Computer Engineering Commons^™

Web Based Analysis Of Hydrological Time Series In R Using Web Processing Services, Jiří Kadlec, Daniel P. Ames, Matthew Bayles, Martin Seul, Rick Hooper, Brian Cummings

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

An increasing quantity of observed and modeled hydrological time series data are becoming available through web based catalogs and data servers. The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI) Water Data Center makes much of this data available globally via its new http://data.cuahsi.org web portal. A computationally distributed system was needed to facilitate web based visualization and analysis of data discovered via this portal. This presentation will introduce the design and development of a web-based software framework including an application programmer interface and architecture to share time series analysis R scripts online. Using the CUAHSI data …

Integrated Spatio-Temporal Model Of Land-Use Change: A Focus On Mediterranean Agriculture Under Global Changes, Vahid Mojtahed, Carlo Giupponi, Fabio Eboli, Francesco Busello, Carlo Cararro

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Global climate and socio-economic changes determine the patterns of the allocation and trade of resources in all markets. Top-Down computable general equilibrium (CGE) models ignoring ecosystem constraints, look at the effects of global trends and generate trajectories of socio-economic indicators. Those models are commonly used to analyse the evolution of global economies, under the pressure of climate change drivers, but their approach impose substantial simplifications in terms of spatial aggregation and interactions between socio-economic and environmental variables. When considering adaptation of coupled socio-ecological systems to climate change, their inherent complexity and non-linearity and their spatial and temporal variabilities put the …

An Experimental Comparison Of Methods To Handle Missing Values In Environmental Datasets, A. D. Maldonado, P. A. Aguilera, A. Salmeron

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper reports on a comparison of different techniques to handle missing data in a real environmental dataset containing missing values. In particular, we handled a dataset related to a surface water quality index. The chosen techniques were regression imputation by linear regression, a model tree and a Bayesian network; multiple imputation by chained equations; and data augmentation by a Bayesian network. The models were tested by analyzing the predictive maps and by comparing the density function of the predicted variable with the observed one. The experimental results showed that the imputation by linear regression and the multiple imputation by …

Facilitating The Design Of Abm And The Code Generation To Promote Participatory Modelling, Peter Uhnak, Pierre Bommel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Designing and implementing an ABM is a hard task that needs programming skills besides design skills. This is especially true when dealing with Participatory Modelling (PM) where the model should no longer appear as a black box. On the contrary, participants of a PM process should easily understand the relationship between the outputs of a simulation and the underlying conceptual model, and even contribute to modify it. For that purpose, we have developed an UML Class Diagram Editor that allows the participants to design the structure of their model. Then it generates the source code of the model that can …

Innovation For Consistent Integrated Modeling Across Scales, Bert Jagers

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the context of environmental management policies and implementation plans, we are often faced by complex questions about the environment and human interaction. In order to be able to identify solution pathways forward, we need to understand the dynamics of the natural system as a whole and the human role therein. Our understanding of the system is reflected by the components of our numerical models: from highly specific detailed models to more integrated lumped models. We use models across a wide range of scales. Since policies and implementations interact across these scales and the expertise of relevant authorities involved varies …

On The Use Of Finite-Difference Model To Evaluate The Impact Of Underground Water Overexploitation, Hani A., Bougherira N., Djabri L., Chaffai H., Lallahem S.

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The potentiometric surface in the Annaba basin, which covers an area of 264 km², has declined significantly since 1995. A transient multilayer model has been developed to synthesise the hydrologic data. The groundwater flow was modelled using the finite difference method with a horizontal dimension of 500 x 500 m for the cells. The model consists of two layers, the first corresponding to the alluvial phreatic aquifer and the second to the deep confined aquifer, and is calibrated against the steady state groundwater heads recorded before 1996. Under steady-state conditions, the correspondence between simulated and observed water levels …

Design Of The Data Sensor Pre-Processing Stage For A Long Term Multi-Tracking Application, Pere Martí-Puig, Ramon Reig-Bolaño, Moisès Serra-Serra

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This paper presents a design strategy for an underwater computer vision data system and its pre-processing stage with the purpose of long-term fish behavior monitoring in a controlled environment. The biological experiment requires the continuous tracking of a group of fishes (of 10 to 20 specimens) in a prepared installation located in the Science Marine Laboratory in Mallorca. The experiment is thought to obtain empirical data to estimate biological energy models from specimen’s activity. In consequence it is required to identify and track each individual in the images, which supposes an important image processing effort. Our approach takes advantage from …

