Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Engineering
Pathogen releases due to inadequate wastewater treatment infrastructure in small-town Alabama
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Engineering, Public Health
Residents of the Alabama Black Belt lack safe and reliable wastewater treatment. Health risks of inadequate treatment are well-established, community-level contamination alone cannot characterize how sanitation failures translate into exposure risks, and few studies have identified pathogens associated with exposure. We surveyed of sanitation-related pathogen releases in a small town in Hale [...]
A Probabilistic Catastrophe Risk Model for Site-Specific Tropical Cyclone Loss Quantification
Published: 2026-09-24
Subjects: Computational Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Quantifying the financial risk posed by landfalling tropical cyclones requires statistical methods that extend beyond the limits of a short and non-stationary historical observational record. This paper presents the mathematical formulation of an open, modular probabilistic catastrophe risk model for site-specific tropical cyclone loss estimation, structured around the four components used [...]
Urban Sprawl and Traffic-Related Air Pollution in Greater Gaborone: A Spatial Analysis of the Land Use–Transport–Environment Relationship
Published: 2026-09-23
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Rapid urban sprawl in many Sub-Saharan African cities has significantly reshaped urban mobility patterns, resulting in longer commuting distances, increased private vehicle dependence, and growing pressure on major transport corridors. These trends have important implications for environmental quality, urban sustainability, and climate resilience. This paper investigates the spatial relationship [...]
From buffer-based tables to dynamic response curves for soil-specific lime requirement estimation using machine learning
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Accurate estimation of lime requirement (LR) remains a major challenge in acid soils, as conventional buffer-based approaches, particularly the Shoemaker–McLean–Pratt (SMP) method, rely on a single equilibrium measurement and predefined target pH values, limiting their ability to capture the diversity of soil neutralization responses. This study evaluated whether machine-learning (ML) models can [...]
In-context learning for small-sample soil mid-infrared spectroscopy: evaluating TabPFN across an integrated soil-acidity panel
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Soil acidity diagnosis requires several interdependent laboratory measurements, limiting throughput. Mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy can estimate this panel from one scan, but practical use depends on robust calibration. Deep learning has surpassed conventional methods in many data-rich fields; however, adapted deep learning architectures such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are [...]
A response surface framework for persistence-aware lime requirement
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Conventional lime-requirement (LR) methods estimate the dose needed to attain a target soil pH, but do not indicate how long the correction remains acceptable during re-acidification. We tested whether repeated dose–response measurements could provide a persistence-aware LR. Single applications of calcium carbonate (CaCO{\! }_{3}) and calcium oxide (CaO) were evaluated in clay, sandy loam, and [...]
A One-Dimensional Framework for Three-Phase Flow in Immiscible and Near-Miscible CO2 Injection: Application to Enhanced Oil Recovery and CO2 Storage
Published: 2026-09-19
Subjects: Engineering
We develop an integrated analytical framework for one-dimensional three-phase flow - involving rarefaction waves, shocks generated through the elliptic region and shock locus, as well as water and oil banks - for the analysis of oil recovery and CO2 storage. The solutions are compared with numerical approximations from a commercial reservoir simulator and an explicit finite difference code, [...]
Coupled Physics-Based and Machine Learning Streamflow Modeling with High-Resolution Flood Inundation and Impact Assessment for Hurricane Florence (2018): A Case Study of the Neuse River at Goldsboro, North Carolina
Published: 2026-09-18
Subjects: Computer Engineering, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Planetary Hydrology, Probability
Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina in September 2018 and produced record or near-record river stages across the Neuse River basin, including at United States Geological Survey (USGS) gauge 02089000 near Goldsboro. This study presents an end-to-end hydrological and floodmapping workflow that couples a semi-distributed, physics-based rainfall-runoff model (Physics V3.5) and a [...]
Evolving Biofilm Morphology Controls Microplastic Transport in Porous Media
Published: 2026-09-17
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Microplastics (MPs) entering soils and subsurface environments interact with biofilms that continually reshape pore geometry and local flow pathways, yet biofilm effects on MP transport are only studied under fixed conditions. Here, we used a saturated microfluidic porous medium to directly image biofilm development and track fluorescent polyethylene MPs at different stages of biofilm growth. [...]
Particle morphology and electrostatic screening shape salinity-dependent flocculation and settling of fine blasted tunnel sediments
Published: 2026-09-17
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences
Rock-blasted fine-grained sediments generated during tunnel excavation may enter receiving waters that range from freshwater to marine conditions. Yet the combined roles of primary-particle morphology and salinity-dependent electrostatic interactions in their settling remain poorly understood. In this work, fine sediments from five Norwegian tunnel construction sites were investigated using [...]
Plasticity more than (linear elastic crack) Propagation may govern standard Propagation Saw Test in snow: evidence from “Fracture toughness of mixed-mode anticracks in highly porous materials” experiments1
Published: 2026-09-13
Subjects: Engineering
An extensive experimental campaign of propagation saw tests (PST) has recently been conducted, enabling systematic investigation of critical cut length vs. slope angle in snowpacks1. PST is considered crucial for understanding avalanche release. Using a linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) framework built upon a linear elastic analysis, it was concluded that not a theoretical but a [...]
Reconstructing annual 30 m forest aboveground biomass across Southwest China’s karst region from 1986 to 2024
Published: 2026-09-10
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Fine-resolution reconstruction of multi-decadal forest aboveground biomass (AGB) remains challenging in karst landscapes, where steep terrain, fragmented stands, and strong environmental gradients can limit the regional transferability of national and global products. We developed a regionally adapted two-stage framework to reconstruct annual 30 m forest AGB across Southwest China’s karst region [...]
Predictive Modeling of Hydrodynamic Dispersion for High-Pressure Atomized Crude Oil Plumes During Tidal Phase-Lag Loops in Santa Barbara Estuaries, Nigeria
Published: 2026-09-09
Subjects: Engineering
This study models the multi-phase hydrodynamic atomization, near-surface jet shattering, and transient longitudinal advection-diffusion transport of high-pressure crude oil plumes within a tidally driven tropical estuary. It maps the 38-day uncontained wellhead failure at the Santa Barbara South Well-1 (OML 29) in Opu-Nembe, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, to quantify sub-surface contaminant migration [...]
Agentic Large Language Model Workflows for Earth Observation: Tool Orchestration, Foundation-Model Adaptation, and the Evaluation Gap
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Engineering
Large language model (LLM) agents have moved rapidly from general-purpose assistants to domain systems that orchestrate specialised remote-sensing models. Within roughly two years, geospatial agents have demonstrated reliable task planning across dozens of Earth Observation (EO) tasks, benchmark environments containing hundreds of tools, and fine-tuned open-weight controllers that outperform far [...]
Systematic Evaluation of a Transformer-Based Surrogate for Distributed Groundwater Dynamics: Long-Horizon Prediction, Dynamic–Static Fusion, and Data Augmentation
Published: 2026-09-05
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Transformers are increasingly reshaping artificial-intelligence-based Earth system prediction, yet their suitability for distributed groundwater surrogate modeling remains poorly understood. Groundwater dynamics combine strong temporal persistence with spatial interactions governed by heterogeneous hydrogeological conditions. These characteristics make attention-based architectures potentially [...]