Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Engineering
Rules-Based Systems Modeling for Hydropower Forecasting in Multi-Objective Reservoir Systems: Application to California's Central Valley Project
Published: 2026-05-02
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Hydropower from large multi-objective reservoirs and water management projects constitutes the bulk of global reservoir-based generation. Yet accurate forecasting remains challenging because generation is governed not only by hydrology but by complex institutional rules, environmental regulations, and infrastructure constraints. This study demonstrates that a rules-based systems modeling [...]
A Meteorological Indicator for Particulate Matter Emissions: Adapting the Hot-Dry-Windy Index to Predict Feedlot Evening Dust Peaks
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Particulate matter emissions from cattle feedlot operations pose significant challenges to both livestock productivity and air quality in surrounding communities. The evening dust peak (EDP) has been documented for decades, but comprehensive long-term studies examining its meteorological drivers are very limited. While laboratory and field-scale investigations have demonstrated that feedlot [...]
Quantifying hydropower flexibility during extreme temperature events
Published: 2026-04-20
Subjects: Computational Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Mathematics, Power and Energy, Systems Engineering
Extreme weather events can impose substantial stress on the electrical grid. Hydropower offers unique operational flexibility, enhancing grid resilience and reliability. Despite this value of flexibility, systematic assessments of hydropower flexibility -- particularly during extreme events -- remain limited. This study is the first to quantify hydropower operational flexibility using 25 years' [...]
The Evolution of Digital Twins in Hydrology and Environmental Science: From Physical Models to AI-Assisted Autonomous Systems
Published: 2026-04-10
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Digital Twin (DT) technologies have emerged as transformative framework in hydrology, enabling adaptive, real-time modeling of water systems through data-driven intelligence. This position paper proposes a five-level technological evolution model for hydrological digital twins, tracing field’s progression over the last three decades (1995-2025) from physical models to autonomous & [...]
Stress testing insurance market stability under climate risk
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis
Climate change, urban development, and evolving insurance markets threaten the stability of disaster-risk financing. Homeowners insurance is embedded in a layered network of reinsurers, capital markets, and public backstops that absorb losses and can be overwhelmed by extreme events. We develop a probabilistic risk-propagation model linking physics-based simulations of tropical cyclone wind and [...]
Rethinking land take futures: A cellular automata-based spatial planning approach to model urban expansion and densification under divergent growth scenarios
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Spatial Science
Land take - the conversion of greenfield land into built-up areas - poses critical challenges for sustainable urban development. Addressing this issue requires understanding the balance between outward urban expansion and inward urban densification. This study employs a Multinomial Logistic Regression-based Cellular Automata (MNL-CA) model to simulate two different future scenarios of urban [...]
Machine Learning Based Alum Dosing Optimization for Adaptive Water Quality Management in Treatment Plant
Published: 2026-03-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Ensuring safe and cost-effective water purification remains a critical challenge, particularly for large natural water bodies like the Halda River, where water quality parameters fluctuate significantly. Traditional methods for determining alum dosages often rely on manual experiments that fail to adapt to real-time variations, leading to inefficiencies and chemical overuse. This study [...]
SIM4Action: An Interactive Platform for Social-Environmental Systems Mapping and Causal Analysis
Published: 2026-03-25
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Life Sciences
SIM4Action is an open-source, browser-based platform for participatory analysis of complex socio-environmental systems through interactive causal network graphs. Existing systems mapping tools require practitioners to combine separate software for map construction, network analysis, and causal simulation; none provides an integrated workflow accessible to non-technical stakeholders. SIM4Action [...]
Agentic Modelling Pipeline: Reproducible Rapid Stormwater Modelling Management System with OpenClaw
Published: 2026-03-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
Configuring urban hydrological models, such as SWMM, for operational or real-time modelling remains onerous for many models. We propose an Agentic SWMM workflow, which embeds ‘Skills’ and model context protocols to automate model configuration, execution, and extract and plot quantities of interest. To ensure that the entire Agentic SWMM workflow is auditable and reproducible, each run will [...]
Probabilistic modelling of pharmaceutical pollution risk from sewage treatment work discharges using a Bayesian Network: application to a Scottish river catchment
Published: 2026-03-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Water Resource Management
Pharmaceuticals are increasingly recognised as a class of emerging contaminants of concern in rivers. Their continuous release from human use and variable removal in sewage treatment works (STWs) can produce ecologically relevant concentrations and contribute to antimicrobial resistance. We developed a probabilistic catchment-scale model based on a Bayesian Network (BN) to quantify pharmaceutical [...]
Potential groundwater recharge during floods
Published: 2026-02-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering
Groundwater constitutes 30% of fresh water reserves on Earth. It is important as a source for drinking water and irrigation due to its good quality. For many aquifers in arid regions, long-term groundwater extraction has put in risk its sustainable use. Thus, it is relevant to understand and quantify processes that contribute to sustainable groundwater recharge. Most recharge to aquifers in [...]
Evaluating economic opportunities and challenges for energy recovery from methane leaks during wastewater treatment
Published: 2026-02-13
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Methane leaks from wastewater treatment represent the loss of biogas that can be used to generate onsite energy, offsetting costs and improving efficiency. Here, we characterize emissions from water resource recovery facilities by compiling measurement data and calculating biogas-production normalized leak rates for facilities with anaerobic digestion. For plants where biogas data were [...]
Spontaneous liquefaction in saturated granular deposits: State controlled boundary and surface reconfiguration
Published: 2026-01-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, Mining Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
In the case of water-saturated, granular deposits that are at risk of liquefaction, engineers need reliable information about the spatial extent of soil deformation in the event of liquefaction. It is not so important for them to know the exact location of the first failure. However, existing anal-yses primarily deal with the triggering of liquefaction and offer only limited information on how [...]
Advancing continuous in-situ quantification of microbial contamination in environmental waters using tryptophan-like fluorescence - Sensor design and validation
Published: 2026-01-23
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring
Microbial contamination of recreational and source waters poses persistent public health risks, yet conventional monitoring based on laboratory culture methods provides delayed results and limited temporal resolution. These constraints hinder timely identification of short-duration contamination events and effective management of recreation advisories. This study evaluates the performance of a [...]
A New Paradigm for High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal: Intrinsic Radionuclide Properties and Comparative Hazard
Published: 2026-01-21
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology
This paper develops a hazard- and pathway-based framework for high-level radioactive waste (HLW) disposal grounded in intrinsic radionuclide decay characteristics, geochemical behavior, and comparative hazard. We examine the physical and geochemical properties of key radionuclides and quantify lifetime cancer risk from chronic ingestion on a per-unit-mass basis using established regulatory [...]