Decision Support System For Waste Management, Jiří Hřebíček, Jiří Kalina, Jana Soukopová, Jiří Valta, Jan Prášek

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The paper presents a prototype of the integrated decision support system DECWASTE developed to support decision making in waste management in the Czech Republic. It uses linked open data of eGovernment systems of the Czech Republic. It consists of six sub-modules: PARSER, which downloads the appropriate data from the eGovernment systems to its databases; PREVENT, which calculates the prevention impact on waste generation; FORECAST, which forecasts waste generation for a given time period using developed mathematical forecast models based on the DPSIR (Driving forces-Pressures-States-Impacts-Responses) framework including past time series of waste stream generation; TREATMENT, which forecasts waste treatment for the …

Individual Vs Collective In Public Policy Design, A Cooperation Example In The Marais Poitevin Region, Pierre-Yves Hardy, Véronique Souchère, Anne Dray, Maia David, Rodolphe Sabatier, Eric Kernéis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The conciliation between different issues such as production activities, biodiversity conservation and water management remains unsolved in many places in the world. As a striking example, the wet grasslands of the Marais Poitevin region (France) present many obstacles against the integration of previous issues, especially in terms of public policy design. The socio-cultural situation in this region shows a high degree of political resistance and questions the relevancy of the current Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) as an incentive for livestock farmers to adopt biodiversity friendly practices favoring the birds’ richness of the area. Yet, the current AES based on financial support …

Integration Of Land Use And Land Cover Models: Coupling Two Existing Models To Improve The Simulation Of Location Choice, Harutyun Shahumyana, Rolf Moeckel, Peter Claggett, Frederick Ducca

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Single models do not usually provide all answers required for complex policy decisions, so an integrated modelling is often applied to inform policy makers and urban planners. Developing a fully integrated model is an expensive and time consuming task, thus, coupling existing models is often used for model integration. The paper provides an overview of potential model integration approaches, briefly describes the Simple Integrated Land Use Orchestrator (SILO) model and the Chesapeake Bay Land Change Model (CBLCM), and focuses on the integration method applied to link those models. Particularly, Python wrappers were developed to loosely couple SILO and CBLCM; while …

Simulation Of Guozheng Lake Temperature By Using A New Water Temperature Model, Ling Kang, Zheng Jing

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water temperature in lakes plays an important role in aquatic ecosystem. Wind sheltering effect has an important influence on water temperature distribution. An improved wind sheltering model, which was developed to quantify wind sheltering effect, was coupled to vertical one dimensional heat conduction model to create a new water temperature model. Based on the relationship between the wind direction and obstacle location, as well as the characteristics of wind variation downwind from the obstacle, the wind sheltering model could calculate a time-dependent wind sheltering coefficient. For numerical solution, a new operator-splitting method was adopted. To compensate for the deviation caused …

Multispecies Granular Biofilm Modelling For Simultaneous Anammox And Denitrification Processes In Batch Systems, Mohammad Azari, Manfred Lȕbken, Martin Denecke

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The nitrogen removal pathways in anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process where anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria and denitrifying heterotrophs convert ammonium and nitrite directly to dinitrogen gas under anoxic conditions were investigated using a mathematical model. The Activated Sludge Model No. 1 (ASM1) was modified with two step denitrification and one-step anaerobic ammonia oxidation. A one dimensional granular biofilm model was implemented in Aquasim 2.1v (EAWAG, Switzerland) in order to describe a series of batch processes operated in a bioreactor treating synthetic wastewater. A sophisticated statistical method was used for parameter estimation. The model was not sensitive with respect to the detachment …

Optimal Scales Of Neighbourhood Effects On Land- Use Change: An Analysis Procedure Applied In An Alpine Mountainous Region, Quang Bao Le, Robert Huber

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Neighbourhood effects on land use change are very common. Therefore, they are often included in spatially explicit models of land use change and other spatial analyses. Neighbourhood indices, however, depend strongly on the spatial extent set for calculating them. So far, most of the existing land-use change analyses or models using neighbourhood indices assumed some predefined neighbourhood extents without proving whether the selected extents are optimal for the analysis of the corresponding land use dynamics. This paper presents a methodological procedure to identify (i) the optimal neighbourhood extent and (ii) the range of scale-dependency in neighbourhood effects of different land …

