Computer Engineering Commons^™

Web Portal For Corporate Sustainability Evaluation, Modelling And Benchmarking, Oldřich Faldík, Jiří Hřebíček, Oldřich Trenz, Edward Kasem

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The ability of a company to maintain productivity over time and thus retain the potential of profitability and stability to the long-term is termed sustainability. The appropriate combination of sustainability indicators from a number of different fields, such as economic, social, environmental and corporate governance, is maintained during this period. In conjunction with the support of corporate reporting, it is a powerful tool that companies use to endorse internal environmental and financial reporting, distribution of descriptive information about the company into its surroundings, and a way to follow Key Performance Indicators. The aim of this paper is to present the …

Modelling Potential Nitrogen Losses In Oil Palm Plantations With In-Palm, An Agri-Environmental Indicator, Pardon Lénaïc, Bockstaller Christian, Marichal Raphaël, Sionita Ribka, Nelson Paul, Gabrielle Benoît, Jean-Paul Laclau, Caliman Jean-Pierre, Bessou Cécile

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Oil palm cultivation area is expected to increase until at least 2050. This expansion raises environmental concerns, not only regarding land-use change and its consequences, but also concerning potential impacts of losses of nitrogen such as ammonia volatilisation, nitrous oxide emission and nitrate leaching and runoff. The prerequisite to any work on the reduction of losses and identification of best practices is the development of an assessment tool. However, the available knowledge regarding nitrogen losses is limited for oil palm, which leads to high uncertainty in environmental assessment.

In this context, we chose to develop an agri-environmental indicator, IN-Palm, which …

The Role Of Subjective Risk Perceptions In Shaping Coastal Development Dynamics, Nicholas R. Magliocca, Virginia Mcconnell, Margaret Walls

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In highly dynamic socio-environmental systems, particularly those affected by frequent natural hazards, the ways in which people perceive their environment, formulate expectations of risk, and make decisions influence the long-term vulnerability of the built landscape to natural hazards. A common observation in landscapes prone to natural hazards, such as flooding and/or hurricanes, is the emergence of overly reactive (i.e., out-of-equilibrium, or ‘boom-bust’ cycles) market dynamics. Housing prices and insurance uptake rates have been shown to decline and spike, respectively, immediately after hazard events and then return to long-term trends as time since the event increases. Theoretical explanations for such dynamics …

Groundwater Recharge And Associated Uncertainty Estimation Combining Multi-Method And Multi-Scale Approaches, S. Lanini, Y. Caballero

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Groundwater resource assessment is a major concern for water managers who have to balance water demands and resources at a basin or territory scale. One operational way to address this question is to estimate the part of recharge which is linked to precipitation. Many methods to estimate groundwater recharge are described in the literature, varying in terms of time scale and the nature of the data they treat. They do not always provide a suitable estimate of uncertainty. To obtain both a realistic estimation of groundwater recharge and a confidence interval at the hydrogeological basin scale, we propose a multi-method …

Hydroshare: Promoting Collaborative Publication, Interoperability, And Reuse Of Hydrologic Data And Research Products, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, David G. Tarboton, Ray Idaszak, Dan P. Ames, Jonathan L. Goodall, Venkatesh Merwade, Alva Couch, Richard P. Hooper, Pabitra Dash, Michael J. Stealey, Hong Yi, Tian Gan, Anthony M. Castronova, Brian Miles, Zhiyu Li, Mohamed M. Morsy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Data and models used within the hydrologic science community are diverse. New research data and model repositories have succeeded in making data and models more accessible, but are, in most cases, limited to particular types or classes of data or models and also lack the type of collaborative, and iterative functionality needed to enable shared data collection and modeling workflows. File sharing systems currently used within many scientific communities for private sharing of preliminary and intermediate data and modeling products do not support collaborative data capture, description, visualization, and annotation. This presentation will cast hydrologic datasets and models as “social …

How To Couple Ecological Database To Geochemical Dynamic Model To Predict The Impact Of Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition And Climate Change On French Forest Ecosystems At The National Scale?, S. Rizzetto, J. -.C Gégout, S. Belyazid, E. Kuhn, H. Sverdrup, A. Probst

