties as well as transformation products. A myriad of chemical property databases exist but these can be difficult to access and often do not contain the proprietary chemicals that environmental regulators must consider. We are building the Chemical Transformation System (CTS) to facilitate model parameterization and analysis. CTS integrates a number of physicochemical property calculators into the system including EPI Suite, SPARC, TEST and ChemAxon. The calculators are heterogeneous in their scientific methodologies, technology implementations and deployment stacks. CTS also includes a chemical transformation processing …

A Novel Sampling Approach For Efficient And Robust Uncertainty And Sensitivity Analysis Of Environmental Models, Razi Sheikholeslami, Saman Razavi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Modern environmental models are typically characterized by a large parameter/problem space and high computational demand. These two attributes impede effective implementation of sampling-based analysis such as sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, which require running these computationally intensive models many times to adequately explore and characterize the parameter/problem space. Therefore, developing efficient sampling strategies that scale with the size of the problem, computational budget, and users’ needs is essential. In this study, we propose an efficient sequential sampling strategy, called Progressive Latin Hypercube Sampling (PLHS), which provides an increasingly improved coverage of the parameter space, while satisfying pre-specified requirements. As opposed to …

Groundwater Quality Across Scales: Implications For Nutrient Transport To Large Water Bodies, Hans H. Dürr, Nils Moosdorf

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

High concentrations of dissolved nutrients such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in groundwater are an increasing concern in many areas of the world. Especially regions with high agriculture impact see widespread declining groundwater quality. Implications reach from direct impacts on different water users to discharge of nutrient-rich groundwater to rivers, lakes and coastal areas, where it can contribute to eutrophication, hypoxia or harmful algal blooms. While local-scale studies are abundant and management options exist, quantitative approaches at regional to continental scales are scarce and frequently have to deal with data inconsistencies or are temporally sparse. Here, we present the …

The Validation Of Algal Growth Processes In A Water Quality Model Using Remote Sensing Data, A. R. Slaughter, S. K. Mantel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Water Quality Systems Assessment Model (WQSAM) uses the concept of requisite simplicity within the context of modelling water quality of data scarce South African surface waters. Although WQSAM has successfully simulated the frequency distribution of observed historical nutrient data for various catchments in South Africa, the validation of algal and macrophyte growth processes in the model is a challenge because of a lack of observed data. Remote sensing data can provide an estimate of algal growth within reservoirs. Therefore, this study aimed to validate the WQSAM simulations of algal growth using remote sensing estimations of primary production in reservoirs. …

A Systemic-Driven Perspective Towards Port´S Informational Decisions Through Consideration Of Port Sustainability, Ana X. Halabi-Echeverry, Philippe Clermont, Nelson Obregon-Neira

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents some of the challenges in the development of Decision Support Systems for ports. Specifically, it refers to port informational integration in a context of sustainable factors, practices and functions of the port. It discusses the systemic perspective of port informational integration containing the boundaries of the complex system named Port Decision System Approach (PDSA) and presents the recognition of a decision-making situation as the step one in a methodology that offers a high-level support enhanced through the application of techniques from Computational Intelligence. The PDSA provides the necessary theoretical elements to recognise and deal with the inherent …

A Survey On Data-Driven Decision Support Systems Using Effective Narrative Pattern, Martin Komenda, Matěj Karolyi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Nowadays information technology assists with decision making in various fields of human activities. This paper focuses on a survey of decision support portals and systems that provide any data visualization form and reporting in the environmental research field. Generally, data outputs in environmental research are too large, and it might be difficult for the general public to be well oriented when exploring shown data sets. Therefore, it would be appropriate to guide readers, or to point out the fundamental features of the presentation. One of the effective techniques to lead the reader is data visualization storytelling. It expands exploratory data …

Hydrodynamics And Transverse Mixing In A Rectangular Channel With Bed Forms And Bank Vegetation, M. Ghasemi, M. Heidarpour, C. Gualtieri, S. H. Tabatabaei

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The analysis of contaminants mixing in natural channels is an important topic of Environmental Hydraulics. In the mid-field, the prediction of transverse mixing is complicated by other typical features of natural channels, such as bed forms and vegetation. The present experimental research investigated the effects of bedforms and banks vegetation on the structure of the turbulent flow field and on the transverse mixing process in a channel. A flume equipped with a set of ten 2D fixed dunes on the bed and rice stems at the banks was used. Detailed velocity measurements were performed using acoustic Doppler velocimetry. Mixing measurements …