Interoperability Between The Basic Modeling Interface (Bmi) And The Open Modeling Interface (Openmi): A Step Toward Building The Earth System Bridge For Modeling Framework Interoperability, Jonathan L. Goodall, Scott D. Peckham

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Interoperability among environmental modeling frameworks is important to allow for the exchange of software components for modeling, analysis, and data access between these systems. Modeling frameworks share the concept of encapsulating models as software components or services within a larger modeling framework where the components have defined interfaces and data exchange formats. However, the exact definition of these interfaces and data exchange formats differs across modeling frameworks. The Earth System Bridge project, funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) under their EarthCube program, seeks to address this challenge by adopting a core model component that can be wrapped using …

Using System-Dynamics For Advanced Decision Making And Sustainable Water-Use For Farm Irrigation, Monika Von Haaren, Sylvia Herrmann

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Under the conditions of climate change, an efficient use of water is crucial for sustainable resource management. There is a need of user-friendly systems to evaluate the complex system of water use in agriculture. In this scientific research, the factors that have a significant effect on irrigation and the assessment of water consumption were determined by a system-dynamics approach. The developed model includes selected components of irrigation farming and shows interactions of these elements. The model was defined based on expert inputs and a participatory stakeholder process to analyse the interactions within the system "water extraction for irrigation" and derive …

Evidence Of Contaminant Storage At The Soil/Vadose Zone Interface And Implication For Nitrate Residence Time Modeling In Groundwaters, E. Viel, M. Dedewanou, Yves Coquet, S. Binet

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The “Beauce” limestone aquifer is contaminated by nitrate and pesticides mostly coming from agricultural activities. In this region the vadose zone can extend to more than 20 m in depth, appears to be highly heterogeneous and plays a significant role in the retention and/or release of pollutants to aquifers and wells. In order to gain insight into contaminant transfer in the vadose zone, tracer experiments were conducted in a pit, 4 meters wide, 1.6 meters deep, using (1) 30 L of brilliant blue (BB) at a concentration of 6 g/L to map the preferential flow along the percolation profile and …

Socio Environmental Conflicts In Ecuador. The Use Of Preprocessing And Data Mining To Detect Influencing Factors On Violence And Crisis (1985 - 2016), Lina Pita Merino, Martí Rosas-Casals, Karina Gibert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The main concern regarding the spread of Socio Environmental Conflicts (SEC) is the constant increase of extractive activities to support the economic system. Conflicts originated in the clash of interests between the extractive industries and local populations is the more visible outcome, but the complexity of this phenomenon may not be that obvious. Among South American countries, the highest murder rates of environmental activists corresponded to Brazil, Peru and Colombia, three of the four Amazonian countries along with Ecuador (Global Witness, 2015). In addition, all of them have similar characteristics such as high levels of inequality and the presence of …

Emergency Maps Tool – Facilitating Collaboration And Decision Making During Emergency & Crises Situations, Gerald Schimak, Peter Kutschera, Refiz Duro, Katharina Kutschera

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Emergency Maps Tool (EMT) has been developed as part of a collaboration environment in the C2-SENSE Emergency Interoperability Framework (www.c2-sense.eu). The collaboration environment aims to connect all relevant organizations for joint response in emergency and crises situations. The Emergency Maps Tool aims to display all relevant resources (e.g., authorities, organization, points and object of interests, messages, etc.) involved or of special importance, in order to allow proper decision making. EMT allows decision makers to set and monitor activities, send and receive event related messages but also to include ad-hoc information from sensors or sensor networks (e.g., water monitoring sensors …

Bluetooth Beacon Network Suitability For Crisis Management, Jonas Sevcik

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This research addresses assessment of Bluetooth Low Energy beacon based sensor networks used indoors for navigation or localization purposes, e.g. for fire brigade or during emergency evacuation. The objective of this research is to evaluate suitability of beacon technology in the terms of overall stability and precision. We focused on commercially highly deployed beacon brand Estimote, for usage in such network infrastructures. These beacons were tested in a real field deployment conditions, with focus on radiated signal quality and its spreading. Test measurements were made by iOS based smartphones to evaluate precision of user localization. Furthermore, beacons were tested in …

