Multiscale flood risk assessment under climate change: the case of the Miño river in the city of Ourense, Spain

[Abstract:] River floods, which are one of the most dangerous natural hazards worldwide, have increased in intensity and frequency in recent decades as a result of climate change, and the future scenario is expected to be even worse. Therefore, their knowledge, predictability, and mitigation represent a key challenge for the scientific community in the coming decades, especially in those local areas that are most vulnerable to these extreme events. In this sense, a multiscale analysis is essential to obtain detailed maps of the future evolution of floods. In the multiscale analysis, the historical and future precipitation data from the CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment) project are used as input in a hydrological model (HEC-HMS) which, in turn, feeds a 2D hydraulic model (Iber+). This integration allows knowing the projected future changes in the flow pattern of the river, as well as analyzing the impact of floods in vulnerable areas through the flood hazard maps obtained with hydraulic simulations. The multiscale analysis is applied to the case of the Miño-Sil basin (NW Spain), specifically to the city of Ourense. The results show a delay in the flood season and an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme river flows in the Miño-Sil basin, which will cause more situations of flooding in many areas frequented by pedestrians and in important infrastructure of the city of Ourense. In addition, an increase in water depths associated with future floods was also detected, confirming the trend for future floods to be not only more frequent but also more intense. Detailed maps of the future evolution of floods also provide key information to decision-makers to take effective measures in advance in those areas most vulnerable to flooding in the coming decades. Although the methodology presented is applied to a particular area, its strength lies in the fact that its implementation in other basins and cities is simple, also taking into account that all the models used are freely accessible.Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2021/44FEDER; 0034_RISC_ML_6_EXunta de Galicia; ED481B-2021-10

Comparison of machine learning techniques for reservoir outflow forecasting

Número especial: Advances in machine learning for natural hazards risk assessment[Abstract:] Reservoirs play a key role in many human societies due to their capability to manage water resources. In addition to their role in water supply and hydropower production, their ability to retain water and control the flow makes them a valuable asset for flood mitigation. This is a key function, since extreme events have increased in the last few decades as a result of climate change, and therefore, the application of mechanisms capable of mitigating flood damage will be key in the coming decades. Having a good estimation of the outflow of a reservoir can be an advantage for water management or early warning systems. When historical data are available, data-driven models have been proven a useful tool for different hydrological applications. In this sense, this study analyzes the efficiency of different machine learning techniques to predict reservoir outflow, namely multivariate linear regression (MLR) and three artificial neural networks: multilayer perceptron (MLP), nonlinear autoregressive exogenous (NARX) and long short-term memory (LSTM). These techniques were applied to forecast the outflow of eight water reservoirs of different characteristics located in the Miño River (northwest of Spain). In general, the results obtained showed that the proposed models provided a good estimation of the outflow of the reservoirs, improving the results obtained with classical approaches such as to consider reservoir outflow equal to that of the previous day. Among the different machine learning techniques analyzed, the NARX approach was the option that provided the best estimations on average.FEDER; 0034_RISC_ML_6_EXunta de Galicia; ED431C 2021/44Xunta de Galicia; ED481B-2021-108Universidade de Vigo; 0000 131H TAL 64

IberWQ: A GPU Accelerated Tool for 2D Water Quality Modeling in Rivers and Estuaries

Este artigo inclúese no número especial "Modelling Flow, Water Quality, and Sediment Transport Processes in Coastal, Estuarine, and Inland Waters"[Abstract] Numerical models are useful tools to analyze water quality by computing the concentration of physical, chemical and biological parameters. The present work introduces a two-dimensional depth-averaged model that computes the most relevant and frequent parameters used to evaluate water quality. High performance computing (HPC) techniques based on graphic processing unit (GPU) parallelization have been applied to improve the efficiency of the package, providing speed-ups of two orders of magnitude in a standard PC. Several test cases were analyzed to show the capabilities and efficiency of the model to evaluate the environmental status of rivers and non-stratified estuaries. IberWQ will be freely available through the package Iber.European Commission; INTERREG-POCTEP; 0034_RISC_ML_6_EXunta de Galicia; ED431C 2017/64-GRCXunta de Galicia; ED481A-2017/31

Increased p53 gene dosage reduces neointimal thickening induced by mechanical injury but has no effect on native atherosclerosis