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Nitrogen atmospheric deposition is known to severely impact ecosystem functioning by influencing soil biogeochemistry, nutrients balance and, consequently, tree growth, forest health and biodiversity. Because the ongoing global changes affect the ecosystem processes, climate change and atmospheric deposition must be conjointly taken into account to assess the evolution of forest ecosystem status over time. The general purpose of this work was to predict forest vegetation response to the combined impacts of nitrogen atmospheric deposition and climate change by using dynamic modelling approaches. The coupled biogeochemical-ecological model ForSAFE-Veg was first run to simulate this response on three well referenced studied sites …

An Agent-Based Model For Studying The Effects Of Sustainable Intensification On Food Security In The Nation State, James Reilly, Terry Dawson, Robin Matthews, Gary Polhill, Pete Smith

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Growth in World’s population, the expansion of human activities and the demand for land has and continues to damage the natural environment. Humans depend on the natural environment for essential life-preserving processes, for example food production. Damage to the environment has serious consequences for national (State) and human security and well-being. One concern is food security and, in particular, whether a growing World population will find enough food to eat. The consequences of using more land and resources to grow more food are an important area of research. The expansion of farming will leave less land for other important uses. …

Uncertainty Analysis Toward Confidence Limits To Hydraulic State Predictions In Water Distribution Networks, Mathias Braun, Olivier Piller, Angelo Iollo, Iraj Mortazavi, Jochen Deuerlein

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Calculating the hydraulic state, through and across elements such as pipes, valves and control devices is an important task in managing a water distribution network. Although hydraulic models are widely used by water utilities and engineers, they are governed by a huge number of uncertain parameters like the diameter and roughness of pipes, consumer demands, leakages and the internal state of valves inside the distribution network. In the past, extensive work has been done on the calibration of these parameters but the results are still uncertain. The objective of the research done as part of the French-German project ResiWater is …

Using Web Content For Informing Water Management In Snow-Dominated Catchments, M. Giuliani, R. Fedorov, A. Castelleti, P. Fraternali

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Snow accumulation and melting are fundamental components of the hydrologic cycle in many water systems across the world. In such contexts, improving snow monitoring can be extremely valuable in a variety of operational contexts, such as avalanche protection, medium to long-term streamflow forecast, and drought risk management. Despite recent advances in environmental monitoring systems, continuous snow monitoring systems able to collect data at high spatial and temporal resolution are not well established yet. The unprecedented availability of user generated data on the Web is opening new opportunities for enhancing real-time monitoring and modeling of environmental systems based on data that …

A Multipurpose Soil Inorganic Carbon Prediction Model, Ben W. Kolosz, Peter Manning, Jorat M. Ehsan, Saran P. Sohi, David A.C. Manning

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

There is a lack of models to predict soil inorganic carbon (SIC) which are not only multipurpose, but can predict SIC in a variety of soils and materials. The importance of estimating SIC stocks is due to the large contribution they make towards total carbon in some soils. This paper proposes such a model which aims to account for the variance and geographical range of soils. As an example, one such use is the accurate prediction of passive SIC sequestration rates as this is currently a complex challenge, mainly due to environmental effects such as water, temperature and atmospheric CO …

Sensitivity Analysis In Support To Drinking Water Production Plants Optimization, Florin Capitanescu, Antonino Marvuglia, Enrico Benetto, Aras Ahmadi, Ligia Tiruta-Barna

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the frameworks of environmental management and computational sustainability, this paper aims at improving, in a cost-effective manner, the sustainability of existing drinking water production plants (DWPPs) via multi-objective constrained optimization (MOO). Specifically, the paper explores the ability of global sensitivity analysis (SA) methods to support MOO of DWPPs by means of a quick identification of a subset of the most sensitive decision variables from a large set, which leads to better quality solutions under limited time budget. To this end, the paper conducts a comparative analysis for this MOO problem of two major SA methods, namely Morris and Sobol’, …

Residual Soil Nitrogen Scenario Analysis Of Canadian Farmland Using A Canadian Agricultural Nitrogen Budget (Canb V4.0) Model, Jingyi Yang, Craig Drury

