Global warming increases the frequency of river floods in Europe

EURO-CORDEX, a new generation of downscaled climate projections, has become available for climate change impact studies in Europe. New opportunities arise in the investigation of potential effects of a warmer world on meteorological and hydrological extremes at regional scales. In this work, an ensemble of EURO-CORDEX RCP 8.5 scenarios is used to drive a distributed hydrological model and assess the projected changes in flood hazard in Europe through the current century. Changes in magnitude and frequency of extreme streamflow events are investigated by statistical distribution fitting and peak over threshold analysis. A consistent method is proposed to evaluate the agreement of ensemble projections. Results indicate that the change in frequency of discharge extremes is likely to have a larger impact on the overall flood hazard as compared to the change in their magnitude. On average in Europe, flood peaks with return period above 100 years are projected to double in frequency within a time range of three decades.JRC.H.7-Climate Risk Managemen

The Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning Project

Berlanga, A. J., Van Rosmalen, P., Trausan-Matu, S., Monachesi, P., & Burek, G. (2009). The Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning Project. In I. Aedo., N. Chen, Kinshuk, D. Sampson & L. Zaitseva (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT2009) (pp. 624-625). July, 14-18, 2009, Riga, Latvia: IEEE.This poster presents an ongoing European project: Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning (LTfLL). The aim of the project is to create a next-generation of support and advice services to enhance individual and collaborative building of competences and knowledge creation in educational and organizational settings. The project makes extensive use of language technologies and cognitive models in the services to face a number of learning specific problems

Development of the Community Water Model (CWatM v1.04) – a high-resolution hydrological model for global and regional assessment of integrated water resources management

We develop a new large-scale hydrological and water resources model, the Community Water Model (CWatM), which can simulate hydrology both globally and regionally at different resolutions from 30 arcmin to 30 arcsec at daily time steps. CWatM is open source in the Python programming environment and has a modular structure. It uses global, freely available data in the netCDF4 file format for reading, storage, and production of data in a compact way. CWatM includes general surface and groundwater hydrological processes but also takes into account human activities, such as water use and reservoir regulation, by calculating water demands, water use, and return flows. Reservoirs and lakes are included in the model scheme. CWatM is used in the framework of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP), which compares global model outputs. The flexible model structure allows for dynamic interaction with hydro-economic and water quality models for the assessment and evaluation of water management options. Furthermore, the novelty of CWatM is its combination of state-of-the-art hydrological modeling, modular programming, an online user manual and automatic source code documentation, global and regional assessments at different spatial resolutions, and a potential community to add to, change, and expand the open-source project. CWatM also strives to build a community learning environment which is able to freely use an open-source hydrological model and flexible coupling possibilities to other sectoral models, such as energy and agriculture

GloFAS – global ensemble streamflow forecasting and flood early warning

Anticipation and preparedness for large-scale flood events have a key role in mitigating their impact and optimizing the strategic planning of water resources. Although several developed countries have well-established systems for river monitoring and flood early warning, figures of population affected every year by floods in developing countries are unsettling. This paper presents the Global Flood Awareness System, which has been set up to provide an overview on upcoming floods in large world river basins. The Global Flood Awareness System is based on distributed hydrological simulation of numerical ensemble weather predictions with global coverage. Streamflow forecasts are compared statistically to climatological simulations to detect probabilistic exceedance of warning thresholds. In this article, the system setup is described, together with an evaluation of its performance over a two-year test period and a qualitative analysis of a case study for the Pakistan flood, in summer 2010. It is shown that hazardous events in large river basins can be skilfully detected with a forecast horizon of up to 1 month. In addition, results suggest that an accurate simulation of initial model conditions and an improved parameterization of the hydrological model are key components to reproduce accurately the streamflow variability in the many different runoff regimes of the Earth.JRC.H.7-Climate Risk Managemen

Current water resources in Europe and Africa - Matching water supply and water demand

Ensuring good quality water in sufficient quantities for all legitimate uses is a major policy aim of the European Commission, and the main aim of the Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water, which will be launched in 2012. The Blueprint is the EU policy response to emerging challenges in the field of water. It is within this policy framework that JRC carries out research on hydrological simulation modelling, aiming to provide scientific assessments of general available water resources and floods, droughts and water scarcity. The main aim of the work is to assess current and future water availability versus current and future water demands from different economic sectors. Before future challenges can be addressed, a thorough analysis of current water resources is needed. The scope of this study is an analysis of current water resources in Europe and Africa, and matching water supply and water demand from various sectors. Several attempts already have been made to assess European, African and global water resources. Recently, Haddeland et al. (2011) produced a multimodel estimate of the global terrestrial water balance at 0.5o spatial resolution. This has been achieved within the Global Water Availability Assessment (GWAVA), developed in the context of the EU-funded WATCH project (https://gateway.ceh.ac.uk ). Within another EU-funded project GLOWASIS (Global Water Scarcity Information System), Utrecht University and Deltares develop a global water scarcity map also at 0.5o spatial resolution, to be finished Dec 2012 (http://glowasis.eu ). First results are published in Van Beek et al (2011). JRC is partner in this project to benchmark the global product with the higher resolution European and African assessments. A further study was conducted by Hoekstra and Mekonnen (2011), assessing global water scarcity for the world’s major river basins. Other available information on global water resources are available from: • FAO, Aquastat portal http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/globalmaps/index.stm • UNEP: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/freshwater-availability-groundwater-and-river-flow • Cleaningwater: http://cleaningwater.se/whats-new/geographical-distribution • IWMI Institute: http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/WAtlas/Default.aspx • World Resources Institute: http://earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/maps_detail_static.php?map_select=265&theme=4 • Monde diplomatique: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/disponibiliteeau • GRID-Arendal (Africa): http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/africa/ • EEA (Europe): http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/annual-water-availability-per-capita-by-country-2001 In general however, the analysis done in the products described above is done at national scales, at relatively coarse spatial resolution (0.5o), and using water demand data from the year 2000 or before, because more recent data are not yet available. The scope of the study presented here, is to carry out an higher spatial resolution analysis for Europe (5 km ~ 0.05o) and Africa (0.1o), using a daily timescale for modelling, and using for Europe new JRC analysis of water uses for irrigation, livestock, industry and energy, and domestic purposes. The analysis is carried out using the JRC LISFLOOD hydrological simulation model, supported by several other available models (EPIC, LUMP).JRC.H-Institute for Environment and Sustainability (Ispra

