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Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Engineering

Post-Wildfire Indoor Pollution in WUI Areas Following the 2025 Los Angeles Fires — Part I: Establishing Baseline Contaminant Levels Prior to Home Reoccupation

Ehsan Goftari, Jose Rivera Carias, London Fulford, et al.

Published: 2025-08-02
Subjects: Engineering, Medicine and Health Sciences

Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires pose unique environmental pollution challenges due to the combustion of both natural vegetation and synthetic building materials. Following the 2025 Palisades and Eaton wildfires in Los Angeles, we conducted a field study to characterize indoor air quality and surface contamination in 19 homes before re-occupancy. Indoor PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀ concentrations averaged [...]

Real-time GIS for Programming and Geocomputation

Wenwen Li, Yan Liu, Sizhe Wang

Published: 2025-08-02
Subjects: Engineering

Streaming data generated continuously from sensor networks, mobile devices, social media platforms and other edge devices have posed significant challenges to existing computing platforms for achieving both high throughput and low latency data processing in addition to scalable computing. This paper introduces a real-time computing and programming platform for time-critical GIS (Geographic [...]

Assessing Indoor Versus Outdoor PM2.5 Concentrations During the 2025 Los Angeles Fires Using the PurpleAir Sensor Network

Yan Lu, Xinyi Zhang, Soroush Esmaeili Neyestani, et al.

Published: 2025-07-30
Subjects: Engineering

In January 2025, a series of fast-moving wildland-urban-interface (WUI) fires swept through the Los Angeles (LA) metropolitan area, causing severe air pollution. While the impacts of WUI fires on outdoor air quality have been extensively studied, indoor exposure remains less understood, despite most people sheltering indoors during WUI fires. This study investigates the spatial and temporal [...]

Experiments to Systematically Evaluate the Role of Cohesion in River Morphodynamics

Nacere M Samassi, Fernando David Cúñez, Rachel Glade

Published: 2025-07-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Other Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences

While cohesion is thought to be an important control on sediment transport, few studies have systematically examined the role of cohesion in river morphodynamics. In this study we use simplified, small-scale laboratory experiments to investigate how increasing sediment cohesion affects the morphometrics of fluvial channels. Experiments were conducted in a laminar flume with a mixture of [...]

Automated Load–Settlement Prediction of Shallow Foundations from Pushed-in PENCEL Pressuremeter Data Based on Briaud (2007) Method: A Python-Based Framework

BRHANE WELDEANENYA YGZAW, Paul John Cosentino

Published: 2025-07-25
Subjects: Engineering

This study presents a fully automated, Python-based framework for predicting shallow foundation settlements from pushed-in PENCEL pressuremeter (PPMT) data, using an adapted implementation of Briaud’s (2007) method. The framework transforms raw in-situ test results into design-grade load–settlement curves by automating key analytical steps, including borehole wall-point detection, Lemée-type [...]

Gauging the Effectiveness and Translatability of Oil Spill Response Technologies to Plastic Pellet Spills

Marko Jugo, Christopher Reddy, Bryan James, et al.

Published: 2025-07-25
Subjects: Engineering

Plastic pellet spills are a growing environmental concern, yet response strategies remain limited and poorly adapted. This study evaluates whether existing oil spill recovery tools, including booms, skimmers, and specialized vessels, can be repurposed to respond to acute releases of plastic pellets. Plastic pellets, while small (typically 1–5 mm in diameter), are characterized by complex physical [...]

Assessing uncertainty of source rock properties using Monte Carlo basin modeling – Application to Canning Basin, Australia

Jiayuan Huang, Tapan Mukerji

Published: 2025-07-24
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Stratigraphy

This study presents a Monte Carlo basin modeling framework for quantifying uncertainty in source rock property predictions by integrating geological, geophysical, and geochemical inputs. The approach accounts for variability in petrological parameters from rock physics inversion, paleo-erosion magnitudes, organic facies properties, and boundary conditions to simulate source rock properties such [...]

Recommendations for improving the design, amenity and performance of privately owned, small-scale biobasins

Sylvie Chell, Ruby Naomi Michael, Matthew Moore, et al.