Developing An Adaptive Science-Infused Governance Framework With Accountability: The Role Of Babel Fish, Pierre Glynn, Alexey Voinov, Carl Shapiro, Karen Jenni

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Science and policy governance, and the development of modeling and decision support tools, suffer from common problems that can affect the management of natural resources and environments. Focusing only on the expertise of scientists and policy makers is not sufficient when designing and implementing effective adaptive strategies to manage complex systems and issues with inherently high uncertainty. Public and stakeholder participation in both science and policy making is essential and can be fostered with greater accessibility, transparency, and accountability in the science and decision-making processes, or what we would call “Babel Fish” enabled responsive communication (cf. Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide …

Numerical Modelling Of Wave-Induced Beach Profile Change With A Two-Phase Sph Scheme, Ming Xiao, Tianyu Long

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This work shows an application of a two-phase SPH model for the details of the interaction between wave propagation and coastal structures. The numerical solution is based on SPH approximation of the mixture model of the Herschel-Bulkley-Papanastasiou viscoplastic model for calculating a variable yield stress. We have investigated the dynamics and characteristics of beach profile transport related to the wave breaking process. Further, the numerical model results were validated against the experimental and numerical data found in the literatures and some relatively good agreements were observed. Afterwards, variable characteristics of the waves propagated over different sloped beaches are carried out. …

Environmental Models As A Service: Enabling Interoperability Through Restful Endpoints And Api Documentation, Jonathan Flaishans, Mike Galvin, Amber Ignatius, Carmen Kuan, Gerard F. Laniak, Kurt Wolfe, Tom Purucker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Achieving interoperability in environmental modeling has evolved as software technology has progressed. The recent rise of cloud computing and proliferation of web services initiated a new stage for creating interoperable systems. Scientific programmers increasingly take advantage of streamlined deployment processes and affordable cloud access to move algorithms and data to the web for discoverability and consumption. In these deployments, environmental models can become available to end users through RESTful web services and consistent application program interfaces (APIs) that consume, manipulate, and store modeling data. RESTful modeling APIs also promote discoverability and guide usability through self-documentation. Embracing the RESTful paradigm allows …

The Exploratory Modeling Workbench An Open Source Toolkit For Exploratory Modeling, Scenario Discovery, And (Multi-Objective) Robust Decision Making, Jan H. Kwakkel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

There is a growing interest in model-based decision support under deep uncertainty, reflected in a variety of approaches and techniques being put forward in the literature. A key idea shared among these various approaches and techniques is the use of models for exploratory rather than predictive purposes. Exploratory modeling aims at exploring the implications for decision making of the various presently irresolvable uncertainties. This is achieved by conducting series of computational experiments that cover the various ways in which the various uncertainties might be resolved. This paper presents an open source library for performing exploratory modeling. This exploratory modeling workbench …

Evaluation Of The Sub-Grid Variability Of Models Simulating Atmospheric Nitrogen Fluxes At Regional Scale From Models Integrating Processes At Landscape Scale, Niramson Azouz, Jean-Louis Drouet, Matthias Beekmann, Pierre Cellier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agricultural activities are the main sources of ammonia emitted into the atmosphere. High concentrations and high rates of dry and wet deposition on soil and vegetation may have an impact on nearby sensitive ecosystems. The high spatial variability of atmospheric ammonia concentrations and deposition rates makes it difficult to produce accurate regional maps without using a large number of measurements or models performing at high spatial resolution. Models used at regional scale to quantify ammonia deposition perform at low spatial resolution and need to average the heterogeneous fluxes that occurred within large grids.

Using regional models may lead to under- …

Reduction Of Pharmaceutical Loads In Rivers: An Integrated Model That Facilitates Decision-Making Processes, Pau Gimeno, Rafael Marcé, Lluís Bosch, Joaquim Comas, Lluís Corominas

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

River Basin Authorities require models and decision support tools to predict loads of Pharmaceutical Active Compounds (PhACs) in surface water and facilitate the evaluation of reduction strategies through urban wastewater system upgrades. We propose a water management support tool which describes the fate and removal of PhACs along the entire catchment and can be used to simulate investments to minimize PhACs loads in the environment. The tool integrates a substance- human consumption and excretion model, a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) model, and a river model. Uncertainty associated to three model parameters (PhAC human consumption and excretion, PhAC degradation constant in …

