Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Transportation Network Vulnerability and Accessibility for Critical Amenities during Flooding: A Case Study for Iowa
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Risk Analysis, Transportation Engineering
Natural disasters, such as flooding, can cause severe social, environmental, and economic damage to a community. Transportation infrastructure plays an essential role in flood response and recovery efforts. However, flooding may disturb road functionality and generate direct and indirect adverse impacts, including the loss of access to essential services. This paper presents a comprehensive [...]
A Comprehensive Flood Event Specification and Inventory: 1930-2020 Turkey Case Study
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Flooding is one of the most frequent natural disasters that have significant impact on communities in terms of loss of life, direct and indirect economic losses, and disruption of daily life. Decision makers often consult flood data inventories to make more informed decisions on the development of flood mitigation plans to protect flood prone communities. A comprehensive inventory that covers [...]
Web-based Data Analytics Framework for Well Forecasting and Groundwater Quality
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
Groundwater supplies drinking water for over one-third of all Americans. However, with aquifers stressed by overdraft, contamination from land use, and the hydrologic impacts of climate change, identifying reliable sources for new wells is increasingly challenging. Well forecasting is a process in which potential groundwater resources are evaluated for a location of interest. While this process [...]
GeospatialVR: A Web-based Virtual Reality Framework for Collaborative Environmental Simulations
Published: 2020-08-09
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This research introduces GeospatialVR, an open-source collaborative virtual reality framework to dynamically create 3D real-world environments that can be served on any web platform and accessed via desktop and mobile devices and virtual reality headsets. The framework can generate realistic simulations of desired locations entailing the terrain, elevation model, infrastructures, dynamic [...]
Serious Gaming for Water Resources Planning and Hazard Mitigation
Published: 2020-08-04
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Hydrological hazards lead to a broad range of socio-economic and environmental risks. The development of a resilient community and risk reduction heavily rely on the adoption of holistic watershed master planning whereby the adaptation options consider the risk associated with individual or multiple hydrological hazards occurring simultaneously at a specific location. Such planning approaches [...]
Crop residues are a key feedstock to bioeconomy but available methods for their estimation are highly uncertain
Published: 2020-07-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Crop residues are acknowledged as a key biomass resource to feed tomorrow’s sustainable bioeconomy. Yet, the quantification of these residues at large geographical scales is primarily reliant upon generic statistical estimations based on empirical functions linking the residues production to the primary crop yield. These useful yet unquestioned functions are developed either using direct evidence [...]
Framework for consequential life cycle assessment of pyrolysis biorefineries: A case study for the conversion of primary forestry residues
Published: 2020-07-27
Subjects: Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
The development of bioeconomy needs to accelerate in order to get rid of fossil fuels and products. The production of bio-based products and renewable energy sources from the thermochemical conversion of biomass can be a sustainable alternative. Pyrolysis is one of the thermochemical processes that can convert biomass into liquid (bio-oil), solid (biochar) and gaseous (non-condensable gases) [...]
pipedream: an interactive digital twin model for urban drainage networks
Published: 2020-07-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
Faced with growing water infrastructure challenges, many cities are now seeking to build digital twins of urban stormwater systems that combine sensor data with online models in order to better understand and control system dynamics. Towards this goal, this study presents pipedream—an end-to-end software toolkit for real-time modeling and state estimation in urban stormwater networks. The toolkit [...]
Modelling an energetic tidal strait: investigating implications of common numerical configuration choices
Published: 2020-07-16
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Characterising tidal hydrodynamics in the vicinity of submerged features can be demanding given the hostility of the marine environment. Logistical challenges in the measurement of such flows has promoted research on wake studies through physical and numerical modelling. In this study, site measurements and modelled data are combined to provide an insight into the regional hydrodynamics within a [...]
Model Parameter Evaluation and Improvement for Real-Time Flood Inundation Mapping Using HAND Model: Iowa Case Study
Published: 2020-07-02
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
In this study, the performance of Height Above Nearest Drainage (HAND) was evaluated in Linn, Jones, Johnson, Cedar, and Muscatine counties in the State of Iowa. The impacts of three model parameters (drainage threshold, water depth, resolution of data) were studied. The effectiveness of improving approaches—variable water depths, community-level analysis, and inner zone was explored. The model [...]
An Ethical Decision-Making Framework with Serious Gaming: Smart Water Case Study on Flooding
Published: 2020-06-23
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Theory and Algorithms
Sensors and control technologies are being deployed extensively in both urban water networks and rural river systems, leading to unprecedented ability to sense and control our water environment. Because these sensor networks and control systems allow for higher resolution monitoring and decision making in both time and space, greater discretization of control will allow for an unprecedented [...]
A Comprehensive Review of Deep Learning Applications in Hydrology and Water Resources
Published: 2020-06-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
The global volume of digital data is expected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025. The volume, variety, and velocity of water-related data are increasing due to large-scale sensor networks and increased attention to topics such as disaster response, water resources management, and climate change. Combined with the growing availability of computational resources and popularity of deep learning, these [...]
Global wave-driven beach evolution; consequences for observation strategies
Published: 2020-06-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
It is an illusion to think that one can observe monthly beach behaviour with monthly surveys. Current coastal observation strategies restrict understanding of beach evolution, preventing effective risk mitigation. In this article, we quantify the global spatiotemporal scales of coastal wave changes, which are the known dominant driver of beach evolution. Consequences and recommendations for beach [...]
Large model parameter and structural uncertainties in global projections of urban heat waves
Published: 2020-06-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Urban heat waves (UHWs) are strongly associated with socioeconomic impacts. Reliable projections of these extremes are pressingly needed for local actions in the context of extreme event preparedness and mitigation. Such information, however, is not available because current multi-model projections largely lack a representation of urban areas. Here, we use a newly-developed urban climate emulator [...]
The sustainability of beach nourishments: A review of nourishment and environmental monitoring practice
Published: 2020-06-10
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Beach nourishments are a widely used method to mitigate erosion along flood-prone sandy shorelines. In contrast to hard coastal protection structures, nourishments are considered as soft engineering, although little is known about the cumulative, long-term environmental effects of both marine sediment extraction and nourishment activities. Recent endeavours to sustain the marine ecosystem and [...]