Heavy metal pollution and human health risk assessment for exposure to surface soil of mining area: a comprehensive study

Climate change projections indicate an increase in intense rainfall events with consequent river flooding, which could lead to devastating natural disaster     

Evaluation of two satellite-based products against ground-based observation for drought analysis in the southern part of Iran

Natural Hazards - Water stress or more specifically drought assessment plays a key role in water management, especially in extreme climate conditions. Basically, globally gridded satellite-based...     

Comparison and Hydrochemical Characterization of Groundwater Resources in the Arabian Peninsula: A Case Study of Al-Baha and Al-Qassim in Saudi Arabia

Water Resources - The objective of this study was to compare and assess the quality and study the hydrochemistry of groundwater in the Al-Baha and Al-Qassim areas, representing the Arabian Shield...     

Nonlinear dynamic tests of a reinforced concrete frame building at different damage levels

This paper discusses the dynamic tests of a two-story infilled reinforced concrete (RC) frame building using an eccentric-mass shaker. The building, located in El Centro, CA, was substantially damaged prior to the tests due to the seismic activity in the area. During the testing sequence, five infill walls were removed to introduce additional damage states and to investigate the changes in the dynamic properties and the nonlinear response of the building to the induced excitations. The accelerations and displacements of the structure under the forced and ambient vibrations were recorded through an array of sensors, while lidar scans were obtained to document the damage. The test data provide insight into the nonlinear response of an actual building and the change of its resonant frequencies and operational shapes due to varying damage levels and changes of the excitation amplitude, frequency, and orientation.     

Location of Areas Prone to Flood Spreading Using GIS (Ilam Province,Iran)

Water Resources - The present study aimed to locate the areas prone to flood spreading in order to manage surface water resources. Therefore, the information layers of slope, land capability,...     

Short-term water quality variable prediction using a hybrid CNN–LSTM deep learning model

Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment - Water quality monitoring is an important component of water resources management. In order to predict two water quality variables, namely...     

CHDS: conflict handling in direct sampling for stochastic simulation of spatial variables

Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment - In recent years, multiple-point geostatistical (MPS) approaches have gained significant popularity for modeling subsurface heterogeneity in...     

A GIS-based comparative study of hybrid fuzzy-gene expression programming and hybrid fuzzy-artificial neural network for land subsidence susceptibility modeling

Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment - Land subsidence is a complicated hazard that artificial intelligence models can model it without approximation and simplification. In this...     

Optimal Location of Wells for Storage and Recovery of Surplus Desalinated Water in Coastal Aquifers

Storage of water in aquifers using injection wells is an efficient way for utilizing excess desalinated water in arid regions. In this investigation we estimate the benefits of optimally recharging seasonal surplus desalinated water into a strategic coastal aquifer already benefitting from natural recharge of flash-floods water by a recharge dam. Since, usually the buyers of desalinated water commit to purchase surplus desalinated water under take-or-pay contracts, any attempt in utilizing the paid water is beneficial. Coastal cities are observing an increased urbanization leaving limited space for aquifer recharge infrastructure. In order to determine the optimal location of wells and maximize the use of surplus desalinated water available in winter period, a decision tool combining a numerical groundwater flow simulation model (MODFLOW) with an optimization model is developed. The results of this study show that increasing the number of wells from the existing 45 wells to 173 would allow storing 31.4 million cubic meter per year of excess desalinated water into the aquifer that can be used during later during summer months. The net benefit would reach US$55 million/year while the cost of drilling the new wells is US$5.11 million.     

Socio-hydrological framework for investigating farmers’ activities affecting the shrinkage of Urmia Lake; hybrid data mining and agent-based modelling

ABSTRACT

Developing a general framework to capture the complexities associated with the non-linear and adaptive nature of farmers facing water resources scarcity is a challenging problem. This paper integrates agent-based modelling (ABM) and a data mining method to develop a hybrid socio-hydrological framework to provide future insights for policy-makers. The data associated with the farmers’ main characteristics were collected through field surveys and interviews. Afterwards, the association rule was employed to discover the main patterns representing the farmers’ agricultural decisions. The discovered patterns were then used as the behavioural rules in ABM to simulate the agricultural activities. The proposed framework has been was applied to explore the interactions between agricultural activities and the main river feeding the Urmia-Lake, Iran. The outcomes indicate that farmers’ acquisitive traits and belongings have significant impacts on their socio-hydrological interactions. The reported values of the efficiency criteria may support the satisfactory performance of the proposed framework.