Introductory R for Water Resources - Fall 2019 - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This is all course material for R for Researchers, a one-credit course taught at UNC Chapel Hill in Fall 2019 to introduce upperclassmen and graduate students to the R programming language and apply learned skills in basic water resources applications, as well as other (semi-related) topics of interest to students. Lecture notes were distributed before (as a subset of full lecture notes) and after lectures, and lectures involved collaborative coding exercises with students in class without any powerpoint material. Course material here includes: Syllabus: rough schedule and description of lectures Lectures: pdf lecture notes with embedded code, including R scripts to reproduce them, which include practice exercises. Not all lectures in syllabus were given and the notes not provided Assignments: two assignments given to students, one on programming basics and one on water resources and general data analysis applications Data: to accompany lectures and assignment

Joint mitigation of supply and financial risk in regional water supply management under uncertainty

Municipal water utilities are tasked with providing reliable, safe, and affordable drinking water for over 250 million Americans. Accomplishing this can be costly and complicated. In 2017, over $110 billion of public funding alone was spent to maintain United States drinking water infrastructure. Changes in climate, land use, and water demand introduce uncertainty in water availability. Growing variability in supply and demand impacts water supply reliability, increasing volatility of water utility costs and revenues, generating financial risk that disrupts utility operations and raises customer water rates. Water utilities have a range of tools for jointly managing supply and financial risks, including building new supply infrastructure, implementing water use restrictions during droughts, and cooperatively managing infrastructure through inter-utility agreements. To navigate supply and demand uncertainties and provide reliable, affordable water service, it is key for utilities to identify actions and decision-making rules that work effectively under a wide range of future conditions, taking greater advantage of available tools. However, no research in the water supply management and planning field to this point has applied dynamic adaptive management modeling to explore utility hydrologic vulnerability and the financial impacts of regional inter-utility agreements, nor developed adaptive financial modeling to quantify utility budgetary responses to water supply planning decisions. This dissertation employs a novel, integrated supply and financial risk modeling approach to address outstanding questions faced by water utilities, specifically: (1) How vulnerable are utilities to climate and land-use landcover change uncertainty, and how can mitigation action influence their vulnerability? (2) Can inter-utility cooperation help mitigate supply and/or financial risk? (3) How robust are regional inter-utility agreements under uncertainty? (4) How can utilities financially adapt to meet water demands? Results of this work demonstrate: (a) how utility decision-making can mitigate (and sometimes exacerbate) climate and land use change impacts on water availability; (b) the financial benefits and drawbacks of inter-utility regional cooperation, relative to independent utility operation; and (c) the adaptive capacity of water utility budgets to finance water supply infrastructure expansion under uncertainty in demand growth and climate. Addressing these questions highlights the opportunities water utilities have to ensure reliable future water service.Doctor of Philosoph

Racial disparities in municipal water and sewer access in western North Carolina

In the 21st Century, there is still observable racial division in communities of the southern United States. In North Carolina, though institutional discrimination has long been outlawed, residual segregation in housing patterns persists. Descendants of freed slaves now live in extra-territorial jurisdictions (ETJs) of the small, southern towns their ancestors settled outside of, which are subject to the adjacent municipality’s zoning and land-use statutes but have no political representation. Communities within an ETJ are not guaranteed municipal water or sewer service by a municipality; if not annexed, these areas must rely on wells and septic systems as an alternative. Should septic systems fail and zoning or land use ordinances prevent timely or affordable replacement, local groundwater contamination would pose a threat to public health. To investigate the role of race in access of municipal services by ETJ populations in Burke and Catawba Counties of NC, we apply logistic regression to tax parcel utility and Census demographic and socioeconomic data aggregated using a geographic information systems (GIS) approach. Comparison of regressions at each county and utility pairing revealed complex relationships between census block black population percentage, socioeconomic indicators parcel value and block group median household income, and ETJ block residential housing density. Regression trends agreed at low and median housing density scenarios in both counties but disagree at high housing density in Burke County. Race could play a role in municipal water and sewer service access in Burke and Catawba County ETJs, but the magnitude and direction of impact greatly varies between socioeconomic and housing density scenarios. Specific analysis of the historical urban planning and zoning designations of areas of interest within these ETJs would be more illuminating in determining whether or not these communities still feel the influence of race-based segregation. Future work involving Hispanic or non-white populations, as well as using well or septic utility services as proxies for lack of municipal service, would be of great interest in NC and the South overall.Bachelor of Scienc

Integrating raw water transfers into an Eastern U.S. management context: a multi-objective analysis

In the Eastern U.S. intermittent transfers of treated water are common tool for drought management, but untreated “raw” water transfers are rare. Nonetheless, raw water transfers, free of physical and financial constraints of treating and piping water, show promise within an Eastern regulatory context and could aid in meeting future demands and delaying or avoiding expensive infrastructure. This work develops a detailed simulation model to investigate several raw water transfer schemes along a common river course, exploring tradeoffs between reliability and financial objectives in a multi-utility framework. Applied within the Research Triangle of North Carolina, modeling will inform management solutions for an Eastern U.S. region at risk of future water shortages. Raw water transfer schemes are observed to substantially improve supply reliability and reduce demand management interventions, cut inter-basin transfers by up to 90%, and reduce financial risk and long-term debt through decreased dependence on infrastructure and increased planning flexibility.Master of Scienc

