Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Engineering
Exploring coastal climate adaptation through storylines: Insights from Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Coastal settlements, facing increasing flood risk from Tropical Cyclones (TCs) under climate change, need local and detailed climate information for effective adaptation. Analysis of historical events and their impacts provides such information. This study uses storylines to evaluate adaptation strategies, focusing on Cyclone Idai’s impact on Beira, Mozambique, under different climate [...]
Integrating Conversational AI Agents for Enhanced Water Quality Analytics: Development of a Novel Data Expert System
Published: 2024-06-01
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Civil Engineering, Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Software Engineering
Despite advancements in environmental monitoring, the gap between data collection and user-friendly data interpretation remains a significant challenge, especially in the domain of water quality management. This paper introduces the Artificial Intelligence Data Expert (AI-DE), a novel data analytics system that is designed to facilitate on-demand analysis of time-series sensor data related to [...]
Technological Trends in The Field of Hydrology and Environmental Sciences: A Bibliometric Analysis
Published: 2024-05-31
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Education, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
The rapid advancement and widespread adoption of technology, particularly in web applications and artificial intelligence, have significantly impacted various sectors, including industry, social media, government, and research. This surge in technological utilization has played a pivotal role in the evolution of hydrogeological and environmental sciences, empowering researchers to harness [...]
Improving Urban Climate Adaptation Modelling in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Through Transient Urban Surface Albedo Representation
Published: 2024-04-03
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil Engineering, Climate, Computational Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Increasing the albedo of urban surfaces, through strategies like white roof installations, has emerged as a promising approach for urban climate adaptation. Yet, modelling these strategies on a large scale is limited by the use of static urban surface albedo representations in the Earth system models. In this study, we developed a new transient urban surface albedo scheme in the Community Earth [...]
On evaporation kinetics of multicomponent aerosols: Characteristic times and implications for volatility measurements.
Published: 2024-03-16
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Transport Phenomena
This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the evaporation of individual compounds from an aerosol in vapor-free conditions, demonstrating that the evaporation of mixture components is interconnected via the ratio of their characteristic times. These characteristic times are proportional to the square of the initial particle diameter and inversely proportional to the compound saturation vapor [...]
Towards an Open and Integrated Cyberinfrastructure for River Morphology Research in the Big Data Era
Published: 2024-02-16
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Computer Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Systems and Communications, Water Resource Management
The objective of this paper is to present the initial illustration of a cyberinfrastructure named the River MORPhology Information System (RIMORPHIS) that addresses the current limitations related to river morphology data and tools. A new specification for data and semantics on river morphology datasets has been developed to support the web-based platform for discovering and visualization of [...]
A Comprehensive Flood Risk Assessment for Railroad Network: Case Study for Iowa
Published: 2023-12-29
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Risk Analysis
Climate-induced disasters, particularly floods, pose a substantial risk to human well-being. These risks encompass economic losses, infrastructural damage, disruption of daily life, and potential loss of life. This study focuses on understanding flood risks to critical infrastructure, emphasizing the resilience and reliability of essential services during such disasters. In the United States, the [...]
Comprehensive Analysis of Riverine Flood Impact on Bridges: Iowa Case Study
Published: 2023-12-20
Subjects: Environmental Engineering
Floods often have a catastrophic impact on human life in terms of economic loss, infrastructure damage, and loss of life. Transportation network resilience is one of the critical aspects of supply lines for delivering goods and services during and after disaster events. Understanding vulnerable transportation segments is critical to addressing potential disruptions that may be caused by a flood [...]
On the economic feasibility of tidal range power plants
Published: 2023-12-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
The wave potential energy associated with tides presents a promising sustainable energy resource. Uncertainties on the economic case of tidal range power plants are a known bottleneck hindering the development of the industry. Significant costs depend on each design's general arrangement, which includes both mechanical components and the associated civil works. Research on tidal range structures [...]
UMIS: An Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System for Water Quality Resources in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Published: 2023-11-28
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Systems and Communications, Water Resource Management
The Upper Mississippi Information System (UMIS) is a cyberinfrastructure framework designed to support large-scale real-time water quality data integration, analysis, and visualization for the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). UMIS is intended to directly address three of the Grand Challenges for Engineering including: 1) understanding access to clean drinking water, 2) management of the [...]
Geospatial Variation in Carbon Accounting of Low-Carbon Hydrogen Production Pathways: Implications for the Inflation Reduction Act
Published: 2023-11-20
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Systems Engineering
Low-carbon hydrogen is considered a key component of global energy system decarbonization strategy. The US Inflation Reduction Act includes incentives in the form of production tax credits for low-carbon hydrogen production, provided the lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity (EI) of hydrogen is below 4 kg CO2e/kg H2. Blue hydrogen or hydrogen produced from natural gas coupled with [...]
Advancing Regional Flood Mapping in a Changing Climate: A HAND-Based Approach for New Jersey with Innovations in Catchment Analysis
Published: 2023-11-03
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology
Regional flood mapping poses computational and spatial heterogeneity challenges, exacerbated by climate change-induced uncertainties. This study focuses on creating a state-wide flood mapping solution with enhanced accuracy and computational speed to support regional flooding hazard analysis and the assessment of climate change, using New Jersey as a case study. The Height Above Nearest Drainage [...]
Data for Critical Infrastructure Network Modelling of Natural Hazard Impacts: Needs and Influence on Model Characteristics
Published: 2023-11-03
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis
Natural hazards impact the interdependent infrastructure networks that keep modern society functional. While a variety of critical infrastructure network (CIN) modelling approaches are available to represent CI networks on different scales and analyse the impacts of natural hazards, a recurring challenge for all modelling approaches is the availability and accessibility of sufficiently [...]
Mapping the Landscape of Water and Society Research: Promising Combinations of Compatible and Complementary Disciplines
Published: 2023-10-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible) [...]
Enhancing Hydrological Modeling with Transformers: A Case Study for 24-Hour Streamflow Prediction
Published: 2023-09-12
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
In this paper, we address the critical task of 24-hour streamflow forecasting using advanced deep-learning models, with a primary focus on the Transformer architecture which has seen limited application in this specific task. We compare the performance of five different models, including Persistence, LSTM, Seq2Seq, GRU, and Transformer, across four distinct regions. The evaluation is based on [...]