Seismic stratigraphy of the Mianwali and Bannu depressions,north-western Indus foreland basin

International Journal of Earth Sciences - Regional seismic reflection profiles, deep exploratory wells, and outcrop data have been used to study the structure and stratigraphic architecture of the...     

The measurement of soil gases and shallow temperature for determination of active faults in a geothermal area: a case study from Ömer–Gecek,Afyonkarahisar (West Anatolia)

Afyonkarahisar is a very important geothermal province of western Anatolia and has low and medium enthalpy geothermal areas. This study has been carried out for the preparation of distribution maps of soil gases (radon and carbon dioxide) and shallow soil temperature and the exploration of permeable tectonic regions associated with geothermal systems and reveal the origins of radon and carbon dioxide gases. The western district of the study area is characterized by the high radon concentration (168.30 kBq/m³), carbon dioxide ratio (0.30%), and soil temperature (21.0 °C) values. Fethibey and Demirçevre faults, which allow the circulation of geothermal fluids, have been detected in the distribution maps of radon, carbon dioxide, and shallow depth temperature and the directions of the curves in these maps correspond to the strikes of Demirçevre faults. The effect of the fault plays an important role in the change of carbon dioxide concentration along the W-E directional geological section prepared to determine the change of soil gas and shallow depth temperature values depending on lithological differences, fault existence, and geothermal reservoir depth. On the other hand, it was determined that Rn²²² concentration and soil temperature changed as a function of geothermal reservoir depth or lithological difference. Tuffs in Köprülü volcano-sedimentary units are the main source of radon due to their higher uranium contents. Besides, the carbon dioxide in Ömer–Gecek soils has geothermal origin because of the highest carbon dioxide content (99.3%) in non-condense gas. The similarities in patterns of soil temperature, radon, and carbon dioxide indicate that the variation in soil temperatures is related to radon and carbon dioxide emissions. It is concluded that soil gas and temperature measurements can be used to determine the active faults in the initial stage of geothermal exploration successfully.     

2-D delineation of individual citrus trees from UAV-based dense photogrammetric surface models

One of the challenges of remote sensing and computer vision lies in the three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction of individual trees by using automated methods through very high-resolution (VHR) data sets. However, a successful and complete 3-D reconstruction relies on precise delineation of the trees in two dimensions. In this paper, we present an original approach to detect and delineate citrus trees using unmanned aerial vehicles based on photogrammetric digital surface models (DSMs). The symmetry of the citrus trees in a DSM is handled by an orientation-based radial symmetry transform which is computed in a unique way. Next, we propose an efficient strategy to accurately build influence regions of each tree, and then we delineate individual citrus trees through active contours by taking into account the influence region of each canopy. We also present two efficient strategies to filter out erroneously detected canopy regions without having any height thresholds. Experiments are carried out on eight test DSMs composed of different types of citrus orchards with varying densities and canopy sizes. Extensive comparisons to the state-of-the-art approaches reveal that our proposed approach provides superior detection and delineation performances through supporting a nice balance between precision and recall measures.     

Effect of Drain Pipes on Uplift Force and Exit Hydraulic Gradient and the Design of Gravity Dams Using the Finite Element Method

Geotechnical and Geological Engineering - The effects of diameter and location of drain pipes on the uplift force and exit hydraulic gradient for a gravity dam are investigated. A numerical model...     

An effective stress-based DSC model for predicting the coefficient of lateral soil pressure in unsaturated soils

Acta Geotechnica - In this study, an analytical model is developed to establish a framework for predicting the coefficient of lateral soil pressure in unsaturated soils. To this end, the disturbed...     

3D Static Modeling and Petrographic Aspects of the Albian/Cenomanian Reservoir,Komombo Basin,Upper Egypt

Natural Resources Research - The Albian/Cenomanian reservoir is one of the two main reservoirs composing the petroleum system in the Komombo Basin. However, these reservoirs have not previously...     

