Filtering by Subject: Risk Analysis
Published: 2020-10-19
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Risk Analysis, Water Resource Management
Regulatory agencies are beginning to recognize and regulate per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as concerning environmental contaminants. In groundwater management, testing and mitigation strategies are desirable, but can be time and cost-intensive processes. As a result, only a fraction of all groundwater wells has been tested for PFAS levels, resulting in potentially extended drinking [...]
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 [...]
Published: 2020-06-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Urban heat waves (UHWs) are strongly associated with socioeconomic impacts. Reliable projections of these extremes are pressingly needed for local actions in the context of extreme event preparedness and mitigation. Such information, however, is not available because current multi-model projections largely lack a representation of urban areas. Here, we use a newly-developed urban climate emulator [...]
Published: 2019-06-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Sustainability, Systems Engineering, Water Resource Management
The increasing impact of flooding urges more effective flood management strategies to guarantee sustainable ecosystem development. Recent catastrophes underline the importance of avoiding local flood management, but characterizing large scale basin wide approaches for systemic flood risk management. Here we introduce an information-theoretic Portfolio Decision Model (iPDM) for the optimization of [...]
Published: 2019-05-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Natural disaster risk assessments typically consider environmental hazard and physical damage, neglecting to quantify how asset losses affect households’ well-being. However, for a given asset loss, a wealthy household might easily recover, while a poor household might suffer from major, long-lasting impacts. Ignoring such differential impacts can lead to inequitable interventions and exacerbate [...]
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Water Resource Management
Prediction of changes in precipitation in upcoming years and decades caused by global climate change associated with the greenhouse effect, deforestation and other anthropic perturbations is a practical and scientific problem of high complexity and huge consequences. To advance toward this challenge we look at the daily historical record of all available rain gauges in Colombia to estimate an [...]
Published: 2019-04-25
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
This paper presents a robust parameter estimation technique for a probabilistic earthquake hazard model that captures time and space interactions between earthquake mainshocks. The approach addresses the existing limitations of parameter estimation techniques by developing a Bayesian formulation and leveraging physics-based simulated synthetic catalogs to expand the limited datasets of historical [...]
Published: 2019-04-08
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Computer models are essential tools in the earth system sciences. They underpin our search for understanding of earth system functioning and support decision- and policy-making across spatial and temporal scales. To understand the implications of uncertainty and environmental variability on the identification of such earth system models and their predictions, we can rely on increasingly powerful [...]
Published: 2019-04-05
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) is a set of statistical techniques to investigate the effects of the uncertainty in the input factors of a mathematical model on the model’s outputs. The value of GSA for the construction, evaluation, and improvement of earth system models is reviewed in a companion paper by Wagener and Pianosi [n.d.]. The present paper focuses on the implementation of GSA and [...]
Published: 2018-09-30
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Sedimentology, Soil Science, Stratigraphy, Sustainability
Coastal Louisiana has lost about 5,000km2 of wetlands over the past century and concern exists whether remaining wetlands will persist while facing some of the world’s highest rates of relative sea-level rise (RSLR). Here we analyse an unprecedented data set derived from 274 rod surface-elevation table-marker horizon stations, to determine present-day surface-elevation change, vertical accretion [...]
Published: 2018-08-31
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Engineering, Ordinary Differential Equations and Applied Dynamics, Other Applied Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
Uncertainty analysis is an unavoidable risk assessment task (for instance for natural hazards, or for environmental issues). In situations where data are scarce, incomplete or imprecise, the systematic and only use of probabilities can be debatable. Over the last years, several alternative mathematical representation methods have been developed to handle in a more flexible manner the lack of [...]
Published: 2018-01-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Off the back of the 2017 hurricanes we extend the notion of human-influenced meteo-hydro hazards to include deeper geophysical events. We question where to place Human responsibility in a changing world, and we outline ways to bridge the gaps between scientist’s technical knowledge and ‘meaning’ as it is understood by people at risk. This short Op-ed has been rejected by Science after two rounds [...]
Published: 2017-10-31
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Fluid Dynamics, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Risk Analysis, Sedimentology
Meandering channels host geophysical flows that form the most extensive sediment transport systems on Earth (i.e. rivers and submarine channels). Measurements of helical flow structures in bends have been key to understanding sediment transport in rivers. Turbidity currents differ from rivers in both density and velocity profiles. These differences, and the lack of field measurements of turbidity [...]