Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Civil Engineering
A Web-based Analytical Urban Flood Damage and Loss Estimation Framework
Published: 2022-12-04
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Risk Analysis, Systems and Communications
Information and communication technology serves a crucial role in communicating flood risk and consequences to a broad range of stakeholders and facilitating mitigation decisions. While studies extensively utilize flood inundation maps for communicating flood risks, there is a need to integrate a broad spectrum of physical vulnerability parameters into risk estimates at various spatial scales. [...]
A Simple Framework for Calibrating Hydraulic Flood Inundation Models using Crowd-sourced Water Levels
Published: 2022-08-23
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Fluid Dynamics, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Floods are the most commonly occurring natural disaster, with the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters 2021 report on “The Non-COVID Year in Disasters” estimating economic losses worth over USD 51 million and over 6000 fatalities in 2020. The hydrodynamic models which are used for flood forecasting need to be evaluated and constrained using observations of water depth and extent. [...]
Optimizing nature-based solutions by combining social equity, hydro-environmental performance, and economic costs through a novel Gini coefficient
Published: 2021-11-15
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Engineering
A robust multi-functional framework for widespread planning of nature-based solutions (NBS) must incorporate components of social equity and hydro-environmental performance in a cost-effective manner. NBS systems address stormwater mitigation by increasing on-site infiltration and evaporation through enhanced greenspace while also improving various components of societal well-being, such as [...]
Kathmandu Basin as a local modulator of seismic waves: 2D modelling of nonlinear site response under obliquely incident waves
Published: 2021-10-15
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Geotechnical Engineering
The 2015 Mw 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal earthquake is the largest event to have struck the capital city of Kathmandu in recent times. One of its surprising features was the frequency content of the recorded ground motion, exhibiting a notable amplification at low frequencies (< 2 Hz) and a contrasting depletion at higher frequencies. The latter has been partially attributed to the damper behaviour of the [...]
Combining shallow-water and analytical wake models for tidal array micro-siting
Published: 2021-07-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Oceanography
For tidal-stream energy to become a competitive renewable energy source, clustering multiple turbines into arrays is paramount. As a result, array optimisation is critical for achieving maximum power performance and reducing cost of energy. However, ascertaining an optimal array layout is a highly complex problem, subject to specific site hydrodynamics and multiple inter-disciplinary [...]
Toward automating post processing of aquatic sensor data
Published: 2021-07-23
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
Sensors measuring environmental phenomena at high frequency commonly report anomalies related to fouling, sensor drift and calibration, and datalogging and transmission issues. Suitability of data for analyses and decision making often depends on manual review and adjustment of data. Machine learning techniques have potential to automate identification and correction of anomalies, streamlining [...]
Microstructural differences between naturally-deposited and laboratory beach sands
Published: 2021-04-14
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Geotechnical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
The orientation of and contacts between grains of sand reflect the processes that deposit the sands. Grain orientation and contact geometry also influence mechanical properties. Quantifying and understanding sand microstructure thus provide an opportunity to understand depositional processes better and connect microstructure and macroscopic properties. We compare naturally-deposited beach sands [...]
Upper Mississippi River Flow and Sediment Characteristics and Their Effect on a Harbor Siltation Case
Published: 2021-01-28
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geomorphology, Hydraulic Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Upper Mississippi River flow and sediment characteristics downstream of St. Louis are presented in this study. Available and measured data were used to assess a harbor siltation case and dredging needs. Such data are also useful to researchers and engineers conducting work in the Mississippi River and large rivers in general. Flows were characterized in terms of the mean annual hydrograph, flow [...]
Structure-from-Motion on shallow reefs and beaches: potential and limitations of consumer-grade drones to reconstruct topography and bathymetry
Published: 2020-10-21
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Fluid Dynamics, Fresh Water Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing
Reconstructing the topography of shallow underwater environments using Structure-from-Motion – Multi View Stereo (SfM-MVS) techniques applied to aerial imagery from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is a challenging problem, as it involves non-linear distortions caused by water refraction. This study presents an experiment with aerial photographs collected with a consumer-grade UAV on the [...]
Transportation Network Vulnerability and Accessibility for Critical Amenities during Flooding: A Case Study for Iowa
Published: 2020-08-16
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Evaluating Controller Performance and Placement on System-level Urban Flooding Reduction and Water Quality Improvement
Published: 2020-05-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
Increases in urbanization and climate change are forcing urban drainage engineers to more effectively leverage stormwater storage facilities to minimize flooding and water quality impacts. This process becomes increasingly challenging due to the operations of storage coordination across the system-level watershed. This study presents a system-level real-time control simulation for assessing [...]
A Data-driven Improved Fuzzy Logic Control Optimization-simulation Tool for Reducing Flooding Volume at Downstream Urban Drainage Systems
Published: 2020-04-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
The uncertainty of climate change and urbanization imposed additional stress for urban drainage systems (UDSs) by intensifying rainfall frequency and magnifying peak runoff rate. UDSs are among the stormwater infrastructures that can be controlled in real-time for mitigating downstream urban flooding. In this paper, a data-driven improved real-time control optimization-simulation tool called [...]
A Performance Comparison of Unsupervised Machine Learning Algorithms for Clustering Water Depth Datasets at Urban Drainage Systems
Published: 2020-04-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering
As sensor measurements emerge in urban water systems, data-driven unsupervised machine learning algorithms have been drawn tremendous interest in infrastructure monitoring, flow prediction, and pollutant warning recently. However, most of them are applied in water distribution systems, and few studies consider using unsupervised clustering analysis to group the time-series hydraulic-hydrologic [...]