Using uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for finding the best rainfall-runoff model in mountainous watersheds(Case study: the Navrood watershed in Iran)

In watersheds that have not sufficient meteorological and hydrometric data for simulating rainfall-runoff events, using geomorphologic and geomorphoclimatic characteristics of watershed is a conventional method for the simulation. A number of rainfall-runoff models utilize these characteristics such as Nash-IUH, Clark-IUH, Geomorphologic Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph(GIUH), Geomorphoclimatic Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph(GcIUH), GIUH-based Nash(GIUH-Nash) and GcIUH-based Clark(GcIUH-Clark). But all these models are not appropriate for mountainous watersheds. Therefore, the objective of this study is to select the best of them for the simulation. The procedure of this study is: a) selecting appropriate rainfall-runoff events for calibration and validation of six hybrid models, b) distinguishing the best model based on different performance criteria(Percentage Error in Volume(PEV); Percentage Error in Peak(PEP); Percentage Error in Time to Peak(PETP); Root Mean Square Error(RMSE) and Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient(ENS)), c) Sensitivity analysis for determination of the most effective parameter at each model, d) Uncertainty determination of different parameters in each model and confirmation of the obtained results by application of the performance criteria. For application of this procedure, the Navrood watershed in the north of Iran as a mountainous watershed has been considered. The results showed that the ClarkIUH and GcIUH-Clark are suitable models for simulation of flood hydrographs, while other models cannot simulate flood hydrographs appropriately. The sensitivity analysis shows that the most sensitive parameters are the infiltration constant rate and time of concentration in the Clark-IUH model. Also, the most sensitive parameters include the infiltration constant rate and storage coefficient in the GcIUHClark model. The Clark-IUH and GcIUH-Clark models are more sensitive to their parameters. The Latin Hypercube Sampling(LHS) on Monte Carlo(MC) simulation method was used for evaluation of uncertainty of data in rainfall-runoff models. In this method 500 sets of data values are produced and then the peak discharge of flood hydrographs for each produced data set is simulated with rainfall-runoff models. The uncertainty of data changes the value of simulated peak discharge of flood hydrograph. The uncertainty analysis shows that the observed peak discharges of different rainfall-runoff events are within the range of values of simulated by the six hybrid rainfall-runoff models and IUH that inputs of these models were the produced data sets. The range of the produced peak discharge of flood hydrographs by the Clark-IUH and GcIUH-Clark models is wider than those of other models.     

Estimation of crowd density from UAVs images based on corner detection procedures and clustering analysis

With rapid developments in platforms and sensors technology in terms of digital cameras and video recordings, crowd monitoring has taken a considerable attentions in many disciplines such as psychology, sociology, engineering, and computer vision. This is due to the fact that, monitoring of the crowd is necessary to enhance safety and controllable movements to minimize the risk particularly in highly crowded incidents (e.g. sports). One of the platforms that have been extensively employed in crowd monitoring is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), because UAVs have the capability to acquiring fast, low costs, high-resolution and real-time images over crowd areas. In addition, geo-referenced images can also be provided through integration of on-board positioning sensors (e.g. GPS/IMU) with vision sensors (digital cameras and laser scanner). In this paper, a new testing procedure based on feature from accelerated segment test (FAST) algorithms is introduced to detect the crowd features from UAV images taken from different camera orientations and positions. The proposed test started with converting a circle of 16 pixels surrounding the center pixel into a vector and sorting it in ascending/descending order. A single pixel which takes the ranking number 9 (for FAST-9) or 12 (for FAST-12) was then compared with the center pixel. Accuracy assessment in terms of completeness and correctness was used to assess the performance of the new testing procedure before and after filtering the crowd features. The results show that the proposed algorithms are able to extract crowd features from different UAV images. Overall, the values of Completeness range from 55 to 70 % whereas the range of correctness values was 91 to 94 %.