Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Engineering
VRFIS: An Immersive Framework for Real-Time Flood Monitoring, Visualization, and Interactive Environmental Analysis
Published: 2025-12-31
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology
The rapid evolution of Mixed Reality (MR) technologies, particularly Virtual Reality (VR), offers powerful new means of visualizing and interacting with geographic and environmental data. This paper presents Virtual Reality Flood Information System (VRFIS), an immersive information platform developed using Unreal Engine 5 and Google Photo Realistic 3D Tiles to enable real-time exploration of [...]
Liquefaction as an energetic instability of saturated granular systems – Density control and static enthalpy equilibrium
Published: 2025-12-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Materials Science and Engineering, Mining Engineering, Other Materials Science and Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Liquefaction of saturated granular materials is commonly interpreted within stress-based frameworks that rely on the existence of an intact grain skeleton. At the onset of liquefaction, however, the contact network collapses and effective stress ceases to be a meaningful state variable. This work reformulates liquefaction as an enthalpy-driven instability of the coupled grain–water system and [...]
IBIS: A Community-Oriented Framework for Flood-Induced Bridge Vulnerability Assessment and Prioritization for Iowa
Published: 2025-12-27
Subjects: Environmental Engineering
Floods are among the most frequent and damaging natural hazards, posing serious risks to transportation infrastructure and public safety. Bridges, as essential links in road and rail networks, are especially vulnerable, and their closures can trigger widespread disruption, economic losses, and reduced access to vital services. Effective flood-risk mitigation and emergency response require systems [...]
Comprehensive Assessment of Flood Risk and Community Impact of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Iowa
Published: 2025-12-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Life Sciences
Flooding presents a significant risk to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), especially in regions increasingly affected by extreme weather events. This study uses advanced geospatial analysis techniques to assess the environmental and economic vulnerabilities of 12,703 CAFOs across Iowa, United States. We focused on the exposure of CAFOS to 100-year and 500-year floodplains, [...]
Community-Oriented Data Integration and Communication Framework for Streamflow Forecast Models and Flood Inundation Map Products
Published: 2025-12-23
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Water Resource Management
Access to critical flood risk information is often limited by expert-driven workflows that require specialized software, representing a barrier to stakeholder engagement and effective science communication. This study presents a generalized web-based framework that integrates federal datasets for real-time scenario-based flood forecasting and mapping at the CONUS scale. By leveraging [...]
HydroVerse Education: An AI-Assisted Education Framework for Immersive Learning and Training Environments
Published: 2025-12-22
Subjects: Adult and Continuing Education, Computer Engineering, Educational Methods, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Hydroinformatics education has traditionally been constrained by pedagogical approaches that fail to adequately convey the complexity of water systems. Virtual Reality (VR) presents a transformative solution by enabling interactive and experiential learning. This study introduces HydroVerse Education, an immersive virtual classroom environment designed to modernize hydroinformatics education by [...]
Spatiotemporal connections in high precipitation events in Iran: Application of complex networks
Published: 2025-11-29
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Water Resource Management
Study region A relatively large area covering east and west Asia, north Africa, and Europe. Study focus This study examines the complex correlation patterns of high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study region. For this purpose, the Complex Networks Theory is used to find the links between high precipitation events in Iran and the rest of the study area with different time lags. [...]
Unified Cross-Modal Learning for Hydrological Processes Using Multi-Task Transformer Framework
Published: 2025-10-31
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Most deep learning studies in hydrology adopt single-task frameworks that address individual variables such as rainfall or streamflow independently, limiting opportunities for shared learning across related environmental processes. This study introduces a unified multi-task, multi-modal deep learning framework capable of jointly performing 24-hour horizon streamflow forecasting and rainfall [...]
A Static Enthalpy Equilibrium Approach to the Stability of Saturated Sands (Version 2)
Published: 2025-10-25
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Construction Engineering and Management, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
This preprint presents a physical formulaton for the stability of saturated granular systems based on a static enthalpy equilibrium. The approach definnes equilibrium as the balance between the gravitationel potential of the granular framework and the hydraulic work of the pore water. From this energetic condition, the limit state and the transition between stable, metastable, and liquefied [...]
Scalable and robust Gaussian processes for reanalysis of urban air temperature with crowdsourced meteorological data
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Statistical Models
Crowdsourced air temperature data from networks like Weather Underground offer dense spatial coverage and are increasingly used to study the canopy urban heat island (CUHI) effect. However, these observations are noisy: siting conditions, environmental interference, and sensor failures introduce spatially and temporally varying bias. This complicates interpolation, limiting our ability to [...]
HydroVerse VR Equipment Hub: An Integrated Virtual Reality Framework for Training and Workforce Development in Environmental Monitoring
Published: 2025-10-21
Subjects: Adult and Continuing Education, Computer Engineering, Educational Methods, Engineering Education, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Environmental monitoring is critical for managing ecosystems and addressing global challenges such as climate change and pollution. However, training professionals in this field is often hampered by remote locations, hazardous field conditions, and limited access to specialized equipment. In response, this paper presents the HydroVerse VR Equipment Hub, an immersive virtual reality framework for [...]
Multi-Task Learning as a Step Toward Building General-Purpose Hydrological Forecasting Systems
Published: 2025-10-21
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis
Streamflow and soil moisture are two critical variables in the hydrological cycle, linked through infiltration, runoff generation, and groundwater recharge. Traditional forecasting approaches often treat them independently, overlooking interdependencies and limiting predictive skill. This study investigates Multi-Task Learning (MTL) for daily prediction of both variables using the CAMELS dataset [...]
Smart Urban Design with Physics-Informed Neural Networks: Quantifying Temperature Reductions from Green Infrastructure Using Satellite Thermal Data
Published: 2025-10-19
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Urban Heat Islands (UHIs), characterised by elevated temperatures in densely built environments, pose critical challenges to urban sustainability, public health, and energy resilience. Mitigating UHIs requires precise quantification of the cooling effects of green infrastructure; however, existing models often fail to integrate high-resolution geospatial data with physical laws. This study [...]
A real time reservoir inflow forecast evaluation framework
Published: 2025-10-16
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
Recent advances in data driven hydrologic forecasts have led to a multitude of new and rapidly improving streamflow forecast products and technologies. These often lead hydropower producers to question whether such advances translate into increases in revenue and whether implementing these new forecasts justify the additional associated costs. To address this, we present a general framework that [...]
Mitigation of Ultraviolet Solar Radiation Involving Calcite (MUSIC)
Published: 2025-10-15
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection
This investigation explores the use of calcite (CaCO3) powder, the most common and radiation- resistant form of calcium carbonate, as an environmentally friendly mechanism for solar radiation management by measuring its ability to deflect ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The experiment took place on a high-altitude balloon (HAB) payload. Three sets of laminated calcite sheets with varying [...]