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A Canadian Agricultural Nitrogen Budget (CANB) model has been developed since 2002 to estimate Residual Soil Nitrogen (RSN) and N leaching loss across Canadian farmland. The current results showed that national RSN averages in Canadian farmland (annual N input minus annual N output) increased from 9.4 kg N ha-1 in 1981 to 23.6 kg N ha-1 in 2011 as mainly affected by the increase in synthetic fertilizer N usage and biological N2 fixation. With annual drainage, about 50 and 80% of residual soil N was lost in Central (Ontario and Quebec) and Atlantic Canada, respectively, through leaching and varying according …

Watershed And Economic Data Interoperability (Wedo) System, Rajbir Parmar, John M. Johnston, Mike Galvin, Amber Ignatius, Catherine Foley

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Hydrologic modeling is essential for environmental, economic, and human health decision- making. However, sharing of modeling studies is limited within the watershed modeling community. Distribution of hydrologic modeling research typically involves publishing summarized data in peer reviewed journals, producing reports, or presenting at conferences. This narrow data distribution process limits interoperability, decreases transparency, wastes leveraging potential, and discourages detailed evaluation by other modelers. These limitations are also experienced beyond hydrologic modeling. For example, an economic analysis for nutrient trading may not be possible without access to detailed hydrologic modeling data. To address these issues, the Watershed and Economic Data InterOperability …

Sustainable Collective Pest Management Using A Graph-Based Markov Decision Processes Framework, Jean-Noël Aubertot, Marie-Josée Cros, Nathalie Peyrard, Régis Sabbadin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

For environmental, ecological and human health sustainability, there is a great need to limit the structural dependency of agriculture on pesticides while, at the same time, maintaining satisfactory levels of production and farmers’ gross margins. A model was developed to explore the consequences of various management policies to contain blackleg on canola, on a long term basis. This model relies on the Graph-based Markov Decision Processes (GMDP) framework, that allows representing and optimizing sequential decisions under uncertainty, taking into account interactions between fields (spore dispersal). The objective of the study is to help better enforce management practices such as cultivar …

Integrating Human Agency And Ecosystem Services: An Abm Perspective On Food, Stefano Balbi, Ferdinando Villa

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Food is a primary provisioning ecosystem service. The concept of ecosystem services only focuses on the flow of services from nature to humans and doesn’t consider human flows, which include both the flows from human to nature (i.e. the co-production of ecosystem services or environmental pressures caused by humans) and human to human flows (i.e. social flows). Neglecting human flows is a main issue for modelling food provision within the ecosystem services framework, especially so under a food security perspective, where food access greatly depend on economic entitlements and social networks. We use the example of food security to provide …

The European Information Platform For Chemical Monitoring (Ipchem) - How Can You Realize Interoperability?, Gerlinde Knetsch, Maria Ruether

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Monitoring programs in Germany offer a large variety of data. On the one hand, these data are generated over many years in selected sampling areas; on the other hand, studies of monitoring take place in the context of research projects or other investigations. These data are often available in web-based information systems. Two databases will be presented with their potential for the interoperability with a (technical) platform for data of the chemical monitoring. The European project "Information Platform for Chemical Monitoring (IPCheM)" promotes networking of various existing databases and information systems with the goal of advancing the environmental data exchange …

A Decision Support Tool (R-Swat-Ds) For Integrated Watershed Management, Angel Udías, Anna Malago, Marco Pastori, Olga Vigiak, Arnauld Reynaud, Francisco Javier Elorza, Faycal Bouraoui

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Best management practices (BMPs) can be used effectively to reduce nutrient and sediment loads generated from point sources or non-point sources to receiving water bodies. Methodologies for optimal, cost effective BMP selection and placement are needed to assist watershed management planners and stakeholders. We developed a modeling-optimization framework that can be used to find cost-effective solutions of BMP placement to attain nutrient load reduction targets. The framework integrates the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) watershed model, spatial representation of BMPs, an economic component, and multi-objective optimization routines in the R environment. The framework can be used to launch individual …

How Weather Uncertainty Impacts The Predicted Yield In An Agricultural Decision Support Tool?, Amélie Pinet, Romain Bourget, Pierre Moreau, Nathalie Saint-Geours, Julia Radoszycki, Philippe Stoop

