The characteristics of glacial tills from Northern England derived from a relational database

Geotechnical investigations have been carried out for many years in order to identify the depth, extent and the properties of the glacial deposits of Northern England. This valuable source of data exists in various forms because of the differences in the design of the investigations, the codes of practice relevant at the time of investigations, and contractors practice. An electronic store of these data would be a valuable asset not only to future development but to help in scientific studies of glacial till. This paper presents an overview of NETDATA (Northern England Till DATA), a relational database which is designed to store that data in a consistent format, allowing flexibility for further use. A preliminary analysis of the data has resulted in a characteristic data set for the tills.     

An Integrated Water Resources Management Considering Agricultural Demands and the Assessment of Different Scenarios in Hirmand Catchment,Iran

Water Resources - The lack of water resources as a critical substance and the increase of water demands and also the complexity of water resources management issues are made the integrated water...     

The Role of Ex-Post and Ex-Ante Integrated Assessment Frameworks in Conceptualization of the Modeling Process in the Context of Integrated Water Resources Management

Water Resources - Reconnaissance and conceptualization of the system are the first steps to perform an integrated assessment study and step towards sustainability. This paper focuses on the...     

Seismic evaluation of 1940s asymmetric wood‐frame building using conventional measurements and high‐definition laser scanning

This study presents results from shake table experiments of a wood‐frame building conducted at the University of California, Berkeley. A 13.5‐ft × 19.5‐ft two‐story wood‐frame building representing San Francisco 1940s design of a residential building with a garage space on the first story (house‐over‐garage) was tested. The test building was subjected to scaled ground motion based on Los Gatos record from Loma Prieta 1989 earthquake. The strong motion time history was scaled to match design spectra of a site in Richmond district of San Francisco. The test results demonstrated the seismic vulnerability of the test building due to soft story mechanism and significant twisting when shaken in two horizontal directions. In addition to conventional instrumentation for measuring acceleration and position of selected points of the test building, high‐definition laser scanning technology was employed to assess global and local anomalies of the building after the shake table tests. The analysis conducted in this study showed very good correlation between conventional data recorded from position transducers and the laser scans. These laser scans expanded limits of conventional data at discrete points and allowed analyzing the whole building after shaking. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tsunami hazard in the shorelines of Khark island (Persian Gulf), Iran

Iran is located in one of the seismically active regions of the world. Due to the high probability of earthquakes throughout the country and the potential for tsunami inundation along the coasts and offshore, comprehensive studies on the interaction of these natural phenomena are necessary. In this study, the most conservative scenarios are determined for possible earthquakes within the Khark zone (Persian Gulf) based on experimental relations between the fault length, magnitude and displacement, which are parameters for determining tsunamigenic sources. Subsequently, the maximum height of tsunami waves are calculated based on the specifications of the seismic source and its distance from the shore as well as the coastal slope. A zoning map of tsunami hazard is finally presented.     

Water Resources Management Through Flood Spreading Project Suitability Mapping Using Frequency Ratio,k-nearest Neighbours,and Random Forest Algorithms

Natural Resources Research - Lack of water resources is a common issue in many countries, especially in the Middle East. Flood spreading project (FSP) is an artificial recharge technique, which is...     

Tidal and surge modelling using differential quadrature: A case study in the Bristol Channel

The Incremental Differential Quadrature Method (IDQM) was applied to a tidal and surge model of the Bristol Channel, UK. The method is considered as an alternative new numerical technique in the field of marine hydraulics and its performance was examined through this case study. For validation of the simulated results, tide gauge data along the Bristol Channel was used. Another well known 1D model (MIKE11) and a quasi-3D model (POLCOMS) provided more insight into the flow pattern of the estuary and additional validation data. Similar to MIKE11, IDQM is unconditionally stable and so time steps of around 45 min achieved good results for the Bristol Channel, whereas for methods which are restricted to the CFL criterion (e.g. explicit finite differencing schemes), the time step is limited to around 3 min. Since there is no stability constraint in IDQM, the time step must be selected with reference to accuracy rather than stability. The usefulness of IDQM was also demonstrated by using a small number of grid points (11 along the 110 km length of the Bristol Channel) to produce accurate results. Based on the results of this case study, it is concluded that IDQM can be successfully implemented for 1D modelling of tidal elevations and surges in non-prismatic irregular channels.     

A GIS-based time-dependent seismic source modeling of Northern Iran

The first step in any seismic hazard study is the definition of seismogenic sources and the estimation of magnitude-frequency relationships for each source. There is as yet no standard methodology for source modeling and many researchers have worked on this topic. This study is an effort to define linear and area seismic sources for Northern Iran. The linear or fault sources are developed based on tectonic features and characteristic earthquakes while the area sources are developed based on spatial distribution of small to moderate earthquakes. Time-dependent recurrence relationships are developed for fault sources using renewal approach while time-independent frequency-magnitude relationships are proposed for area sources based on Poisson process. GIS functionalities are used in this study to introduce and incorporate spatial-temporal and geostatistical indices in delineating area seismic sources. The proposed methodology is used to model seismic sources for an area of about 500 by 400 square kilometers around Tehran. Previous researches and reports are studied to compile an earthquake/fault catalog that is as complete as possible. All events are transformed to uniform magnitude scale; duplicate events and dependent shocks are removed. Completeness and time distribution of the compiled catalog is taken into account. The proposed area and linear seismic sources in conjunction with defined recurrence relationships can be used to develop time-dependent probabilistic seismic hazard analysis of Northern Iran.     

Comparative study of multilayer perceptron-stochastic gradient descent and gradient boosted trees for predicting daily suspended sediment load: The case study of the Mississippi River,U.S.

Monitoring sediment transport is essential for managing and maintaining rivers.Estimation of the sediment load in rivers is fundamental for the study of sediment movement,erosion,and flood control.In the current study,three machine learning models-multi-layer perceptron(MLP),multi-layer perceptron-stochastic gradient descent(MLP-SGD),and gradient boosted tree(GBT)-were utilized to estimate the suspended sediment load(SSL)at the St.Louis(SL)and Chester(CH)stations on the Mississippi River,U.S.Four evaluation criteria including the Correlation Coefficient(CC),Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency(NSE),Scatter Index(SI),and Willmott’s Index(WI)were utilized to evaluate the performance of the used models.A sensitivity analysis of the models to the input variables revealed that the current day discharge variable had the most effect on the SSL at both stations,but in the absence of current-day discharge data(Qt),a combination of input parameters including SSL_t-3,SSL_t-2,SSL_t-1,Q_t-3,Q_t-2,Q_t-1 can be used to estimate the SSL.The comparative outcomes indicated the high accuracy of MLP-SGD-5 model with a CC of 0.983,SI of 0.254,WI of 0.991,and NSE of 0.967 at station CH and the MLP-SGD-6 model with a CC of 0.933,SI of 0.576,WI of 0.961,and NSE of 0.867,respectively,at station SL.The results of MLP models were improved by SGD optimization.Therefore,the MLP-SGD method is recommended as the most accurate model for SSL estimation.