For many researchers, government agencies, and emergency responders, access to the geospatial data of US electric power infrastructure is invaluable for analysis, planning, and disaster recovery. Historically, however, access to high quality geospatial energy data has been limited to few agencies because of commercial licenses restrictions, and those resources which are widely accessible have been of poor quality, particularly with respect to reliability. Recent efforts to develop a highly reliable and publicly accessible alternative to the existing datasets were met with numerous challenges – not the least of which was filling the gaps in power transmission line voltage ratings. To address the line voltage rating problem, we developed and tested a basic methodology that fuses knowledge and techniques from power systems, geography, and machine learning domains. Specifically, we identified predictors of nominal voltage that could be extracted from aerial imagery and developed a tree-based classifier to classify nominal line voltage ratings. Overall, we found that line support height, support span, and conductor spacing are the best predictors of voltage ratings, and that the classifier built with these predictors had a reliable predictive accuracy (that is, within one voltage class for four out of the five classes sampled). We applied our approach to a study area in Minnesota. 相似文献
Natural Hazards - Flooding is the most costly type of natural disaster, as well as the most frequent. To provide risk-based flood insurance, providers must be able to accurately determine an... 相似文献
On 22 March 2014, a massive, catastrophic landslide occurred near Oso, Washington, USA, sweeping more than 1 km across the adjacent valley flats and killing 43 people. For the following 5 weeks, hundreds of workers engaged in an exhaustive search, rescue, and recovery effort directly in the landslide runout path. These workers could not avoid the risks posed by additional large-scale slope collapses. In an effort to ensure worker safety, multiple agencies cooperated to swiftly deploy a monitoring and alerting system consisting of sensors, automated data processing and web-based display, along with defined communication protocols and clear calls to action for emergency management and search personnel. Guided by the principle that an accelerating landslide poses a greater threat than a steadily moving or stationary mass, the system was designed to detect ground motion and vibration using complementary monitoring techniques. Near real-time information was provided by continuous GPS, seismometers/geophones, and extensometers. This information was augmented by repeat-assessment techniques such as terrestrial and aerial laser scanning and time-lapse photography. Fortunately, no major additional landsliding occurred. However, we did detect small headscarp failures as well as slow movement of the remaining landslide mass with the monitoring system. This was an exceptional response situation and the lessons learned are applicable to other landslide disaster crises. They underscore the need for cogent landslide expertise and ready-to-deploy monitoring equipment, the value of using redundant monitoring techniques with distinct goals, the benefit of clearly defined communication protocols, and the importance of continued research into forecasting landslide behavior to allow timely warning.
Within the Ararat Valley (Armenia), a continuously growing water demand (for irrigation and fish farming) and a simultaneous decline in groundwater recharge (due to climate change) result in increasing stress on the local groundwater resources. This detrimental development is reflected by groundwater-level drops and an associated reduction of the area with artesian conditions in the valley centre. This situation calls for increasing efforts aimed at more sustainable water resources management. The aim of this baseline study was the collection of data that allows for study on the origin and age distribution of the Ararat Valley groundwater based on environmental tracers, namely stable (δ2H, δ18O) and radioactive (35S, 3H) isotopes, as well as physical-chemical indicators. The results show that the Ararat Valley receives modern recharge, despite its (semi-)arid climate. While subannual groundwater residence times could be disproved (35S), the detected 3H pattern suggests groundwater ages of several decades, with the oldest waters being recharged around 60 years ago. The differing groundwater ages are reflected by varying scatter of stable isotope and hydrochemical signatures. The presence of young groundwater (i.e., younger that the 1970s), some containing nitrate, indicates groundwater vulnerability and underscores the importance of increased efforts to achieve sustainable management of this natural resource. Since stable isotope signatures indicate the recharge areas to be located in the mountains surrounding the valley, these efforts must not be limited to the central part of the valley where most of the abstraction wells are located.
Climatic Change - This study examines the climatic drivers of ice-off dates for lakes and rivers across the Northern Hemisphere. Most lakes and rivers have trended toward earlier ice-off dates over... 相似文献
NASA's Genesis mission revealed that the Sun is enriched in 16O compared to the Earth and Mars (the Sun's Δ17O, defined as δ17O–0.52×δ18O, is –28.4 ± 3.6‰; McKeegan et al. 2011). Materials as 16O‐rich as the Sun are extremely rare in the meteorite record. Here, we describe a Ca‐Al‐rich inclusion (CAI) from a CM chondrite that is as 16O‐enriched as the Sun (Δ17O = –29.1 ± 0.7‰). This CAI also has large nucleosynthetic anomalies in 48Ca and 50Ti (δ‐values are –8.1 ± 3.3 and –11.7 ± 2.4‰, respectively) and shows no clear evidence for incorporation of live 26Al; (26Al/27Al)0 = (0.03 ± 0.11) × 10–5. Due to their anomalous isotopic characteristics, the rare CAIs consistent with the Genesis value could be among the first materials that formed in the solar system. In contrast to the CAI studied here, the majority of CAIs formed in or interacted with a reservoir characterized by a Δ17O value near –23.5‰. Combined with 26Al‐26Mg systematics, the oxygen isotopic compositions of FUN (fractionation and unidentified nuclear effects), UN, and normal CAIs suggest that nebular conditions were favorable for solids to inherit this value for an extended period of time. Many later‐formed materials, such as chondrules, planetesimals, and terrestrial planets, formed in reservoirs with Δ17O near 0‰. The distribution could be easier to explain if the common CAI value of –23.5‰, which is consistent with the Genesis value within 3σ, represented the average composition of the protoplanetary disk. 相似文献