Can climate variability information constrain a hydrological model for an ungauged Costa Rican catchment?

Long‐term hydrological data are key to understanding catchment behaviour and for decision making within water management and planning. Given the lack of observed data in many regions worldwide, such as Central America, hydrological models are an alternative for reproducing historical streamflow series. Additional types of information—to locally observed discharge—can be used to constrain model parameter uncertainty for ungauged catchments. Given the strong influence that climatic large‐scale processes exert on streamflow variability in the Central American region, we explored the use of climate variability knowledge as process constraints to constrain the simulated discharge uncertainty for a Costa Rican catchment, assumed to be ungauged. To reduce model uncertainty, we first rejected parameter relationships that disagreed with our understanding of the system. Then, based on this reduced parameter space, we applied the climate‐based process constraints at long‐term, inter‐annual, and intra‐annual timescales. In the first step, we reduced the initial number of parameters by 52%, and then, we further reduced the number of parameters by 3% with the climate constraints. Finally, we compared the climate‐based constraints with a constraint based on global maps of low‐flow statistics. This latter constraint proved to be more restrictive than those based on climate variability (further reducing the number of parameters by 66% compared with 3%). Even so, the climate‐based constraints rejected inconsistent model simulations that were not rejected by the low‐flow statistics constraint. When taken all together, the constraints produced constrained simulation uncertainty bands, and the median simulated discharge followed the observed time series to a similar level as an optimized model. All the constraints were found useful in constraining model uncertainty for an—assumed to be—ungauged basin. This shows that our method is promising for modelling long‐term flow data for ungauged catchments on the Pacific side of Central America and that similar methods can be developed for ungauged basins in other regions where climate variability exerts a strong control on streamflow variability.     

Reliability of U‐shaped steel dampers used in base‐isolated structures subjected to biaxial excitation

A reliable performance of anti‐seismic devices when the upper‐structure is subjected to strong biaxial seismic excitation is of vital importance to ensure the latter doesn't reach critical behavior. U‐shaped steel dampers are hysteretic devices used to dissipate the earthquake‐induced energy of base‐isolated structures. In the framework of performance‐based design, which is gaining more and more recognition, it is of particular importance to assess the performance of base‐isolated structures with such dampers under different intensity levels of bidirectional ground motion. To achieve this goal, an analytical model able to simulate the bidirectional displacement response of an isolation system is adopted. Incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) is used to obtain the relation between the earthquake‐induced bidirectional damage of U‐shaped steel dampers and different intensity levels of the considered records. The performance of the dampers is categorized into 5 levels delimited by 4 limit states for which fragility curves are derived. The results obtained using the bidirectional approach are quantitatively compared to those given by employing an in‐plane model (widely used in current design practices in Japan) with the purpose of assessing whether the latter provides unconservative estimates of the performance of the dampers. The main conclusion is that, for large seismic intensities, the safety margin against fracture of the dampers is significantly overestimated when an in‐plane model is adopted. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Low cyclic fatigue and hysteretic behavior of U‐shaped steel dampers for seismically isolated buildings under dynamic cyclic loadings

Energy dissipation devices are necessary for base‐isolated buildings to control the deformation in the isolation system and to dissipate the earthquake‐induced energy. U‐shaped steel dampers (also known as U‐dampers) dissipate energy through plastic deformation of specially designed U‐shaped steel elements. This type of device can be installed at several locations in the isolation system. U‐dampers have been widely used in Japan for different types of isolated structures, such as hospitals, plants and residential buildings, since the 1995 Kobe Earthquake. Previous research has used static tests to estimate the performance of U‐dampers. However, the ultimate plastic deformation capacities and hysteretic behaviors of full‐scale U‐dampers under dynamic excitations still remain unclear. In addition, it is unclear whether the initial temperature has an effect on the hysteretic behavior and plastic deformation capacity of U‐dampers. In this paper, two series of dynamic loading tests of U‐dampers were conducted to evaluate the issues described earlier. The major findings of the study are (i) the loading speed has little effect on the plastic deformation capacity of U‐dampers; (ii) method to evaluate the ultimate plastic deformation capacities of U‐shaped steel dampers of different sizes is established using a Manson–Coffin relation‐based equation that is based on the peak‐to‐peak horizontal shear angle γ_t, which is defined as the lateral deformation amplitude (peak‐to‐peak amplitude) divided by the height of the dampers; (iii) the loading rate and the initial temperature have a minimal effect on the hysteretic behavior of the U‐dampers; and (iv) a bilinear model is proposed to simulate the force‐deformation relationships of the U‐dampers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analyzing the spatial interactions between rainfall levels and flooding prediction in São Paulo

Rainfall is one of the primary triggers for many geological and hydrological natural disasters. While the geological events are related to mass movements in land collapse due to waterlogging, the hydrological ones are usually assigned to runoff or flooding. Studies in the literature propose predicting mass movement events as a function of accumulated rainfall levels recorded at distinct periods. According to these approaches, a two-dimensional rainfall levels feature space is segmented into the occurrence and non-occurrence decision regions by an empirical critical curve (CC). Although this scheme may easily be extended to other purposes and applications, studies in the literature need to discuss its use for flooding prediction. In light of this motivation, the present study is unfolded in (1) verifying that defining CCs in the rainfall levels feature space is a practical approach for flooding prediction and (2) analyzing how geospatial components interact with rainfall levels and flooding prediction. A database containing the rainfall levels recorded for flooding and non-flooding events in São Paulo city, Brazil, regarding the period 2015–2016, was considered in this study. The results indicate good accuracy for flooding prediction using only partial rain, which can be improved by adding physical characteristics of the flooding locations, demonstrating a direct correlation with spatial interactions, and rainfall levels.