Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Decentralized Flood Forecasting Using Deep Neural Networks
Published: 2019-06-22
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
Predicting flood for any location at times of extreme storms is a longstanding problem that has utmost importance in emergency management. Conventional methods that aim to predict water levels in streams use advanced hydrological models still lack of giving accurate forecasts everywhere. This study aims to explore artificial deep neural networks performance on flood prediction. While providing [...]
Global resource potential of seasonal pumped-storage
Published: 2019-06-20
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
The risk of seasonal mismatches between electricity supply and demand is increasing due to expanded use of wind, solar and hydropower resources. Power system planners are thus in search of low-cost seasonal energy storage options. Seasonal Pumped-Storage (SPS) can provide short, medium and long-term energy storage at a relatively low-cost and provides co-benefits in the form of freshwater storage [...]
Optimizing Regional Climate Model Output for Hydro-Climate Applications in the Eastern Nile Basin
Published: 2019-06-18
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study focuses on the Eastern Nile (EN) Basin, most of whose water flows into the High Aswan Dam (HAD), Egypt. It is, therefore, crucial to have an accurate hydrological assessment overtime to plan water resource management in the area. With complex topography, it is important to capture most of the physics captured with the least bias in meteorological information. Weather Research and [...]
Technical note: Limitations on the use of space borne differential SAR interferometry for systematic monitoring and failure forecast of alpine landslides
Published: 2019-06-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Recent advances on satellite geodesy have boosted our capabilities to map and monitor landslides globally with unprecedented resolutions. In this scenario, differential interferometry of space borne synthetic aperture radar imagery (DInSAR) plays a major role in identifying surface displacements associated to slope instabilities and in monitoring their spatial and temporal evolution. However, [...]
A Temperature- and Pressure-Sensitive Visco-Plasticity Theory based on Interface Mechanisms for Sedimentary Rocks
Published: 2019-05-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Other Materials Science and Engineering
Constitutive modelling in geotechnical engineering and applied earth sciences is facing the challenge of assessing the long-term potential of both man-made and natural geohazards. This involves designing engineering operations for length scales and timescales well beyond those observable in the laboratory. In order to bridge the gap between scales, study rock behaviours well beyond their yield [...]
On the stability of deep-seated landslides. The cases of Vaiont (Italy) and Shuping (Three Gorges Dam, China)
Published: 2019-05-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Geotechnical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Deep-seated catastrophic landslides are among the most powerful natural hazards on earth. These devastating events are not possible to be prevented yet, because of their large volumes and sudden acceleration phase. The present study suggests a new method to detect when a landslide will turn unstable, giving both a time-window to evacuate the area that is going to be affected and critical values [...]
An assessment of the wind influence in local inertial 1D hydrodynamic flow routing
Published: 2019-05-23
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
One-dimensional (1D) hydrodynamic modeling studies generally do not take into account the influence of wind, although literature experiences demonstrate the importance of this information in some cases. In this context, the present work had the objective to investigate this matter further, studying the influence of wind on hydrodynamic 1D modeling results and proposing an abacus for the rapid [...]
Using nano-XRM and high-contrast imaging to inform micro-porosity permeability during Stokes-Brinkman single and two-phase flow simulations on micro-CT images
Published: 2019-05-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Carbonate rocks have particularly complex and multiscale pore systems which are weakly understood. In this study we use combined experimental, modelling, and pore space generation methods to tackle the impact of micro-porosity on the bulk flow properties of Estaillades limestone. First, a nano-core from a microporous grain of Estaillades Limestone was scanned using x-ray nano tomography [...]
Well-being loss: a comprehensive metric for household disaster resilience
Published: 2019-05-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Natural disaster risk assessments typically consider environmental hazard and physical damage, neglecting to quantify how asset losses affect households’ well-being. However, for a given asset loss, a wealthy household might easily recover, while a poor household might suffer from major, long-lasting impacts. Ignoring such differential impacts can lead to inequitable interventions and exacerbate [...]
On the automatic and a priori design of unstructured mesh resolution for coastal ocean circulation models
Published: 2019-05-10
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study investigates the design of unstructured mesh resolution and its impact on the modeling of barotropic tides along the United States East Coast and Gulf Coast (ECGC). A discrete representation of a computational ocean domain (mesh design) is necessary due to finite computational resources and an incomplete knowledge of the physical system (e.g., shoreline and seabed topography). The [...]
Analysis of Persistence in the Flood Timing and the Role of Catchment Wetness on Flood Generation in a Large River Basin in India
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Probability
This study contributes to the understanding of the timing of occurrence of floods and role of the catchment wetness in flood processes (i.e., magnitude and the timing of floods) over one of the largest tropical pluvial river basin system, Mahanadi, in India. Being located in the monsoon ‘core’ region (18° - 28° N latitude and 73° - 82° E longitude) and its proximity to Bay of Bengal, Mahanadi [...]
Trends of hydroclimatic intensity in Colombia
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Water Resource Management
Prediction of changes in precipitation in upcoming years and decades caused by global climate change associated with the greenhouse effect, deforestation and other anthropic perturbations is a practical and scientific problem of high complexity and huge consequences. To advance toward this challenge we look at the daily historical record of all available rain gauges in Colombia to estimate an [...]
Probabilistic space- and time-interaction modeling of main-shock earthquake rupture occurrence
Published: 2019-04-28
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Structural Engineering
This paper presents a probabilistic formulation for modeling earthquake rupture processes of mainshocks. A correlated multivariate Bernoulli distribution is used to model rupture occurrence. The model captures time interaction through the use of Brownian passage-time (BPT) distributions to assess rupture interarrival in multiple sections of the fault, and it also considers spatial interaction [...]
Bayesian parameter estimation for space and time interacting earthquake rupture model using historical and physics-based simulated earthquake catalogs
Published: 2019-04-25
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
This paper presents a robust parameter estimation technique for a probabilistic earthquake hazard model that captures time and space interactions between earthquake mainshocks. The approach addresses the existing limitations of parameter estimation techniques by developing a Bayesian formulation and leveraging physics-based simulated synthetic catalogs to expand the limited datasets of historical [...]
Influence of dissolution on frictional properties of carbonate faults
Published: 2019-04-25
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Velocity stepping experiments have been performed on a simulated calcite gouge using an annular shear apparatus to investigate the effect of dissolution on the frictional properties of a carbonate fault. The tested material was put in contact with hydrochloric acid at different concentration in order to dissolve the grains. Particle size analysis shows that the small grains tend to disappear due [...]