HAZMAP: A REMOTE DIGITAL MEASUREMENT SYSTEM FOR WORK IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS

In a continuing drive to reduce the radiation exposure of nuclear workers, many routine aspects of nuclear plant maintenance and refurbishment are increasingly undertaken by robotic or remote handling tools. Accurate “as built” documentation of plant records is vital to the successful planning and execution of such operations since an unexpected obstruction or undocumented site modification may result in a costly disruption or even failure of the intervention. In recognition of the importance of such documentation, a recent European Community ? ? Teleman-Robotics and remote sensing operations in hazardous nuclear environments
sponsored project has been directed towards the development of techniques for cost effective survey and modelling of such plant. This paper will detail the rationale behind the design of such a system and will describe typical results from a number of pilot projects.     

Synthetic light curves of two eclipsing binary systems,U Sge and AW UMa

Photometric curve fits have been investigated by means of numerical quadratures to develop theoretical light curves appropriate to stars built up in accordance with the Roche model. The method has been applied previously to β Per (Al-Naimiy and Budding, 1977) on the basis of available observations in red and infrared, while presently applied to two systems with contact components.

1. U Sge, spherical primary totally eclipsed by a contact component secondary. Improved photometric elements of the system have been found, and compared with those obtained by Kopal's method in the frequency domain. The outcome of the curve fitting corresponds well with the results of an analysis in the frequency domain.
2. AW UMa, exhibiting the shallowest minima known for totally eclipsing W UMa systems. The physical and geometrical elements of the system have been found, and the contact nature of the two components confirmed.

     

Time series forecasting of river flow using an integrated approach of wavelet multi-resolution analysis and evolutionary data-driven models. A case study: Sebaou River (Algeria)

The complexity of hydrological processes and lack of data for modeling require the use of specific tools for non-linear natural phenomenon. In this paper, an effort has been made to develop a conjunction model – wavelet transformation, data-driven models, and genetic algorithm (GA) – for forecasting the daily flow of a river in northern Algeria using the time series of runoff. This catchment has a semi-arid climate and strong variability in runoff. The original time series was decomposed into multi-frequency time series by wavelet transform algorithm and used as inputs to artificial neural networks (ANN) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) models. Several factors must be optimized to determine the best model structures. Wavelet-based data-driven models using a GA are designed to optimize model structure. The performances of wavelet-based data-driven models (i.e. WANFIS and WANN) were superior to those of conventional models. WANFIS (RMSE = 12.15 m³/s, EC = 87.32%, R = .934) and WANN (RMSE = 15.73 m³/s, EC = 78.83%, R = .888) models improved the performances of ANFIS (RMSE = 23.13 m³/s, EC = 54.11%, R = .748) and ANN (RMSE = 22.43 m³/s, EC = 56.90%, R = .755) during the test period.     

Soil organic carbon mapping using remote sensing techniques and multivariate regression model

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an important aspect of soil quality and plays an imperative role in soil productivity in the agriculture ecosystems. The present study was applied to estimate the SOC stock using space-borne satellite data (Landsat 4–5 Thematic Mapper [TM]) and ground verification in the Medinipur Block, Paschim Medinipur District and West Bengal in India. In total, 50 soil samples were collected randomly from the region according to field surveys using a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) unit to estimate the surface SOC concentrations in the laboratory. Bare soil index (BSI) and normalized difference vegetation ndex (NDVI) were explored from TM data. The satellite data-derived indices were used to estimate spatial distribution of SOC using multivariate regression model. The regression analysis was performed to determine the relationship between SOC and spectral indices (NDVI and BSI) and compared the observed SOC (field measure) to predict SOC (estimated from satellite images). Goodness fit test was performed to determine the significance of the relationship between observed and predicted SOC at p ≤ 0.05 level. The results of regression analysis between observed SOC and NDVI values showed significant relationship (R² = 0.54; p < 0.0075). A significant statistical relationship (r = ?0.72) was also observed between SOC and BSI. Finally, our model showed nearly 71% of the variance of SOC distribution could be explained by SOC and NDVI values. The information from this study has advanced our understanding of the ongoing ecological development that affects SOC dissemination and might be valuable for effective soil management.     