Development Of A Novel Mobile Industrial-Scale Fluidized Adsorption Process For Emergency Treatment Of Water Polluted By Aniline: Cfd Simulation And Experiments, Zhaolin Du, Tong Zheng, Huizhe Cao, Jiping Jiang, Peng Wang

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Sudden river chemical spills accidents occurred frequently these years and caused great economic losses and odious social impacts. Although the current methods, such as the granular activated carbon package treatment in the Sudden Water Pollution Accident of Zhuozhang River of China, could make the water quality up to the standard, they resulted in the limited flow ability and low mass transfer capability, and also had some difficulty treating the unpredicted emergencies because of its location-specific treatment and time-consuming preparation work. Hence, a novel mobile industrial-scale fluidized adsorption process, which could address the above problems and was fast to deploy with …

Participatory Modelling To Assess Climate Impacts On Water Resources In The Big Wood Basin, Idaho, J. Koch, A. Inouye, D. Lach, J. Stevenson, J. P. Bolte

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many of the natural resource issues we face today cannot be fully understood using normal scientific methods or theories. When uncertainties or decision stakes are high, participation by an “extended peer community” can be critical to studying and managing complex systems since local expertise on land use and ecosystem processes may not otherwise be captured. We conducted a case study of participatory modelling to support natural resource management under a changing climate. Over a two-year period, we convened a Knowledge to Action Network (KTAN) of scientists and stakeholders interested in exploring the impacts of climate change in Idaho’s Big Wood …

R Package Mvghd: Causal Inference Procedure For Geographic High-Dimensional, Stéphane Bourrelly, Pascal Auquier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Causal statistic inference is a key issue in machine learning. The goal is designing procedures that are able to select relevant subsets of explanatory variables, which might help scientists to better understand the underlying mechanisms behind the studied phenomena. We present a causal statistic inference procedure, especially designed for Geographic High-dimensional Datasets (GHD). The promise of discovering unknown informative factors are as great as the intrinsic learning challenges in these complex datasets, which are more and more common in the fields of environment, health, ecology, epidemiology, geography, agriculture, etc. Firstly, we point out the difference between the variable selection strategies …

From Openmi To Hydrocouple: Advancing Openmi To Support Experimental Simulations And Standard Geospatial Datasets, Caleb A. Buahin, Jeffery S. Horsburgh

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

HydroCouple is a cross-platform, component-based modeling interface definition that largely follows the Open Modeling Interface 2.0 (OpenMI) specification. HydroCouple provides advancements to better facilitate those experimental model investigations that fall into the so-called “embarrassingly parallel” class of simulations, including uncertainty assessment, ensemble forecasting, and optimization simulations. Additionally, HydroCouple explicitly incorporates low level interface definitions for multi- dimensional datasets and geospatial data formats including the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Simple Feature Access specification, raster datasets, and meshes that are widely used in the earth systems and environmental modeling field. In this paper, we describe these and other advances provided by the HydroCouple …

Towards A Neural Networks-Based Prediction Tool Devoted To Low Water-Levels Forecasting: Relevant Architecture Selection Based On Main Physical Processes, A. Coutouis, A. Johannet, S. Pistre, P. -A. Ayral, L. Cadilhac

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Karst aquifers provide water resource for a large part of the Mediterranean population and water resource becomes a strategic problem during summer when population increases due to tourism. To help managers to optimize the exploitation of water, this work studies the ability of a neural network model to efficiently simulate water levels in the Cèze River, connected to a karst aquifer, few months ahead during the dry season. The neural model is based on recurrent multilayer perceptrons that learn the relations between inputs (mainly rainfall and ETP) and output (water level). After a training step using 17 years of data, …

Paper And Pebbles Simulations And Modelling For The Governance Of Socio-Environmental Systems: A Review Of 8 Years Of Experimenting With The Wat-Agame Toolkit, Géraldine Abrami, Nils Ferrand, Raphaele Ducrot, Sylvie Morardet, Emeline Hassenforder, Patrice Garin, Bruno Bonté, Patrice Robin, Wanda Aquae-Gaudi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Wat-A-Game (WAG) is an open toolkit and a method based on simple bricks for designing and using participatory simulations (i.e. role playing games) for water management, policy design and education. It is included in a more extensive package of integrated methods and tools, called CoOPLAaGE, targeting the main needs and steps in the multilevel decision and management process.