Targeted Epigenetic Remodeling of the \u3cem\u3eCdk5\u3c/em\u3e Gene in Nucleus Accumbens Regulates Cocain- and Stress-Evoked Behavior

Recent studies have implicated epigenetic remodeling in brain reward regions following psychostimulant or stress exposure. It has only recently become possible to target a given type of epigenetic remodeling to a single gene of interest, and to probe the functional relevance of such regulation to neuropsychiatric disease. We sought to examine the role of histone modifications at the murine Cdk5 (cyclin-dependent kinase 5) locus, given growing evidence of Cdk5 expression in nucleus accumbens (NAc) influencing reward-related behaviors. Viral-mediated delivery of engineered zinc finger proteins (ZFP) targeted histone H3 lysine 9/14 acetylation (H3K9/14ac), a transcriptionally active mark, or histone H3 lysine 9 dimethylation (H3K9me2), which is associated with transcriptional repression, specifically to the Cdk5 locus in NAc in vivo. We gound that Cdk5-ZFP transcription factors are sufficient to bidirectionally regulate Cdk5 gene expression via enrichment of their respective histone modifications. We examined the behavioral consequences of this epigenetic remodeling and found that Cdk5-targeted H3K9/14ac increased cocaine-induced locomotor behavior, as well as resilience to social stress. Conversely, Cdk5-targeted H3K9me2 attenuated both cocaine-induced locomotor behavior and conditioned place preference, but had no effect on stress-induced social avoidance behavior. The current study provides evidence for the causal role of Cdk5 epigenetic remodeling in NAc in Cdk5 gene expression and in the control of reward and stress responses. Moreover, these data are especially compelling given that previous work demonstrated opposite behavioral phenotypes compared with those reported here upon Cdk5 overexpression or knockdown, demonstrating the importance of targeted epigenetic remodeling tools for studying more subtle molecular changes that contribute to neuropsychiatric disease

Spatially-resolved Assessment of Land and Water Use Scenarios for Shale Gas Development: Poland and Germany

The analysis presented in this report focuses specifically on two issues of potential concern with respect to shale gas development in EU member states using hydraulic fracturing technologies: pressure on freshwater resources, and land use competition. Potential alternative technologies, such as “dry fracking”, are not considered, because they are still at the research and development stage. We reviewed available literature in order to identify important variables that may influence the land and water requirements associated with shale gas development. We further derived a range of representative values spanning worst-, average- and best-case scenarios for each variable. We then coupled specific technology scenarios (incorporating these variables) regarding water and land use requirements for shale gas development from 2013-2028 with spatially-resolved water and land availability/demand modeling tools (i.e. using the European Land Use Modelling Platform (LUMP)). Scenario analyses (intended to represent worst-, average- and best-case assumptions) were subsequently implemented that incorporate a subset of the identified variables for shale gas development in the Lower Paleozoic Baltic-Podlasie-Lublin basin in Poland and for Germany as a whole from 2013-2028. In addition, we undertook a screening-level risk assessment of potential human and ecosystem health impacts attributable to accidental or operational release of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing of shale formations, as well as the average gaseous emissions (per active well) associated with shale gas development activities that might be anticipated within a shale play. Finally, we developed a qualitative discussion of necessary considerations to support future air quality impact assessments for shale gas development activities.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Developing elastomeric cellular structures for multiple head impacts

Foam‐based materials were originally incorporated into helmets in the 1970’s, providing an effective method of absorbing impact energy and so protecting against severe head injury. Similar materials still exist in the majority of protective helmets today, indicating a need for an innovative approach that will achieve a step‐ change in energy absorption performance. This paper focusses on tailoring the Miura‐Ori (MO), origami‐derived geometry, as a method to achieve a material structure tailored to maximise impact energy absorption, whilst complying with existing product design constraints. This ambitious concept was then realised using an elastomeric, additive manufacturing powder, before being tested against foam derived from a commercially‐ available American football helmet. MO pads demonstrated comparable performance versus foam at relatively low impact velocities, though recorded a peak acceleration 15% less than foam at the highest impact velocity. This difference increased once the respective samples were exposed to their third impact, demonstrating the superior performance of MO over multiple impacts. The MO material demonstrated encouraging energy impact absorbing behaviour, with scope remaining to further optimise the geometry in order to further enhance performance. Furthermore, opportunities exist for achieving superior shear‐energy performance than contemporary materials and, ultimately, for harnessing the benefits of additive manufacturing to fabricate person‐specific headwear optimised for a given impact environment