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Crop models dynamically simulate nutrient and water cycles on a daily basis to predict crop growth and yield. They can be integrated into decsision support systems (DSS) dedicated to helping farmers improve their profitability and sustainability by pro-actively adapting their cultural practices (for example irrigation and fertilization). One key challenge is then the use of appropriate input data, and in particular of weather data: current weather data drive the simulation of the daily crop growth, seasonal forecasts are used to predict the yield at the end of the growing season, and both are elements on which farmers base their strategical …

An Integrated Interdisciplinary Modelling System Of Climate Change Impacts On Agriculture In Support Of Adaptation Planning: Mosaicc, Hideki Kanamaru, Mauro Evangelisti

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations developed a server-based integrated system of tools and models called MOSAICC to evaluate climate change impacts on the agriculture sectors (crops, water resources, forests, and economy). MOSAICC is designed to respond to the needs of developing countries which may benefit from institutional and individual capacity development in producing relevant information for national climate change adaptation planning. This innovative system design facilitates a participatory environment where researchers with different installations on the user's computer and makes maintenance and update of the system on the centralized server simple. MOSAICC is based on open-source technology …

A Centralized Management System For Raster Data, Felix Linde, Ralf Wieland, Karin Groth

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We present a concept for a system to manage and distribute geo-referenced raster data from multiple possible sources on the institute level. The core concept is to centralize all import routines for data from different sources and formats, store the information in a common data format and distribute the needed information for research purposes upon request. By using hdf5 files, it can be assured that geo-spatial data is always kept in close connection with the corresponding meta-data. Furthermore this approach builds a technical basis for enhancing data fusion methods by allowing the use of common analysis routines, regardless of the …

What Is The Role Of Human Decisions In Restoring A Clear Lake?, Romina Martin, Maja Schlüter

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Human decisions affect and are affected by ecological systems in multiple ways. Natural resource modelling has commonly focused on the decisions of resource users or strategic planners. We argue that the dynamics of social-ecological systems (SES), however, emerge from multiple social-ecological interactions that are the result of decisions from different actors. As a first step towards incorporating this social complexity into models of SES, we developed a model that includes decisions by governance actors, ecosystem users and individuals that affect the state of an ecological system. We use the example of lake restoration, i.e. the ecological regime shift from a …

Methodological Abilities Of Integrated Models To Support Agricultural Landscape Resilience: Current Status And Research Perspectives, Quang Bao Le

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

It is important to increase the resilience of rural landscapes in the face of global changes. It is widely recognized that integrated modeling is often a methodological choice to study landscape resilience because the task is often beyond the ability of direct, empirical studies. However, so far there has not yet been a systemized, critical review on methodological abilities current modeling approaches can have for supporting management for agricultural landscape resilience. This review study (i) highlighted the methodological abilities of integrated system modeling ideally needed for agricultural landscape management for resilience, (ii) reviewed strengths and weakness of common integrated modeling …

Uncertainties In Estimating Design Droughts, Devanmini Halwatura, Alex M. Lechner, Neil Mcintyre, Sven Arnold

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Severity-duration–frequency (SDF) curves of periods of rainfall deficits are useful tools for drought analyses. However, accuracy of these curves are affected by uncertainties associated with a number of factors including: (i) the choice of drought index, (ii) the sampling error due to the limited length of observation data, (iii) the effects of aggregation of data with respect to drought timescales, (iv) the selection of marginal probability distribution functions of drought severity and duration, (v) and the type of copula used to approximate the dependency between severity and duration. In this paper we assess the impact of these uncertainties on estimates …

A Framework For Developing Simple Adaptive Indicator-Based Water Treatment Decision Support Systems, Mohamed A. Hamouda

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A number of indicator-based decision tools have been developed to help select optimal water or wastewater treatment technologies. Water treatment is an inherently dynamic process that is influenced by constantly changing external factors, such as: deteriorating source water quality, changing regulations, and uncertain economic situation. Thus, decision support systems developed to select among alternative water treatment technologies should be adaptive to such changes. However, many of the developed tools still follow the traditional route of assigning fixed values and weights for the used indicators. Moreover, existing attempts to make the decision logic more adaptive often comes at the expense of …

System Dynamics And Bayesian Network Models For Vulnerability And Adaptation Assessment Of A Coastal Water Supply And Demand System, Thuc D. Phan, Oz Sahin, James Cr. Smart