Published: 2025-07-13
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences

Due to spatial constraints in cities, it is increasingly challenging to integrate appropriate water sensitive urban design (WSUD) solutions. There has been a shift from larger, precinct-scale bioretention systems owned by local governments to smaller scale ‘biobasins’ managed by private landholders. This shift has brought about unique challenges in regulation, design, maintenance, and [...]

Thermal analysis of meso-scale high-temperature Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) systems with varying operational cycles

Murat Aydin, Bo Wang, Jens Lingenauer, et al.

Published: 2025-07-12
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Other Mechanical Engineering

High temperature and short-term subsurface heat storage using BTES is a promising option and an emerging technology for increasing the fraction of renewable energy in the heat sector and supplying stored heat at high and directly usable temperatures. Investigation of thermal interactions of multiple BHEs employed for high-temperature cyclic storage operations is required to understand the system [...]

Towards HydroLLM: Approaches for Building a Domain-Specific Language Model for Hydrology

Dilara Kizilkaya, Yusuf Sermet, Ibrahim Demir

Published: 2025-07-11
Subjects: Engineering

As large language models (LLMs) continue to expand, their effective adaptation to specialized fields remains a critical challenge. This work presents an initial step toward the development of HydroLLM, a domain-specific LLM for hydrology. We construct a dataset of approximately 8,800 hydrology-focused question–answer pairs, each with a supporting context passage drawn from textbooks and [...]

Remote Sensing-Based Geospatial Analysis of Channel Migration Patterns in the Lower Shire Valley of the Shire River, Chikwawa District, Malawi

Japhet Khendlo

Published: 2025-07-11
Subjects: Engineering

This study examines the spatiotemporal dynamics of fluvial geomorphology along the Shire River floodplain in Malawi from 1975 to 2023, with emphasis on channel migration, width variation, sinuosity, meander curvature, and sediment budget changes. Utilizing multi-temporal satellite imagery and geospatial analysis, morphometric indicators were quantified across 41 cross-sectional zones over four [...]

Domain-Specific Embedding Models for Hydrology and Environmental Sciences: Enhancing Semantic Retrieval and Question Answering in RAG Pipelines

Ramteja Sajja, Yusuf Sermet, Ibrahim Demir

Published: 2025-07-11
Subjects: Education, Engineering

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown strong performance across natural language processing tasks, yet their general-purpose embeddings often fall short in domains with specialized terminology and complex syntax, such as hydrology and environmental science. This study introduces HydroEmbed, a suite of open-source sentence embedding models fine-tuned for four QA formats: multiple-choice (MCQ), [...]

Leveraging Large Language Models for Automating Water Distribution Network Optimization

Jian Wang, Guangtao Fu, Dragan Savic

Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Engineering

Effective management of Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) is essential to ensure efficient and reliable water supply in cities. However, many management tasks require complex system modelling and optimization approaches, which heavily rely on specialized domain expertise and human resources. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) offer promising opportunities to automate complex [...]

Regional Variability of Drought-Crop Sensitivities Across Iowa Using Unsupervised Learning

S M Samiul Islam, Ibrahim Demir, Most Fatematozzohora

Published: 2025-07-10
Subjects: Engineering

Understanding the spatial variability of crop drought sensitivity is critical for improving agricultural resilience in the face of climate change. This study presents a station-level analysis of meteorological and yield data across Iowa from 1998 to 2022 to investigate the relationship between multiple drought indices and detrended yields of Corn and Soybean. Eleven drought indicators were [...]

Carbon removal trading can promote economic growth in the Global South but could undermine food and energy security

Jeffrey Dankwa Ampah, Chao Jin, Haifeng Liu, et al.

Published: 2025-07-06
Subjects: Engineering

A fundamental mismatch between countries’ carbon dioxide removal (CDR) responsibilities and their domestic capacities to fulfil them poses a major challenge to achieving the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal. Interregional CDR trade offers a solution, yet there has been no quantitative assessment of how such trade could reshape the economies of exporting regions and impact their [...]

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