Search results for "Environmental engineering"
showing 10 items of 2674 documents
Characterizing Low-Permeable Granitic Rock from Micrometer to Centimeter Scale: X-ray Microcomputed Tomography, Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy an…
2006
AbstractFirst results of combining X-ray microcomputer tomography (µCT), confocal laser-scanning microscopy (CLSM) and 14C-polymethylmethacrylate (14C-PMMA) impregnation techniques in the study of granitic rock samples are reported. Combining results of µCT and CLSM with those of the 14C-PMMA technique, the mineral-specific porosity and morphology of the open pore space, as well as its connectivity, could be analyzed from a micrometer up to a decimeter scale.Three different types of granite were studied. In two cases part of the micro-fissure and pore apertures were found to be in a micrometer scale, but in one case all grain-boundary openings were below the detection limit. Micrometer-scal…
Effect of C/N shock variation on the performances of a moving bed membrane bioreactor.
2015
Abstract The effect of a sharp variation of C/N ratio in a moving bed membrane bioreactor (MB-MBR) pilot plant treating high strength wastewater has been investigated. The experimental campaign was divided into two periods, each characterized by a different C/N ratio (namely, 2.5 and 15, Period 1 and Period 2, respectively). The MB-MBR system was analyzed in terms of organic carbon removal, nitrification efficiency, biokinetic activity and fouling behavior. The results showed that the nitrification process was severely affected by lower C/N value and by high concentration of ammonia. It was noticed an extensive stress effect on the autotrophic bacteria. Furthermore, it was observed an incre…
Multicriteria decision support in a technology competition for cleaning polluted soil in Helsinki
2000
Due to expansion of the capital area in Finland, industrial areas are being replanned for residential and commercial use. The soil in these areas is sometimes contaminated, and must therefore be cleaned before building. In spring 1997 the City of Helsinki and the National Technology Agency of Finland declared a contract-based competition for cleaning the polluted soil of the planned Toukolanranta residential area. Nine proposals entered the competition, and the problem was to choose three best candidates for test-cleaning a small part of the region considered. The winner of the test-cleaning phase will get the contract for cleaning the whole area. The proposals were evaluated based on five …
Evaluation of debris flow susceptibility in El Salvador (CA): a comparison between Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) and Binary Logisti…
2018
In the studies of landslide susceptibility assessment, which have been developed in recent years, statistical methods have increasingly been applied. Among all, the BLR (Binary Logistic Regression) certainly finds a more extensive application while MARS (Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines), despite the good performance and the innovation of the strategies of analysis, only recently began to be employed as a statistical tool for predicting landslide occurrence. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the predictive performance and identify possible drawbacks of the two statistical techniques mentioned above, focusing in particular on the prediction of debris flows. To this aim, an…
Uncertainty evaluation of design rainfall for urban flood risk analysis
2011
A reliable and long dataset describing urban flood locations, volumes and depths would be an ideal prerequisite for assessing flood frequency distributions. However, data are often piecemeal and long-term hydraulic modelling is often adopted to estimate floods from historical rainfall series. Long-term modelling approaches are time- and resource-consuming, and synthetically designed rainfalls are often used to estimate flood frequencies. The present paper aimsto assess the uncertainty of such an approach and for suggesting improvements in thedefinition of synthetic rainfall data for flooding frequency analysis. According to this aim, a multivariate statistical analysis based on a copulameth…
GIS-based groundwater potential mapping in Shahroud plain, Iran. A comparison among statistical (bivariate and multivariate), data mining and MCDM ap…
2019
Abstract In arid and semi-arid areas, groundwater resource is one of the most important water sources by the humankind. Knowledge of groundwater distribution over space, associated flow and basic exploitation measures can play a significant role in planning sustainable development, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. Groundwater potential mapping (GWPM) fits in this context as the tool used to predict the spatial distribution of groundwater. In this research we tested four GIS-based models for GWPM, consisting of: i) random forest (RF); ii) weight of evidence (WoE); iii) binary logistic regression (BLR); and iv) technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) mul…
On the use of adaptive spatial weight matrices from disease mapping multivariate analyses
2020
Conditional autoregressive distributions are commonly used to model spatial dependence between nearby geographic units in disease mapping studies. These distributions induce spatial dependence by means of a spatial weights matrix that quantifies the strength of dependence between any two neighboring spatial units. The most common procedure for defining that spatial weights matrix is using an adjacency criterion. In that case, all pairs of spatial units with adjacent borders are given the same weight (typically 1) and the remaining non-adjacent units are assigned a weight of 0. However, assuming all spatial neighbors in a model to be equally influential could be possibly a too rigid or inapp…
Probabilistic Flood Hazard Mapping Using Bivariate Analysis Based on Copulas
2017
This study presents a methodology to extract probabilistic flood hazard maps in an area subject to flood risk, taking into account uncertainties in the definition of design hydrographs. Particularly, the authors present a new method to produce probabilistic inundation and flood hazard maps in which the hydrological input (i.e., synthetic flood design event) to a 2D hydraulic model has been obtained by using a bivariate statistical analysis (copulas) to generate flood peak discharges and volumes. This study also aims to quantify the contribution of boundary conditions’ uncertainty in order to evaluate the effect of this uncertainty source on probabilistic flood hazard mapping. Different comb…
Comparison of differences in resolution and sources of controlling factors for gully erosion susceptibility mapping
2018
Abstract Gully erosion has been identified as an important soil degradation process and sediment source, especially in arid and semiarid areas. Thus, it is useful to identify the spatial occurrence of this form of water erosion in the landscape and the most vulnerable areas. In this study, we explored the effects of different pixel sizes on some controlling factors extracted from a digital elevation model and remote sensing data when producing a gully erosion susceptibility map (GESM) of Ekbatan Dam Basin, Hamadan, Iran. An inventory map of the gully landforms was prepared based on global positioning system routes of the gullies, extensive field surveys, and visual interpretations of satell…
Biogas from municipal solid waste landfills: A simplified mathematical model
2018
AbstractMunicipal solid waste (MSW) landfills now represent one of the most important issues related to the waste management cycle. Knowledge of biogas production is a key aspect for the proper exploitation of this energy source, even in the post-closure period. In the present study, a simple mathematical model was proposed for the simulation of biogas production. The model is based on first-order biodegradation kinetics and also takes into account the temperature variation in time and depth as well as landfill settlement. The model was applied to an operating landfill located in Sicily, in Italy, and the first results obtained are promising. Indeed, the results showed a good fit between me…