Modelling the Eddy Pattern in the harbour of Zeebrugge

Hydrodynamic

Data collection, analysis methods and equipment for naturalistic studies and requirements for the different application areas. PROLOGUE Deliverable D2.1

Naturalistic driving observation is a relatively new method for studying road safety issues, a method by which one can objectively observe various driver- and accident related behaviour. Typically, participants get their own vehicles equipped with some sort of data logging device that can record various driving behaviours such as speed, braking, lane keeping/variations, acceleration, deceleration etc., as well as one or more video cameras. In this way normal drivers are observed in their normal driving context while driving their own vehicles. Optimally, this allows for observation of the driver, vehicle, road and traffic environments and interaction between these factors. The main objective of PROLOGUE is to demonstrate the usefulness, value, and feasibility of conducting naturalistic driving observation studies in a European context in order to investigate traffic safety of road users, as well as other traffic related issues such as eco-driving and traffic flow/traffic management. The current deliverable aims to develop an inventory of the current and appropriate data collection and data analysis equipment for naturalistic observation studies together with a theoretical analysis of the requirements for different application areas. The deliverable also discusses data quality issues and top level data base management requirements. Among the reviewed literature, maximal use is made of the extensive knowledge and experience that comes from the EU projects FESTA and EuroFOT, the 100car study and the SHRP2 preparatory safety

Negotiating Climate Change in Crisis

"Climate change negotiations have failed the world. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing carbon emissions rise dramatically. This edited volume, comprising leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world, takes a critical look at what has gone wrong and what is to be done to create more decisive action. Composed of twenty-eight essays—a combination of new and republished texts—the anthology is organised around seven main themes: paradigms; what counts?; extraction; dispatches from a climate change frontline country; governance; finance; and action(s). Through this multifaceted approach, the contributors ask pressing questions about how we conceptualise and respond to the climate crisis, providing both ‘big picture’ perspectives and more focussed case studies. This unique and extensive collection will be of great value to environmental and social scientists alike, as well as to the general reader interested in understanding current views on the climate crisis.

Integrating materials supply in strategic mine planning of underground coal mines

In July 2005 the Australian Coal Industry’s Research Program (ACARP) commissioned Gary Gibson to identify constraints that would prevent development production rates from achieving full capacity. A “TOP 5” constraint was “The logistics of supply transport distribution and handling of roof support consumables is an issue at older extensive mines immediately while the achievement of higher development rates will compound this issue at most mines.” Then in 2020, Walker, Harvey, Baafi, Kiridena, and Porter were commissioned by ACARP to investigate Australian best practice and progress made since Gibson’s 2005 report. This report was titled: - “Benchmarking study in underground coal mining logistics.” It found that even though logistics continue to be recognised as a critical constraint across many operations particularly at a tactical / day to day level, no strategic thought had been given to logistics in underground coal mines, rather it was always assumed that logistics could keep up with any future planned design and productivity. This subsequently meant that without estimating the impact of any logistical constraint in a life of mine plan, the risk of overvaluing a mining operation is high. This thesis attempts to rectify this shortfall and has developed a system to strategically identify logistics bottlenecks and the impacts that mine planning parameters might have on these at any point in time throughout a life of mine plan. By identifying any logistics constraints as early as possible, the best opportunity to rectify the problem at the least expense is realised. At the very worst if a logistics constraint was unsolvable then it could be understood, planned for, and reflected in the mine’s ongoing financial valuations. The system developed in this thesis, using a suite of unique algorithms, is designed to “bolt onto” existing mine plans in the XPAC mine scheduling software package, and identify at a strategic level the number of material delivery loads required to maintain planned productivity for a mining operation. Once an event was identified the system then drills down using FlexSim discrete event simulation to a tactical level to confirm the predicted impact and understand if a solution can be transferred back as a long-term solution. Most importantly the system developed in this thesis was designed to communicate to multiple non-technical stakeholders through simple graphical outputs if there is a risk to planned production levels due to a logistics constraint

Mediated Bordering: Eurosur, the Refugee Boat, and the Construction of an External EU Border

The external border of the EU remains under permanent construction. The author engages with two of its primary building sites - the European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur) and the Refugee Boat. She analyzes how the function and quality of the EU's current political border is crafted, shaped, produced and eventually stabilized through these two mediators. Eurosur and the Refugee Boat mediate a level of Europeanization which has hitherto - and would otherwise have - been impossible. While Eurosur mobilizes the limits of border policing in various ways, the Refugee Boat functions as the vacillating European Other to legitimize both control and humanitarian interventions. The study shows the specific, if not constitutive, ambivalences of EU border policies, and explores the emergence of viapolitics

Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation: Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

This Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) has been jointly coordinated by Working Groups I (WGI) and II (WGII) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report focuses on the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events, the impacts of such events, and the strategies to manage the associated risks. The IPCC was jointly established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in particular to assess in a comprehensive, objective, and transparent manner all the relevant scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information to contribute in understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, the potential impacts, and the adaptation and mitigation options. Beginning in 1990, the IPCC has produced a series of Assessment Reports, Special Reports, Technical Papers, methodologies, and other key documents which have since become the standard references for policymakers and scientists.This Special Report, in particular, contributes to frame the challenge of dealing with extreme weather and climate events as an issue in decisionmaking under uncertainty, analyzing response in the context of risk management. The report consists of nine chapters, covering risk management; observed and projected changes in extreme weather and climate events; exposure and vulnerability to as well as losses resulting from such events; adaptation options from the local to the international scale; the role of sustainable development in modulating risks; and insights from specific case studies