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A coastal water supply and demand system is a highly uncertain and dynamically complex system. The degree of high uncertainty can arise from future climate change, population growth, water consumption trends, land use changes and socio-economic development, resulting in limited availability of empirical data. The effects of temporal and spatial interactions among such driving factors further contribute to the high dynamic complexity of coastal freshwater management. To effectively manage a coastal freshwater system with high levels of uncertainty and complexity, a participatory integrated System dynamics (SD) and Bayesian networks (BNs) modelling framework was suggested to assess the vulnerability and adaptation …

The Role Of Social Institutions In The Resolution Of International Conflicts Over Shared Fishing Resources, Cezara Păstrăv, Frank Dignum

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

International conflicts over shared fishing resources may rise in numbers in the context of climate change, which has lead, and will continue to lead, to changes in behavior patterns and geographic distribution of fish and other marine resources of interest to the fishing industry. Under these circumstances, being able to quickly adapt to unexpected changes becomes a very desirable trait for the fishing industry. Unfortunately, the current conflict resolution processes are often difficult, time consuming and sometimes not maintained.

We are interested in whether more sustainable mechanisms, that act from the bottom up and are easier to enforce by the …

Blueprint Of A System Dynamics Model For Flanders, Jean-Luc De Kok, Peter Viaene, Stijn Vranckx, Karolien Vermeiren, Guy Engelen, Inge Mayeres, Leo De Nocker, Pieter Valkering, Wouter Wetzels, Marleen Van Steertegem, Bert De Vries

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The development of energy prices, immigration, and other exogenous factors which are beyond control of the authorities add to the uncertainties in long-term environmental planning. Prospective studies such as the Nature Outlook and Environment Outlook are carried out to assess the existing status of nature and the environment in Flanders, to support the mid- and long-term planning, and to ensure that the environmental targets set by the EU are met. The supporting analyses are based on modelling and data for a wide range of social-economic sectors and thematic domains, including demography, economics, energy, mobility, land-use change, environment, agriculture and food …

Development Of A Nutrient Load Apportionment Modelling Toolbox, Eva M. Mockler

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Where surface waters are impacted by excess nutrients, understanding the sources of those nutrients is key to the development of effective, targeted, mitigation measures. In Ireland, nutrient emissions remains the top suspected cause of surface waters not achieving the required Good Status, as defined by the Water Framework Directive (WFD). Hence, a toolbox has been developed to predict the sources of nutrients contributing to these emissions, and to assess future pressures and the likely effectiveness of targeted mitigation scenarios. This Source Load Apportionment Model (SLAM) supports catchment managers by providing scientifically robust evidence to back-up decision-making in relation to reducing …

Calibration Of Hydrological Model In Data Scarce Tropical Basin, T. Alemayehu, A. Griensven, Willy Bauwens, Hoshin Gupta

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This study presents an innovative method for calibrating hydrological models in data limited basins using historical mean annual flow duration curves (FDC) and spatially distributed remote sensing evapotranspiration (ET). FDCs retrieved from historical observations could provide crucial information about river flow regime and hence could be considered as an option, particularly when observations are not available and /or intermittent, during model calibration and validation. Additionally, remote sensing ET offers a consistent spatially distributed and temporally varying information for model parameterization. Therefore, in this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for the Mara Basin (Kenya/Tanzania) has been calibrated …

Modeling Winter Wheat Phenological Responses To Water Deficits In The Unified Plant Growth Model (Upgm) Component Of The Spatially Distributed Agroecosystem-Watershed (Ages-W) Model, Gregory S. Mcmaster, Debora A. Edmunds, Nathan P. Lighthart, James C. Ascough Ii, Timothy R. Green, Robert H. Erskine, Holm Kipka

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Accurately predicting phenology in crop simulation models is critical for correctly simulating crop production. While extensive work in modeling phenology has focused on the temperature response function (resulting in robust phenology models), limited work on quantifying the phenological responses to varying water deficits has been done, particularly for the various versions of the EPIC-based plant growth component used in many agroecosystem models (e.g., EPIC, SWAT, WEPS, WEPP, GPFARM). Further, these EPIC-based plant growth components simulate few if any developmental events. The primary impetus for developing the Unified Plant Growth Model (UPGM) was to incorporate the various FORTRAN versions of the …