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Cardiovascular Research following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Cardiovasc Res. 75 (4):803-12. is available online at: http://cardiovascres.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/75/4/803OBJECTIVE: The tumor suppressor p53 regulates cell proliferation and apoptosis, two key processes in the pathogenesis of occlusive vascular disease. Here, we examined the consequences of heightening p53 function on neointimal lesion formation in the setting of atherosclerosis and mechanical injury. METHODS: (1) Immunohistopathological characterization of neointimal lesions in atherosclerosis-prone apolipoprotein E-null mice with normal p53 gene dosage (apoEKO) and carrying a p53 transgene (Super-p53/apoE-KO); (2) molecular studies in macrophages and smooth muscle cells (SMCs) obtained from these mice. RESULTS: The p53 transgene conferred p53 gain-of-function in cultured cells and mice. In vitro, survival of irradiated Super-p53 macrophages and femoral SMCs was reduced, but only Super-p53 SMCs exhibited attenuated proliferation. In vivo, whereas the size of spontaneously formed and diet-induced aortic atheromas was undistinguishable in apoE-KO and Super-p53/apoE-KO mice, the latter exhibited attenuated neointimal thickening in mechanically-injured femoral artery. In both models, neither apoptosis nor cell proliferation were affected by additional p53 gene dosage when examined in established neointimal lesions. However, at 2 days after mechanical injury when neointimal lesions were not formed yet, cell proliferation was significantly attenuated within medial SMCs of Super-p53/apoEKO mice. CONCLUSION: Heightening p53 function has differential effects on in vitro proliferation of macrophages (unaffected) versus SMCs (reduced), and on native atherosclerosis (unaffected) versus mechanically-induced neointimal thickening (reduced) in apoE-KO mice. The protective effect of p53 in mechanically-injured femoral artery coincided with limited medial SMC proliferation at early time points preceding neointima formation, but neither medial nor neointimal cell proliferation was affected in vessels with established occlusive lesions. These findings corroborate p53 gain-of-function as a promising therapeutic strategy to limit post-angioplasty restenosis but not native atherosclerosis.Work financed by grants from Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo/Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Red Temática de Investigación Cooperativa en Enfermedades Cardiovasculares, RECAVA), from the Regional Government of Valencia (GV04B-288) and from Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and the European Regional Development Fund (SAF2004-03057). S.M.S.-G. and J.M.G received salary support from Instituto de Salud Carlos III, and J.J.F. from CSIC-I3P predoctoral fellowship program cosponsored by the European Social Fund.Peer reviewe

Analysis of burnout syndrome and resilience in nurses throughout the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study

Producción CientíficaBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the occurrence of work-related stress on nursing staff. Being resilience an essential element to countering adversity. The aim of the study was to assess burnout syndrome as well as resilience in hospital-care nurses during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study of burnout syndrome and resilience of 101 nurses during the first COVID-19 outbreak. The Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Scale of Resilience of Connor-Davidson were used. Results: The burnout average score was 74.35 ± 12.78 points, and resilience was 27.94 ± 5.84. Temporary nurses reached a lower average score for the emotional fatigue dimension (23.80 ± 10.39 points) p < 0.05. The emotional fatigue dimension correlated adversely with the average score of resilience (r = −0.271; p < 0.001). Conclusions: The level of burnout in nurses was high, being higher on those who took care of COVID-19 patients. Resilient nurses were able to better cope with stressful situations

An accelerated tool for flood modelling based on Iber

Este artigo inclúese no número especial "Selected Papers from the 1st International Electronic Conference on the Hydrological Cycle (ChyCle-2017)"[Abstract:] This paper presents Iber+, a new parallel code based on the numerical model Iber for two-dimensional (2D) flood inundation modelling. The new implementation, which is coded in C++ and takes advantage of the parallelization functionalities both on CPUs (central processing units) and GPUs (graphics processing units), was validated using different benchmark cases and compared, in terms of numerical output and computational efficiency, with other well-known hydraulic software packages. Depending on the complexity of the specific test case, the new parallel implementation can achieve speedups up to two orders of magnitude when compared with the standard version. The speedup is especially remarkable for the GPU parallelization that uses Nvidia CUDA (compute unified device architecture). The efficiency is as good as the one provided by some of the most popular hydraulic models. We also present the application of Iber+ to model an extreme flash flood that took place in the Spanish Pyrenees in October 2012. The new implementation was used to simulate 24 h of real time in roughly eight minutes of computing time, while the standard version needed more than 15 h. This huge improvement in computational efficiency opens up the possibility of using the code for real-time forecasting of flood events in early-warning systems, in order to help decision making under hazardous events that need a fast intervention to deploy countermeasures.Water JPI—WaterWorks Programme, project Improving Drought and Flood Early Warning, Forecasting and Mitigation, IMDROFLOOD; PCIN-2015-243European Commission; project RISC_ML 034_RISC_ML_6_EXunta de Galicia; ED431C 2017/64-GRCXunta de Galicia; ED481A-2017/314Xunta de Galicia; ED481B-2018/020European Commission; IMDROFLOOD PCIN-2015-24