Juno: a Python-based graphical package for optical system design

This report introduces Juno, a modular Python package for optical design and simulation. Juno consists of a complete library that includes a graphical user interface to design and visualise arbitrary optical elements, set up wave propagation simulations and visualise their results. To ensure an efficient visualisation of the results, all simulation data are stored in a structured database that can filter and sort the output. Finally, we present a practical use case for Juno, where optical design and fabrication are interlaced in a feedback cycle. The presented data show how to compare the simulated and the measured propagation; if a difference or unexpected behaviour is found, we show how to convert and import the optical element profile from a profilometer measurement. The propagation through the profile can provide immediate feedback about the quality of the element and a measure of the effects brought by differences between the idealised and the actual profile, therefore, allowing to exclude the experimental errors and to weigh every aspect of fabrication errors.Comment: The software is available at https://github.com/DeMarcoLab/jun

High-efficiency Fresnel zone plates for hard X-rays by 100 keV e-beam lithography and electroplating

The efficiencies of several Fresnel zone plates, that were fabricated using a direct-write method with high-energy electrons, were measured over a wide range of photon energies

Racial Differences in the Distribution of Posterior Circulation Occlusive Disease

We Compared Clinical and Arteriographic Features in 27 White and 24 Black Patients with Symptomatic Posterior Circulation Occlusive Disease. the Degree of Arterial Stenosis Was Measured Independently by Two Examiners at 12 Sites within the Vertebrobasilar Territory. Racial Comparisons Were Made based Upon the Distribution of Extra- and Intracranial Occlusive Lesions and Symptomatic Sites of the Lesions. White Patients Had Significantly More Angina Pectoris, More Lesions of the Origin of the Left Vertebral Artery and More High-Grade Lesions of the Extracranial Vertebral Arteries. Black Patients Had Significantly Higher Mean Diastolic Blood Pressure, More Diabetes Mellitus, More Lesions of the Distal Basilar Artery, More High-Grade Lesions of Intracranial Branch Vessels and More Symptomatic Intracranial Branch Disease. Race Was Found to Be the Only Factor Increasing the Risk of Intracranial Posterior Circulation Occlusive Disease. Knowledge of the Contribution of Race to the Distribution of Posterior Circulation Lesions Will Help Guide Evaluation and Treatment Strategies for Patients with Vertebrobasilar Occlusive Disease. © 1985 American Heart Association, Inc

High-Throughput SHAPE Analysis Reveals Structures in HIV-1 Genomic RNA Strongly Conserved across Distinct Biological States

Replication and pathogenesis of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is tightly linked to the structure of its RNA genome, but genome structure in infectious virions is poorly understood. We invent high-throughput SHAPE (selective 2′-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension) technology, which uses many of the same tools as DNA sequencing, to quantify RNA backbone flexibility at single-nucleotide resolution and from which robust structural information can be immediately derived. We analyze the structure of HIV-1 genomic RNA in four biologically instructive states, including the authentic viral genome inside native particles. Remarkably, given the large number of plausible local structures, the first 10% of the HIV-1 genome exists in a single, predominant conformation in all four states. We also discover that noncoding regions functioning in a regulatory role have significantly lower (p-value < 0.0001) SHAPE reactivities, and hence more structure, than do viral coding regions that function as the template for protein synthesis. By directly monitoring protein binding inside virions, we identify the RNA recognition motif for the viral nucleocapsid protein. Seven structurally homologous binding sites occur in a well-defined domain in the genome, consistent with a role in directing specific packaging of genomic RNA into nascent virions. In addition, we identify two distinct motifs that are targets for the duplex destabilizing activity of this same protein. The nucleocapsid protein destabilizes local HIV-1 RNA structure in ways likely to facilitate initial movement both of the retroviral reverse transcriptase from its tRNA primer and of the ribosome in coding regions. Each of the three nucleocapsid interaction motifs falls in a specific genome domain, indicating that local protein interactions can be organized by the long-range architecture of an RNA. High-throughput SHAPE reveals a comprehensive view of HIV-1 RNA genome structure, and further application of this technology will make possible newly informative analysis of any RNA in a cellular transcriptome

EEFlux: A Landsat-based Evapotranspiration mapping tool on the Google Earth Engine

“EEFlux” is an acronym for ‘Earth Engine Evapotranspiration Flux.’ EEFlux is based on the operational surface energy balance model “METRIC” (Mapping ET at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration), and is a Landsat-imagebased process. Landsat imagery supports the production of ET maps at resolutions of 30 m, which is the scale of many human-impacted and human-interest activities including agricultural fields, forest clearcuts and vegetation systems along streams. ET over extended time periods provides valuable information regarding impacts of water consumption on Earth resources and on humans. EEFlux uses North American Land Data Assimilation System hourly gridded weather data collection for energy balance calibration and time integration of ET. Reference ET is calculated using the ASCE (2005) Penman-Monteith and GridMET weather data sets. The Statsgo soil data base of the USDA provides soil type information. EEFlux will be freely available to the public and includes a web-based operating console. This work has been supported by Google, Inc. and is possible due to the free Landsat image access afforded by the USGS

Beam-induced damage on diffractive hard X-ray optics

Beam-induced damage on diffractive hard X-ray optics is studied by means of X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy