Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Engineering
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 [...]
FloodGame: An Interactive 3D Serious Game on Flood Mitigation for Disaster Awareness and Education
Published: 2023-09-08
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Risk Analysis, Science and Mathematics Education
The number and devastating impacts of natural disasters have grown significantly worldwide, and floods are one of the most dangerous and frequent natural disasters. Recent studies emphasize the importance of public awareness in disaster preparedness and response activities. FloodGame is designed as a web-based interactive serious game geared towards educating K-12 and college students and raising [...]
Satellite-derived shorelines for monitoring of sandy beaches: a benchmark study
Published: 2023-07-09
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Satellite remote sensing is becoming a widely used monitoring technique in coastal sciences. Yet, no benchmarking studies exist that compare the performance of popular satellite-derived shoreline (SDS) mapping algorithms against standardized sets of inputs and validation data. Here we present a new benchmarking framework to evaluate the accuracy of shoreline change observations extracted from [...]
Mitigation effectiveness on groundwater-dependent ecosystems revealed by counterfactual AI
Published: 2023-07-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Overexploitation of groundwater threatens groundwater-bound aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystem stability, underscoring the need to devise appropriate mitigation strategies. Yet, substantial scientific evidence that mitigation measures effectively protect groundwater ecosystems is presently nonexistent. We provide unique and compelling evidence, using counterfactual artificial [...]
Heuristic Data-inspired Scheme to Characterize Meteorological and Groundwater Droughts in Semi-arid Karstic Region under Warming Climate
Published: 2023-07-08
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Hydrology
Study region The Edwards Aquifer Region is located in south-central Texas, United States. Study focus The paper focuses on the development and implementation of a data-inspired heuristic drought identification scheme to (i) quantify the intensity, duration, and frequency of precipitation deficit- and high temperature-driven meteorological droughts (PMet- and TMet-droughts), and (ii) link [...]
Non-structural Flood Mitigation Optimization at Community Scale: Middle Cedar Case Study
Published: 2023-06-07
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Risk Analysis
Flooding is the leading natural hazard in Iowa and has resulted in billions of dollars of damage to properties and critical infrastructure over the past couple of decades. Land alterations, urbanization, and changing precipitation regimes increase the magnitude and frequency of flood events. Considering the increasing risk, flood mitigation efforts are significant to reduce future losses. In this [...]
Ecological Flows in Southern Europe: status and trends in non-perennial rivers
Published: 2023-05-16
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The concept of environmental flows (E-Flows) describes the streamflow that is necessary to maintain river ecosystems. Although a large number of methods have been developed, a delay was recorded in implementing E–Flows in non-perennial rivers. The general aim of the paper was to analyse the criticalities and the current state of implementation of the E-Flows in non-perennial rivers of southern [...]
Ammonia emissions from a dairy housing and a wastewater treatment plant quantified with an inverse dispersion method accounting for deposition loss
Published: 2023-04-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Engineering
Ammonia (NH3) emissions negatively impact air, soil, and water quality, hence human health and biodiversity. Significant emissions, including the largest sources, originate from single or multiple structures, such as livestock facilities and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The inverse dispersion method (IDM) is effective in measuring total emissions from such [...]
Revisiting the Climate Narrative
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Management, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Environmental Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is chiefly tied to land stewardship. Farmers and loggers have removed the plants that, until the industrial era, kept the soil fungi alive, kept soil emissions nearby by breaking the wind, and soaked those up. The result is plumes of carbon dioxide. Putting plants back in would curb these emissions. Farmers and loggers could address biodiversity loss [...]
Setting an ecological flow regime in a Mediterranean basin with limited data availability: the Locone River case study (S-E Italy)
Published: 2023-03-31
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The Environmental Flow regime (E-Flows) was defined as the flow regime necessary to support river ecosystems, which in turn support crops, the economy, sustainable livelihoods, and human well-being. Although a large number of methods for setting an E-Flow regime have been developed, E-Flows science is still an emerging discipline in non-perennial rivers because of the lack of specific guidelines [...]
Crop Yield Prediction based on Reanalysis and Crop Phenology Data in the Agroclimatic Zones
Published: 2023-03-24
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Crop yield and phenological stages are remarkably sensitive to not only environmental factors like atmospheric conditions and physical properties of soils but also agricultural activities. Accurate crop yield prediction plays a crucial role in food security and agricultural sustainability. There are several approaches that a wide range of researchers have tried to predict crop yield at different [...]
Greenhouse gas intensity of geologic hydrogen produced from subsurface deposits
Published: 2023-03-23
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Geologic hydrogen (H2) deposits could be a source of climate friendly energy. In this work, we perform a prospective life cycle assessment of a generic geologic hydrogen production and processing system. While it is still too early in the development cycle to estimate precise life-cycle carbon intensities (CI) we can use fundamental engineering physics and chemistry to estimate CI. Our baseline [...]
Data, knowledge and modeling challenges for science-informed management of river deltas
Published: 2023-03-16
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
450 million people live on river deltas and thus on land that is precariously low above the sea level and sinking because of human activities and natural processes. Although global debates around coastal risk typically focus on sea level rise, it is sinking lands and rising seas that together endanger lives and livelihoods in river deltas. However, the ability to quantify and address those risks [...]
Sand Shoal Dynamics of a Tide-Dominated Estuarine Embayment: Comparison of a Numerical Sediment Transport Model against Field Observations
Published: 2023-02-07
Subjects: Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Oceanography
This paper presents an innovative and detailed dataset of currents and sediment transport observations over a sand shoal system responsible for focusing wave energy on eroding coastline. The data are used to measure the performance of a detailed numerical sediment transport model of the sand shoal system. The predictive skill of the model is 0.96 for tidal elevations within Port Phillip Bay, 0.75 [...]
Improving Shoreline Forecasting Models with Multi-Objective Genetic Programming
Published: 2023-01-10
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Climate, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography, Sedimentology, Statistical Models
Given the current context of climate change and increasing population densities at coastal zones, there is an increasing need to be able to predict the development of our coasts. Recent advances in artificial intelligence allow for automatic analysis of observational data. This work makes use of Symbolic Regression, a type of Machine Learning algorithm, to evolve interpretable shoreline [...]