Analysis of two sources of variability of basin outflow hydrographs computed with the 2D shallow water model Iber: Digital Terrain Model and unstructured mesh size

Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade da Coruña/CISUG[Abstract:] Modelling hydrological processes with fully distributed models based on the shallow water equations implies a high computational cost, which often limits the resolution of the computational mesh. Therefore, in practice, modellers need to find a compromise between spatial resolution, numerical accuracy and computational cost. Moreover, this balance is probably related to the accuracy and resolution of the underlying Digital Terrain Model (DTM). In this work, it is studied the effect of the DTM resolution and the size of the computational mesh on the results and on the runtime of a hydrological model based on the 2D shallow water equations. Seven rainfall events in four different basins have been modelled using 3 DTMs and 3 different mesh resolutions. The results obtained highlight the relevance of the vertical accuracy versus the horizontal resolution of the DTMs. Furthermore, it has been observed that mesh resolutions greater than 25 m, together with LiDAR-based DTMs with horizontal resolution greater than 25 m, provide comparable outflow hydrographs.Xunta de Galicia; ED481B-2021-108Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2021/44Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2018/56Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER); 0034_RISC_ML_6_

The Rivillas flood of 5–6 November 1997 (Badajoz, Spain) revisited: an approach based on Iber+ modelling

Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade de Vigo/CISUGThe flash flood registered in November 1997 in the city of Badajoz (Spain) in the basin of Rivillas river is analysed by means of the numerical code Iber+. This event constitutes one of the most destructive flash-floods registered in an urban area in the Iberian Peninsula. Starting from precipitation data obtained from rain stations, the runoff of the entire river basin was simulated to obtain the discharge of the Rivillas river in Badajoz. The flood maps obtained with Iber+ reproduce accurately the field data registered during the actual event. Likewise, the numerical time evolution of the flood and water depths are in accordance with testimonies of the witnesses. Once the capability of Iber+ to reproduce the event was assessed, several scenarios were considered in order to analyse the main causes of the event. In particular, simulations show that the catastrophic magnitude of the flood was mainly due to the blockage of bridges. Different hypothetical scenarios were simulated to analyze the role of rain intensity and bridge maintenance, concluding that similar floods can occur under much lower rainfall but with poor bridge maintenance.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431C 2021/44Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED481B-2021-10

Convergence-confinement curve analysis of excavation stress and strain resulting from blast-induced damage

Using the convergence-confinement curves methodology, we analysed excavation behaviour for a range of rock masses of different geotechnical qualities, taking into account blast-induced damage. The novelty of the research is (i) we include blast-induced damage to the rock mass in ground reaction curve construction, and (ii) we analyse results for 54 rock mass and rock geotechnical quality scenarios. The research, an application of a previously developed methodology (González-Cao et al., 2013), provides practical guidelines for the preliminary design phase for an excavation resulting from blasting. Our main conclusions are (i) that rock mass quality has a greater bearing on the plastic radius and excavation maximum displacement than blast-induced damage, and (ii) that the plastic radius and maximum displacement around an excavation increase with the level of blast-induced damage, most especially for poor quality rock masses. This would justify the need to limit blast-induced damage in poor quality rock masses.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad | Ref. BIA2014-53368

Analysis of interval‐grouped data in weed science: The binnednp Rcpp package

[Abstract] Weed scientists are usually interested in the study of the distribution and density functions of the random variable that relates weed emergence with environmental indices like the hydrothermal time (HTT). However, in many situations, experimental data are presented in a grouped way and, therefore, the standard nonparametric kernel estimators cannot be computed. Kernel estimators for the density and distribution functions for interval‐grouped data, as well as bootstrap confidence bands for these functions, have been proposed and implemented in the binnednp package. Analysis with different treatments can also be performed using a bootstrap approach and a Cramér‐von Mises type distance. Several bandwidth selection procedures were also implemented. This package also allows to estimate different emergence indices that measure the shape of the data distribution. The values of these indices are useful for the selection of the soil depth at which HTT should be measured which, in turn, would maximize the predictive power of the proposed methods. This paper presents the functions of the package and provides an example using an emergence data set of Avena sterilis (wild oat). The binnednp package provides investigators with a unique set of tools allowing the weed science research community to analyze interval‐grouped data.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; AGL2015-64130-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad; MTM2014-52876-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad; MTM2017-82724-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad; AGL2012-33736Xunta de Galicia; ED431C-2016-015Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/0