Strategies And Systems Architecture For Emergency Management Decision Support – A Northern Australia Case Study, Gaëlle Faivre, Dan Ware, Jon Shuker, Rodger Tomlinson

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Emergency managers are increasingly responsible for considering multiple and often disparate information in highly pressurised situations to make evacuation decisions. Under these circumstances there is significant potential for the application of high performance computing technology to provide decision support. An important characteristic of the development of decision support is engagement with end users. In the emergency management setting end users operate in a highly standardised and rule structured environment which has developed based on existing information sources and products. In this context it is very difficult to discuss innovations and new approaches or systems designs with end users.

This paper …

Modelling Social Ecological Dynamics With Transfers Of Vulnerability And Robustness. Examples With Adaptation To Coastal Vulnerability, Olivier Barreteau, J. Marty Anderies, Bruno Bonté, Pauline Brémond, Frédéric Grelot, Chloé Guerbois, Tara Quinn

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Adaption patterns undertaken by policy makers within their own jurisdiction may bump in adaptation patterns undertaken by others at their own level. The consequences of these interactions may lead to mutual reinforcement or to cancelling each policy maker’s adaptation capacity. In this presentation, we consider following Anderies (2014) that autonomous SES have their own adaptive management as an autonomous feedback loop. We take on seriously the concept of pluralism of agency in SES: any goal can be used as the root for a specific feedback loop. We identify the interactions between these loops to characterize transfers of vulnerability or robustness …

Modelling Approach For A Pcb Inventory In Our Environment, Gerlinde Knetsch

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The data of more than 100 monitoring programs in Germany for the substance group of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are to be used for a modelling approach for a PCB inventory. The application landscape of the Federation/Laender POP-DioxinDatabase, which is operated in the German Environment Agency, pursues an interdisciplinary approach and includes all these data. A cross-media evaluation and assessment of environmental data are necessary and relevant to the target system, compiling an inventory of PCBs in our environment. The question arises how the integrated modelling concept can control the knowledge-based methods, with the aim …

Hydraulics Simulation Based On The Two-Phase Sph Model, Hang Wan, Huixia Yang, Ran Li, Ruifeng Liang

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The two-phase flow of air and water is a common problem in the hydraulics simulation, which is difficult to track the deformations of interface with conventional numerical methods based on Eulerian grid-based approaches. As a Lagrangian mesh-less particle method, the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) model has a great advantage in modelling the interface flow. Due to the limitation of the single phase SPH model based on the platform of DualSPHysics, a two-phase SPH model is developed in the paper to investigate the mechanics of aerated flow with large density differences. However, the Mach number appears different in each phase, and …

Dynamic Modelling Of Dissolved Organic Carbon Concentrations In The Severn-Thames River Systems And Assessment Of The Impact Of A Water Transfer, Jaeyoung Lee, Gianbattista Bussi, Paul Whitehead, Martyn Futter, Jim Hall

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The aim of this modelling study has been to assess Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) in the River Thames and River Severn and the impacts of water transfers from in drought or low flow years. The transfer of water from the River Severn to the Thames is a water resource option under consideration by Thames Water as part of Water Resource Management Plan 2014. Rising trends of DOC in upland rivers in Wales have been observed over the past 15 years and with the proposed water transfer there is a chance that high DOC concentrations might be transferred across to the …

A Demonstration Of Many Objective Robust Decision Making Using Openmordm, David Hadka, Jonathan Herman, Patrick Reed, Klaus Keller

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This presentation demonstrates the application of a new open source software framework for many-objective robust decision making (MORDM), called OpenMORDM, on a challenging environmental management test case termed the "lake problem". The lake problem has been used extensively in the prior environmental decision science literature and, in this presentation, captures the challenges posed by conflicting economic and environmental objectives, a water quality "tipping point" beyond which the lake may become irreversibly polluted, and multiple deeply uncertain factors that may undermine the robustness of pollution management policies. OpenMORDM has a basis in the R programming language and represents a bridge to …