Mediated Bordering

The external border of the EU remains under permanent construction. Sabrina Ellebrecht engages with two of its primary building sites – the European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur) and the Refugee Boat. She analyzes how the function and quality of the EU's current political border is crafted, shaped, produced and eventually stabilized through these two mediators. Eurosur and the Refugee Boat mediate a level of Europeanization which has hitherto – and would otherwise have – been impossible. While Eurosur mobilizes the limits of border policing in various ways, the Refugee Boat functions as the vacillating European Other to legitimize both control and humanitarian interventions. The study shows the specific, if not constitutive, ambivalences of EU border policies, and explores the emergence of viapolitics

Theoretical sketches on fluvial and tidal morphodynamics

The dynamic interaction between a sediment-carrying fluid and the erodible Earth's surface is responsible for the formation of a variety of sedimentary patterns. These morphological features manifest across a broad range of spatial and temporal scales, often showing a high degree of regularity. Here, the attention is restricted to some fluvial and tidal sedimentary patterns. While fluvial patterns populate streams flowing downhill from mountain valleys to low-lying plains, tidal patterns form in coastal regions like estuaries, lagoons, and deltas. Recognizing that morphological patterns share the same basic elements, the development of simplified mechanistic models that relies on universal mathematical approaches like dimensional analysis and perturbation methods is pursued. In first place, several morphodynamic problems focusing on multi-thread streams are addressed. In these patterns, the downstream routing of water and sediment is fundamentally directed by channel bifurcations, morphological features where a main thread splits into two smaller anabranches. It is investigated the potential role of tides in controlling the long-term equilibrium state of riverine deltas. To this aim, an idealized tree-like delta network with multiple bifurcations is formulated. It is shown how, even if controlled by few simple interactions, the model behaves as a complex system, where tides can be either a stabilizing or a destabilizing factor for the asymptotic equilibrium state. Then, it is discussed how river bifurcations can be interpreted as a classical phase transition phenomena like the spontaneous magnetization of a ferromagnetic material. This is shown through a fully analytical treatment, which ultimately allows to explicitly compute the flow distribution and bed topography at the bifurcation node. Subsequently, it is explored the role of sediment heterogeneity on stability conditions and equilibrium configurations of fluvial bifurcations, by extending a consolidated modeling framework to deal with mixtures. Ultimately, the spatial structure of looping systems is examined. Indeed, sometimes multi-thread patterns display flow splitting among two smaller anabranches that reconnect further downstream at a channel confluence. Through a systematic field data analysis, it is shown that the average length of the anabranches is not randomly distributed, but follows quasi-universal relations regardless of the specific climatic and geologic context of single rivers. These relations indicate that the length of channel anabranches is slope-invariant and directly proportional to bankfull hydraulic geometry variables (i.e., width and depth) of the main thread. A mechanistic justification of the observed relations is then proposed on the basis of a recent theoretical framework, which is found on the idea of a two-way morphodynamic interaction occurring between bifurcation and confluence nodes. The central part of the thesis analyzes the formation of both free and forced alternate bars, namely meso-scale bedforms characterized by a repetitive sequence of scour pools and sediment deposits. While free bars arise spontaneously due to an instability of the fluid-bed interface, forced bars are triggered by external factors affecting the boundary conditions of the system. Initially, the study of free bars development is restricted to coastal settings as tidal channels, which are distinguished by the absence of a fluvial source of freshwater and sediment, and estuaries, namely rivers debouching into open sea. It is shown how the study of tidal bars formation in these environments can be framed within the same theoretical framework. Then, it is analyzed the influence of sediment sorting on fluvial forced bars. The analysis enables to underline the close relationship between forced bars formation and channel bifurcations in sediment mixtures. The last part of the thesis deals with meandering streams flowing through permafrost floodplains. When the river banks are composed by perennially frozen material, a problem then arises of defining proper reference hydraulic and thermodynamic conditions that can represent the long-term migration of the stream. Through a simplified statistical approach, an erodibility coefficient, which retains the seasonal variability of flow and thermal regime, and physically embodying the cumulative effect of thermo-mechanical processes as ablation, is defined. The analytical model is tested on some Alaskan rivers. A preliminary qualitative analysis suggests that theoretical predictions are in good agreement with field data

USCID water management conference

Presented at Upgrading technology and infrastructure in a finance-challenged economy: a USCID water management conference held on March 23-26, 2010 in Sacramento, California.Includes bibliographical references.The Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL®) is used worldwide to estimate actual evpotranspiration (ET) at different spatial scales (individual fields to entire basins) and temporal scales (water year, growing season, individual day, etc.). SEBAL has been successfully applied on various surface types including crops, riparian, natural vegetation, playas, and wetlands. Comparisons of SEBAL actual ET results with reliable ground based measurements (Eddy covariance, Bowen ratio, lysimeter, water balance and scintillometer) have shown close agreement with differences ranging from 1 to 5% when compared to reliable ground-based estimates over a growing season when the model is applied by experienced operators. This paper describes near real-time application of SEBAL® (Version 2009) to produce weekly maps of actual ET, crop coefficients, and biomass production for California's Central Valley. Each week, the maps for the prior week are produced and posted to the Internet. The maps are developed using MODIS multispectral satellite imagery with an end resolution of 250 meters. This paper discusses potential application of near real time actual ET maps by water managers, water supply agencies and irrigators