The main principle of WAG is to use pebbles to show explicitly how water (and other resources) flows, and are transformed and used, and different paper elements and cards to represent space, activities and rules (Abrami et al, 2012; Ferrand et al, …

Analysing The Error Potential Of Administrative Data In Determining The Sinuosity Of Small Rivers, Pierre Karrasch, Sebastian Hunger

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

According to the European Water Framework Directive the member states are committed to prove the good ecological status of all water bodies. These requirements are verified by a regular monitoring. Especially the use of remote sensing data and methods of applied geoinformatics and statistics can be recommended for the monitoring of several hydromorphological parameters. At the same time for some single parameters basic geodata provided by local authorities are available (e.g. river centrelines). In this study the quality of these basic geodata is compared with self-extracted results using different remote sensing data sources (CIR-orthophoto, digital terrain model). The results reveal …

Artificial Intelligence Techniques To Enhance Actors’ Decision Strategies In Socio-­Ecological Agent-­ Based Models, Shaheen A. Abdulkareem, Ellen-­Wien Augustijn-­Beckers, Yaseen T. Mustafa, Tatiana Filatova

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agent-­Based Models (ABMs) are indispensable to studying the aggregated impacts of individual actions of heterogeneous interacting adaptive agents. Concurrently, artificial intelligence has been employed for decades to simulate autonomous actions of individual entities that react, learn and exchange information with an environment and one another. There are obvious synergies between the two computational approaches. For example, artificial intelligence is often used to enhance agents’ behaviour in ABMs. Artificial intelligence learning algorithms (AILAs) allow for a richer agents’ architecture for operationalization of more realistic learning decisions beyond a simplistic treatment of agents’ cognitive and sensory capacities. Firstly, we review recent socio-­economic …

Experimental Measurement Of Stakeholder Expectation Formation And Risk Taking Behaviour For Integrated Regional Agricultural Land Use Modelling, Marius Eisele, Christian Troost, Thomas Berger

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Understanding how stakeholders respond to climate signals, form expectations about the future and adapt behaviour under uncertainty is crucial for simulating land use change in integrated assessment models. Traditional economic models of expectation formation assume rational or quasi- rational patterns of expectation formation and have typically been derived in the context of price expectations. Approaches for modelling decisions under uncertainty typically either follow the paradigms of (subjective) expected utility maximization or prospect theory.

These approaches however may not fit to the analysis of climate change responses due to ambiguous climate signals, a long time span of change, and the significance …

Gis Mash-Ups In The Cloud: Visualizing Online Data Using Hydroshare And Tethys Platform, Daniel P. Ames, Shawn Crawley, Zhiyu Li

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

HydroShare is a web based data management system for climate and water data that is includes a web-services application programmer interface (API) to allow third party programmers to access and use its open data resources. To provide end users with data analysis and visualization tools for HydroShare resources, we have implemented an online web app development system called Tethys Platform and have developed several apps that utilize the HydroShare API. Tethys Platform is an open source software package based on the Django framework and Python programming language. The Tethys software development kit allows users to create web apps for visualizing, …

Effects Of Climate Data Aggregation On Regional Net Primary Production (Npp) Modelling, Matthias Kuhnert, Jagadeesh Yeluripati, Pete Smith, Holger Hoffmann, Marcel Van Oijen, Julie Constantin, Elsa Coucheney, Rene Dechow, Henrik Eckersten, Thomas Gaiser, Balász Grosz, Edwin Haas, Kurt-Christian Kersebaum, Ralf Kiese, Steffen Klatt, Elisabet Lewan, Claas Nendel, Helene Raynal, Carmen Sosa, Xenia Specka, Edmar Teixeira, Enli Wang, Lutz Weihermüller, Gang Zhao, Zhigan Zhao, Stephen Ogle, Frank Ewert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In ecosystem modelling studies, data are often collected at a small scale but are used in models to predict ecosystem responses e.g. net primary production (NPP) at coarser scale, using data aggregation. The data aggregation causes errors that are difficult to predict, because of model complexity and our limited knowledge of the spatial heterogeneity underlying our aggregated input values. Input aggregation thus adds to the uncertainty associated with model predictions. One way of reducing uncertainty related to input aggregation error is to evaluate models at different resolutions for areas where high-resolution input data are available. The objective of this study …