Design And Implementation Of A Rest Api For The Human Well Being Index (Hwbi), Amber R. Ignatius, Kurt Wolfe, Rajbir Parmar, Jonathan Flaishans, Linda Harwell, Susan Yee, Tom Purucker, Mike Galvin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Interoperable software development uses principles of component reuse, systems integration, flexible data transfer, and standardized ontological documentation to promote access, reuse, and integration of code. While interoperability principles are increasingly considered technology standards in software engineering, adoption by the environmental modeling community has been slow. We created an Application Programming Interface (API) for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Human Well-being Index (HWBI) model based on interoperability principles. The HWBI characterizes economic, social, and environmental services during years 2000-2010. For each county in the U.S., specific metrics (e.g., life expectancy, housing affordability, voter turnout) are used to calculate scores for eight …

A Cascade Comprehensive Framework For Emergency Response To Water Pollution Incidents From Monitoring To Disposal Engineering: Water Security Protection On South-To-North Water Division Project, Jiping Jiang, Bin Shi, Zhaolin Du, Peng Wang

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Complex surrounding conditions along the water routes put threats on the water supply security of South-to-North Water Division Project (SNWDP), the biggest water transfer projects around the world. Comprehensive emergency management and decision support system (DSS) for chemical spill incidents prevention and control are of great necessary. However, many quantitative decision support models for guiding emergency response and disposal are not available nowadays. For example, how to quantitatively design emergency monitoring network? How to select emergency disposal technology and materials? Whether to start the disposal or not? How to analysis the risk of emergency disposal engineering? … After four years …

Using Machine Learning To Make The Most Out Of Free Data: A Deforestation Case Study, Helen Mayfield, Carl Smith, Marcus Gallagher, Lauren Coad, Marc Hockings

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Deforestation remains a major environmental issue and is studied for a range of reasons such as informing policy decisions, predicting at risk areas and evaluating interventions. Despite there being a range of machine learning (ML) techniques with a proven record in complicated, non-linear problems, many of these are rarely applied to deforestation analysis. We propose that this is partially due to uncertainty in the environmental services field regarding how these models perform compared to standard statistics. There is also a lack of guidance on which situations various models are suitable for. We compared the three ML techniques of artificial neural …

Decision Support Tools Of European Environment Agency, Jiří Hřebíček, Stefan Jensen, Chris Steenmans

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The European Environment Agency (EEA) is an agency of the European Union. Its task is to provide sound, independent information on the environment. EEA is a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and also the general public. Currently, the EEA has 33 member countries. The paper introduces updated decision support tools of the EEA which integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) and data management. There are discussed relevant Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), databases and sharing data with the European Copernicus programme, data centres of EEA, Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre …

Service-Based Processing Of Modis Global Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Data For Hydrological Modelling, C. Siegert, S. Kralisch, A. Künne, D. Nüst, B. Proß, C. Stasch

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Current challenges of understanding and assessing the impacts of climate and land use changes on ecosystems worldwide demand for an ever increasing integration of data and process knowledge in environmental simulation models. While the growing performance of multi-processor computer environments and the availability of well-tested data products with global coverage provide the basis to address this demand, the seamless and automated pre-processing of existing information and their integration into environmental models often remains a crucial point. Here, Web Processing Services (WPS) can be used for an easily usable, standardized geo-information processing that links data with models. This work presents a …

Cloud Services Integration Platform (Csip) Model And Data Services, Olaf David, W. Lloyd, J. Carlson, M. Arabi, T. Wible

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Cloud Services Integration Platform (CSIP) is an open platform tailored to develop and deploy microservices for environmental models with data sources. Its emergence responded to needs within the modelling community for rapid and wide access to such modelling resources. CSIP was designed from the ground up (1) to account for modelling service elasticity and scalability, (2) to leverage contemporary computational approaches, (3) to address interoperability and traceability within operational settings, (4) to allow platform and language agnostic service access and cloud agnostic deployment while providing a simple, OMS3 based non-invasive approach to leverage legacy and new modelling solutions with …

The Delayed Oscillator Model For Climate Variability: A Review And An Application To The Atlantic Meridional Mode, F. Mesmin Awo, Gaël Alory, Ezinvi Baloïtcha

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Understanding climate variability in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans is a considerable challenge for climate scientists. Interannual to decadal climate variability is dominated in these regions by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the North Atlantic Oscillation, the tropical Atlantic zonal and meridional modes. These climatic modes are mainly driven by competing positive and negative feedback processes that involve ocean-atmosphere interactions. The delayed oscillator, a conceptual model that include these processes, has been developed to explain the cyclic nature of ENSO in the Pacific Ocean. We review its successful applications in the Atlantic Ocean and present our own application of …