Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Power law scaling model predicts N2O emissions along the Upper Mississippi River basin
Published: 2020-03-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Nitrous oxide, N2O, is widely recognized as one of the most important greenhouse gases, and responsible for stratospheric ozone destruction. A significant fraction of N2O emissions to the atmosphere is from rivers. Reliable catchment-scale estimates of these emissions require both high-resolution field data and suitable models able to capture the main processes controlling nitrogen transformation [...]
Tracking Flooding Phase Transitions and Establishing a Passive Hotline with AI-Enabled Social Media Data
Published: 2020-02-21
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Flooding management requires collecting real-time onsite information widely and rapidly. As an emerging data source, social media demonstrates an advantage of providing in-time, rich data in the format of texts and photos and can be used to improve flooding situation awareness. The present study shows that social media data, with additional information processed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) [...]
Realistic River Image Synthesis using Deep Generative Adversarial Networks
Published: 2020-02-20
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In this paper, we investigate an application of image generation for river satellite imagery. Specifically, we propose a generative adversarial network (GAN) model capable of generating high-resolution and realistic river images that can be used to support models in surface water estimation, river meandering, wetland loss and other hydrological research studies. First, we summarized an augmented, [...]
On the potential of linked-basin tidal power plants: an operational and coastal modelling assessment
Published: 2020-02-02
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Single-basin tidal range power plants have the advantage of predictable energy outputs, but feature non-generation periods in every tidal cycle. Linked-basin tidal power systems can reduce this variability and consistently generate power. However, as a concept the latter are under-studied with limited information on their performance relative to single-basin designs. In addressing this, we [...]
Sensitivity Analysis of a Conceptual, Lumped Model Using VARS-TOOL Applied to Western Ghats Catchments of India
Published: 2020-01-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
The present work considers the application of Variogram Analysis of Response Surfaces Toolbox (VARS-TOOL) to identify the sensitive parameters of a rainfall-runoff model in the Netravati river basin of Karnataka, India using the global sensitivity analysis method. The statistical bootstrapping method is used to obtain the confidence intervals around each of the sensitivity indices. The VARS-TOOL [...]
High Attenuation Recycled Materials as landfill liners (the HARM project) – A new concept for improved landfill liner design
Published: 2020-01-28
Subjects: Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydrology, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Public Health, Soil Science
A new approach in landfill liner design which combines hydraulic containment of leachate with contaminant attenuation to improve the performance of these environmental control systems at landfills is described. The idea is to re-use readily available industrial waste residues (construction and biomass waste) as additives for natural clay liners, wherein the additives have specific properties [...]
A Multivariate Outlier Detection Approach for Water Footprint Assessments in Shale Formations: Case Eagle Ford Play (Texas)
Published: 2020-01-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
The increasing trend on water use for hydraulic fracturing (HF) in multiple plays across the U.S. has raised the need to improve the HF water management model. Such approaches require good quality datasets, particularly in water stressed regions. In this work, we presented a QA/QC framework for HF data using a multivariate outlier detection methodology based on five univariate techniques: two [...]
The role of natural clays in the sustainability of landfill liners
Published: 2020-01-10
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Engineered synthetic liners on their own are not the ideal solution to protect land, water and living beings against landfill leachate pollution. Despite their impermeability, engineered liners are susceptible to fail during installation and after a few years of landfill operation, and have no attenuation properties. Conversely, natural clay liners can attenuate leachate pollutants by reactions [...]
A web application for hydrogeomorphic flood hazard mapping
Published: 2020-01-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A detailed delineation of flood-prone areas over large regions represents a challenge that cannot be easily solved with today’s resources. The main limitations lie in algorithms and hardware, but also costs, scarcity and sparsity of data and our incomplete knowledge of how inundation events occur in different river floodplains. We showcase the implementation of a data-driven web application for [...]
The interplay between clay fabric and mechanical response of deep-seated landslides
Published: 2019-12-05
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Deep-seated landslides are amongst the most devastating natural hazards on earth, typically involving a rigid rock mass sliding over a weak, clayey shear-band. The mechanical response of this shear-band to the loading of the overburden is therefore critical for the stability of a landslide. We hereby show that this mechanical response is strongly linked to the mineralogy and microstructure of the [...]
Optical wave gauging using deep neural networks
Published: 2019-12-04
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We develop a remote wave gauging technique to estimate wave height and period from imagery of waves in the surf zone. In this proof-of-concept study, we apply the same framework to three datasets: the first, a set of close-range monochrome infrared (IR) images of individual nearshore waves at Duck, NC, USA; the second, a set of visible (i.e. RGB) band orthomosaics of a larger nearshore area near [...]
Urban Near-surface Seismic Monitoring using Distributed Acoustic Sensing
Published: 2019-11-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Urban subsurface monitoring requires high temporal-spatial resolution, low maintenance cost, and minimal intrusion to nearby life. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), in contrast to conventional station-based sensing technology, has the potential to provide a passive seismic solution to urban monitoring requirements. Based on data recorded by the Stanford Fiber Optic Seismic Observatory, we [...]
Effects of off-fault inelasticity on near-fault directivity pulses
Published: 2019-11-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering
Near-fault motion is often dominated by long-period, pulse-like particle velocities with fault-normal polarization that, when enhanced by directivity, may strongly excite mid- to high-rise structures. We assess the extent to which plastic yielding may affect amplitude, frequency content, and distance scaling of near-fault directivity pulses. Dynamic simulations of 3D strike-slip ruptures reveal [...]
Simulating Electropulse Fracture of Granitic Rock
Published: 2019-11-22
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Electropulse treatments employ a series of high-voltage discharges to break rock into small fragments. As these methods are particularly suited to fracturing hard brittle rocks, electropulse treatments can serve to enhance or substitute for more traditional mechanical approaches to drilling and processing of these materials. Nevertheless, while these treatments have the potential to improve [...]
Dynamic modelling of overprinted impermeable fault gouges and surrounding damage zones as lower dimensional interfaces
Published: 2019-11-14
Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Petroleum Engineering
In the modelling of subsurface fluid flow, faults are dominant features since they can act as fluid pathways or barriers. Special emphasis is therefore placed in representing them in a numerically efficient manner and the use of lower dimensional domains has become prevalent to simulate higher permeability features like fractures. Such features, however, only represent some of the components of [...]