Correction to: Geochemical Prospectivity Mapping Through a Feature Extraction–Selection Classification Scheme

Natural Resources Research - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake in the second part of Table&nbsp;3. The data in last four rows of Table&nbsp;3, i.e.,...     

Declustering of Iran earthquake catalog (1983–2017) using the epidemic-type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model

The main goal of this article is to decluster Iranian plateau seismic catalog by the epidemic-type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model and compare the results with some older methods. For this purpose, Iranian plateau bounded in 24°–42°N and 43°–66°E is subdivided into three major tectonic zones: (1) North of Iran (2) Zagros (3) East of Iran. The extracted earthquake catalog had a total of 6034 earthquakes (Mw?>?4) in the time span 1983–2017. The ETAS model is an accepted stochastic approach for seismic evaluation and declustering earthquake catalogs. However, this model has not yet been used to decluster the seismic catalog of Iran. Until now, traditional methods like the Gardner and Knopoff space–time window method and the Reasenberg link-based method have been used in most studies for declustering Iran earthquake catalog. Finally, the results of declustering by the ETAS model are compared with result of Gardner and Knopoff (Bull Seismol Soc Am 64(5):1363–1367, 1974), Uhrhammer (Earthq Notes 57(1):21, 1986), Gruenthal (pers. comm.) and Reasenberg (Geophys Res 90:5479–5495, 1985) declustering methods. The overall conclusion is difficult, but the results confirm the high ability of the ETAS model for declustering Iranian earthquake catalog. Use of the ETAS model is still in its early steps in Iranian seismological researches, and more parametric studies are needed.     

Revisiting hydrological drought propagation and recovery considering water quantity and quality

Climate extremes, in particular droughts, are significant driving forces towards riverine ecosystem disturbance. Drought impacts on stream ecosystems include losses that can be either direct (e.g., destruction of habitat for aquatic species) or indirect (e.g., deterioration of water quality, soil quality, and increased chance of wildfires). This paper combines hydrologic drought and water quality changes during droughts and represents a multistage framework to detect and characterize hydrological droughts while considering water quality parameters. This method is applied to 52 streamflow stations in the state of California, USA, over the study period of 1950–2010. The framework is assessed and validated based on two drought events declared by the state in 2002 and 2008. Results show that there are two opposite drought propagation patterns in northern and southern California. In general, northern California indicates more frequent droughts with shorter time to recover. Chronology of drought shows that stations located in southern California have not followed a specific pattern but they experienced longer drought episodes with prolonged drought recovery. When considering water quality, results show that droughts either deteriorate or enhance water systems, depending on the parameter of interest. Undesirable changes (e.g., increased temperature and decreased dissolved oxygen) are observed during droughts. In contrast, decreased turbidity is detected in rivers during drought episodes, which is desirable in water systems. Nevertheless, water quality deteriorates during drought recovery, even after drought termination. Depending on climatic and streamflow characteristics of the watersheds, it was found that it would take nearly 2 months on average for water quality to recover after drought termination.     

Time-dependent seismic hazard analysis for the Greater Tehran and surrounding areas

This study presents a time-dependent approach for seismic hazard in Tehran and surrounding areas. Hazard is evaluated by combining background seismic activity, and larger earthquakes may emanate from fault segments. Using available historical and paleoseismological data or empirical relation, the recurrence time and maximum magnitude of characteristic earthquakes for the major faults have been explored. The Brownian passage time (BPT) distribution has been used to calculate equivalent fictitious seismicity rate for major faults in the region. To include ground motion uncertainty, a logic tree and five ground motion prediction equations have been selected based on their applicability in the region. Finally, hazard maps have been presented.     

Geochemical and Isotopic Assessment of Groundwater Quality in the Alluvial Aquifer of the Eastern Mitidja Plain

Water Resources - The Mitidja-plain is very important in size and role, it contains two important aquiferous tanks exploited to serve Algiers and the surrounding agglomerations, these resources...