Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Engineering
Mapping landslides through a temporal lens: An insight towards multi-temporal landslide mapping using the U-Net deep learning model
Published: 2022-06-25
Subjects: Engineering
Repeated temporal mapping of landslides is essential for investigating changes in landslide movements, legacy effects of the landslide triggering events, and susceptibility changes in the area. However, in order to perform such investigations, multi-temporal (MT) inventories of landslides are required. The traditional approach of visual interpretation from cloud-free optical remote sensing [...]
A Comprehensive Review of Ontologies in the Hydrology Towards Guiding Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Applications
Published: 2022-06-25
Subjects: Engineering
Open science presents a new approach for knowledge discovery, dissemination, and integrity. The idea behind open science is to reinforce research activities and create open knowledge networks by exploring, organizing, and sharing scientific data, as well as making research results transparent, open and integrated. Big data derived from remote sensing, ground-based measurements, models and [...]
A spatial framework for prioritizing biochar application to arable land: a case study for Sweden
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Engineering
The biochar-agriculture nexus can potentially generate several benefits ranging from soil carbon sequestration to the reduction in nutrient leaching from arable soils. However, leveraging these benefits requires spatially-explicit information on suitable locations for biochar application. This study provides a flexible multicriteria framework that delivers spatial indications on biochar [...]
Regionalized life cycle assessment of present and future lithium production for Li-ion batteries
Published: 2022-06-21
Subjects: Engineering
Existing life cycle assessments (LCA) of lithium carbonate production from brines are mainly based on one single brine operation site, while many different lithium carbonate production routes have been developed in the past. Hence, current life cycle inventories do not capture the variability of brine sites and misestimate life cycle impacts. This study presents a systematic approach for LCA of [...]
Flood Susceptibility Mapping using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process for Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Published: 2022-06-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies
Floods affect over 2.2 billion people worldwide, and their frequency is increasing at an alarming rate compared to other natural disasters. Presidential disaster declarations have issued increasingly almost every year in Iowa for the past 30 years, indicating that the state is on the rise of flood risk. While significant scientific and technological advancement is becoming available for many [...]
Variational and numerical modelling strategies for cost-effective simulations of driven free-surface waves
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A new, cost-effective and widely applicable tool is developed for simulating three-dimensional (3D) water-wave motion in the context of the maritime-engineering sector, with specific focus on the formation and analysis of extreme waves generated within in-house experimental wave tanks. The resulting ``numerical wave tank'' is able to emulate realistic sea states in which complex wave-wave or [...]
Notes from the Oil Patch: Planning for a Worker-Focused Transition in the Oil and Gas Industry
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Engineering
The energy transition portends major disruption to livelihoods of oil and gas workers and communities dependent on the fossil fuel industry. Managing this transition smoothly will require coordinated policy planning, community and place-based incentives, and structural reforms and support structures that carefully map the skills of the worker to opportunities in the clean energy economy.
Quantifying baseline costs and cataloging potential optimization strategies for kelp aquaculture carbon dioxide removal
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
To keep global surface warming below 1.5 °C by 2100, the portfolio of cost-effective CDR technologies must expand. To evaluate the potential of macroalgae CDR, we developed a kelp aquaculture bio-techno-economic model in which large quantities of kelp would be farmed at an offshore site, transported to a deep water "sink site", and then deposited below the sequestration horizon (1,000 m). We [...]
Hotspots of Mining-Related Biodiversity Loss in Global Supply Chains and the Potential for Reduction through Renewable Electricity
Published: 2022-06-15
Subjects: Engineering
Anticipated infrastructure growth and energy transition may exacerbate biodiversity loss through increased demand for mining products. This study uses an enhanced multi-regional input-output database (REX, Resolved EXIOBASE) and supply chain impact mapping (SCIM) method to assess global biodiversity loss associated with mining-related land use. We identify hotspots in the supply chain of mining [...]
Inclination and heterogeneity of layered geological sequences influence dike-induced ground deformation
Published: 2022-05-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Mining Engineering
Constraints on the amount and pattern of ground deformation induced by dike emplacement are important for assessing potential eruptions. The vast majority of ground deformation inversions made for volcano monitoring during volcanic unrest assume that dikes are emplaced in either an elastic-half space (a homogeneous crust) or a crust made of horizontal layers with different mechanical properties. [...]
Defining renewable groundwater use and its relevance to sustainable groundwater management
Published: 2022-05-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Groundwater systems are commonly, but variously, defined as renewable or non-renewable based on natural fluxes of recharge or on estimates of aquifer storage and groundwater residence time. However, we show here that the principle of capture challenges simple definitions so that a groundwater system cannot be renewable or non-renewable in and of itself, but only with reference to how the [...]
Hydraulic fracturing: Laboratory evidence of the brittle-to-ductile transition with depth
Published: 2022-05-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Petroleum Engineering
Understanding the propagation of hydraulic fracture (HF) is essential for effectively stimulating the hydrocarbon production of unconventional reservoirs. Hydraulic fracturing may induce distinct failure modes within the formation, depending on the rheology of the solid and the in-situ stresses. A brittle-to-ductile transition of HF is thus anticipated with increasing depth, although only scarce [...]
Experimental investigation of fire spread across a vegetative fuel bed incorporating the effect of wind velocity
Published: 2022-05-10
Subjects: Engineering, Mechanical Engineering
Wind, moisture content, and density of fuel are three environmental factors that affect the rate of fire spread in wildland fires by changing the rate of convection, radiation, and conduction heat transfer from the flames and burned fuels to the unburned fuel. These effects have been experimentally investigated in the current study to further understand the complex phenomena of wildland fire [...]
Democratizing Deep Learning Applications in Earth and Climate Sciences on the Web: EarthAIHub
Published: 2022-04-20
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Most deep learning application studies have limited accessibility and reproducibility for researchers and students in many domains, especially in earth and climate sciences. In order to provide a step towards improving accessibility to deep learning models in such disciplines, this study presents a community-driven framework and repository, EarthAIHub, that is powered by TensorFlow.js, where deep [...]
Interactive Hydrological Modelling and Simulation on Client-Side Web Systems: An Educational Case Study
Published: 2022-04-13
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Science and Mathematics Education, Water Resource Management
Computational hydrological models and simulations are fundamental pieces of the workflow of contemporary hydroscience research, education, and professional engineering activities. In support of hydrological modelling efforts, web-enabled tools for data processing, storage, computation, and visualization have proliferated. Most of these efforts rely on server resources for computation and data [...]