Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Engineering
Building Resilient Sanitation Systems in Malawi: Pit-latrine Costs, Collapse, and Management
Published: 2024-10-19
Subjects: Engineering
Despite widespread access to basic sanitation in Malawi, over 75% of the population lacks improved sanitation facilities. This national study investigates the resilience of pit-latrines across Malawi, focusing on the relationship between construction quality, facility lifespan, and collapse frequency. A survey of 268,000 pit-latrines revealed that high-quality latrines (lined and with a slab) [...]
Multiobjective Optimization for Optimal Water Resource Allocation
Published: 2024-10-14
Subjects: Engineering, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
This work investigates the use of multiobjective optimization (MOO) in the distribution of water resources, a crucial problem made worse by rising demand brought on by population expansion, industrialization, and climate change. Conventional unidimensional methods frequently fall short in considering the intricacies of conflicting water requirements in several domains, including domestic [...]
Viability of video imaging spectro-radiometry (VISR) for quantifying flare combustion efficiency
Published: 2024-10-12
Subjects: Engineering
Video imaging spectro-radiometry (VISR) has been proposed as a means to quantify the combustion efficiency (CE) of flares. This work presents a numerical assessment of VISR using computational fluid dynamics simulations of a steam-assisted industrial flare, with a focus on three aspects: how approximations in the radiometric model impact the local “pixel-wise” CE, the validity of the approach [...]
Clay Stabilisation using Modified Anionic Bitumen Emulsion and Waste Glass
Published: 2024-10-11
Subjects: Engineering
Clay (black cotton soil) is among the most difficult soils to stabilise against land movement. This study explores the possibility of mixing binders with the soil to increase its internal properties and stabilise clay from landslide prone areas. A modified anionic bitumen emulsion was mixed with the soil at different percentages and tested for angle of friction and cohesion. It was found that an [...]
SWMManywhere: A Global-scale Workflow for Generation and Sensitivity Analysis of Synthetic Urban Drainage Models
Published: 2024-10-11
Subjects: Engineering
Continual improvements in publicly available global geospatial datasets provide an opportunity for deriving urban drainage networks and simulation models of these networks (UDMs) worldwide. We present SWMManywhere, which leverages such datasets for generating synthetic UDMs and creating a Storm Water Management Model for any urban area globally. SWMManywhere’s highly modular and parameterised [...]
ml4xcube: Machine Learning Toolkits for Earth System Data Cubes
Published: 2024-10-09
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Computer Engineering, Engineering, Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Rapidly changing climate conditions and the increase in extreme events are posing severe challenges to human life and infrastructure, requiring sophisticated analytical capabilities for hazard prediction and disaster risk management. Earth System Data Cubes (ESDCs) have become an essential tool in Earth System Sciences (ESS) by organizing large-scale, multivariate environmental datasets into a [...]
Expansion of cropland area during an abrupt sunlight reduction scenario
Published: 2024-10-01
Subjects: Engineering
In the eventuality of a major volcanic eruption or nuclear war, particles would accumulate in the stratosphere and reduce sunlight, potentially altering climate conditions severely and decreasing crop yields. Mass starvation could be prevented with the help of resilient foods, such as transforming natural gas into protein, wood into sugar, and relocating crops. One intervention not yet analysed [...]
Comprehensive Assessment of Drought Impact on Crop Yields Across Iowa Over Two Decades (2000-2022)
Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Corn and soybeans are pivotal crops in the U.S. agricultural landscape, providing essential vitamins and oils. These two crops dominate approximately 90% of crop production in Iowa. However, their yields are significantly impacted by recurrent drought conditions. A prolonged deficiency in soil moisture characterizes agricultural drought due to sustained precipitation shortfalls. This study aims [...]
FirnLearn: A Neural Network based approach to Firn Densification Modeling for Antarctica
Published: 2024-09-13
Subjects: Engineering
Understanding firn densification is essential for interpreting ice core records, predicting ice sheet mass balance, elevation changes, and future sea-level rise. Current models of firn densification on the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) are semi-empirical, complex, and rely on sparse climatic data and surface density observations. In this work, we introduce a deep learning technique to study firn [...]
ML-CASCADE: A Machine Learning and Cloud Computing-based Tool for Rapid and Automated Mapping of Landslides using Earth Observation Data
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering
Landslides pose a significant threat to humans as well as the environment. Rapid and precise mapping of landslide extent is necessary for understanding their spatial distribution, assessing susceptibility, and developing early warning systems. Traditional landslide mapping methods rely on labor-intensive field studies and manual mapping using high-resolution imagery, which are both costly and [...]
Resilient foods for preventing global famine: a review of food supply interventions for global catastrophic food shocks including nuclear winter and infrastructure collapse
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Risk Analysis
Global catastrophic threats to the food system upon which human society depends are numerous. A nuclear war or volcanic eruption could collapse agricultural yields by inhibiting crop growth. Nuclear electromagnetic pulses or extreme pandemics could disrupt industry and mass-scale food supply by unprecedented levels. Global food storage is limited. What can be done? This article presents the state [...]
Deployment of Enhanced Geothermal System technology leads to rapid cost reductions and performance improvements
Published: 2024-09-10
Subjects: Engineering
Following successful production testing of the world’s first horizontal well enhanced geothermal system in 2023, continued deployment and optimization of the technology across two commercial projects has resulted in significant cost reductions and performance improvements. In this paper, we present field results and updates from Fervo Energy’s enhanced geothermal system projects in Nevada and [...]
Imperviousness in Hungary's Second Largest City Using Spatial Analytics
Published: 2024-08-29
Subjects: Engineering
Urbanization in Debrecen, Hungary, has rapidly developed buildings and infrastructure, replacing ecosystems like vegetation, forest, and farmland. This has created a high percentage of sealed-up land, which cannot absorb water leading to water quality impairment in nearby water bodies. This research aims to examine the degree of land imperviousness in Debrecen, Hungary, and its effect on [...]
Two-layer formulation for long-runout turbidity currents: theory and bypass flow case
Published: 2024-08-29
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Turbidity currents, which are stratified, sediment-laden bottom flows in the ocean or lakes, can run out for 100's to 1000's of kilometers in submarine channels without losing their stratified structure. Here we derive a layer-averaged, two-layer model for turbidity currents, specifically designed to capture long-runout. Previous models have captured runout only 10’s of kilometers, beyond which [...]
How much is enough? Uncertainty aware sample mass determination of coarse-grained soils for particle size analyses
Published: 2024-08-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Geology, Geomorphology, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Probability, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Stratigraphy
Determining particle size distributions (PSD) of soils is a basic first step in many geotechnical analyses and guidance is given in different national standards. For ambiguous reasons, the recommended required minimum sample mass (m_min) for the PSD-analyses of soils with a main component of gravel or greater is always based on equations including the soil's maximum grain diameter (D_max). We [...]