Decision Support System for Demining Waterways

In the beginning of 2002, Croatian Waters, a state water management system, gave the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the University of Split a project with the main objective of determining the optimal strategy for demining waterways by using contemporary scientific methods and tools

Coagulant addition for managing sediment-associated phosphorus bioavailability to prevent cyanobacterial blooms in drinking water reservoirs

To ensure the uninterrupted supply of adequate amounts of drinking water, many utilities rely on reservoirs for raw (i.e., untreated) water storage prior to treatment. For example, reservoirs are integral to storing water originating as mountain snowpack that melts and slowly releases water to downstream rivers and lakes, serving ~75% of the western United States and Canada and approximately two billion people globally. Although raw water supply reservoirs have been historically managed for water quantity, not quality, reservoir management objectives are rapidly evolving. The importance of reservoir management for source quality is increasing as the relationships between source water quality, treatment costs, finished water quality, and public health protection are better understood, and climate change-exacerbated pressures on that relationship are better described. Water supply reservoir management is increasingly recognized as an integral component of risk management in the water industry due to the inextricable connection of climate change to source water quality and treatment costs, finished water quality, and public health protection. Multipurpose reservoirs frequently provide seasonal flow equalization, storage during periods of high precipitation (i.e., rain, snow melt), hydroelectric power, and flood mitigation; they also ensure that demand can be met during low flow periods and droughts. Notably, reservoirs are not typically managed for influxes of fine sediment and associated nutrients, which are more frequent in many areas because of climate change-exacerbated landscape disturbances such as wildfires and extreme precipitation. Algae, especially cyanobacteria, blooms are one of the biggest threats to water quality and the provision of safe drinking water globally. High densities of algal cells have the potential to lead to customer complaints, service disruptions, and even outages, especially in water treatment plants lacking advanced treatment options. Phosphorus (P) is the limiting nutrient for primary productivity in freshwater. Fine sediment is the primary vector of phosphorus transport in aquatic systems, thus fine sediment management to mitigate or prevent releases of bioavailable P to the water column could be integrated into water treatment operations, potentially as a climate change adaptation strategy. Drinking water reservoirs are not typically designed to manage internal loading of phosphorus; while this has been well studied in lakes, investigations of management strategies such as coagulant addition to prevent phosphorus release from bottom sediments (i.e., phosphorus inactivation) to mitigate the proliferation of cyanobacteria in raw water storage reservoirs are scant. Here, a series of lab- and field-scale analyses were conducted to (i) describe phosphorus release from fine sediment in a raw water reservoir, (ii) characterize its availability for biological uptake, (iii) evaluate phosphorus inactivation by application of common coagulants (FeCl3, alum, PACl), and (iv) evaluate the combination of strategically-timed reservoir dredging and coagulant application on phosphorus inactivation and turbidity reduction. This study demonstrated that significant amounts of phosphorus were readily released from fine sediment in the study reservoir, suggesting the need for fine sediment management. Application of typical doses of common chemical coagulants, especially FeCl3 effectively inactivated phosphorus to below target thresholds in the presence of fine sediment, as would be expected. Moreover, the combination of reservoir dredging and coagulant application during higher algae risk periods not only inactivated phosphorus, but also eliminated the potential for its re-release to the reservoir water column with the concurrent benefit of turbidity reduction. Thus, this study demonstrated that seasonal coagulant application coupled with strategically-timed reservoir dredging may offer utilities reliant on offline raw water storage reservoirs an effective P inactivation approach for risk management and climate change adaptation

Hierarchic Approach to Mine Action in Croatia

The Republic of Croatia is one of the 10 most mine-contaminated countries in the world. There are almost 750,000 mines on 1,630 sq km of mine-suspected areas. About 170 sq km are actual minefields, while the rest of the area is contaminated with individual explosive ordnance. Mine-affected areas that have not been used for years, pose a huge economic problem and obstruct infrastructure development, reconstruction, and return of displaced persons to their normal lives. They also pose a significant safety problem. In particular, any activities carried out in mine-contaminated areas significantly threaten human lives and material assets. It is estimated that removing all the mines in the Republic of Croatia would cost approximately $1.473 billion (U.S.) and would require 10 years of intensive work

Decision support system to urban infrastructure maintenance management

Life-cycle management of urban infrastructure projects is very complex process from both management and economic aspects. Focus of this research is on urban infrastructure maintenance phase of a life-cycle, especially on decision making in maintenance problems. Urban infrastructure maintenance management deals with complex decision making process. The reasons for a complexity are: lots of participants, multi-disciplinarity, huge quantity of information, limited budget, conflict goals and criteria. These facts indicate that decision making processes in urban infrastructure management undoubtedly belong to ill-defined problems. In order to cope with such complexity and to help project managers during decision making processes this research proposes an application of multicriteria methods. Multicriteria methodology proposed herein is applied on priority setting problem. It starts with goal analysis followed by definition of urban infrastructure elements and development of adequate criteria set. Evaluation of criteria importance (weights) is based on a set of experts’ opinions processed by AHP method. An assessment of maintenance conditions of urban infrastructure elements is provided trough monitoring process. The way of using proper forms and procedures for data collection is presented as well. All collected data are processed by PROMETHEE multicriteria methods. The main result of a multicriteria process is priority maintenance list for urban infrastructure elements. The methodology is tested on road infrastructure of town of Split

The ANDROID Case Study; Venice and its Territory: Identification of Hazards and Impact of Multi-hazard Scenarios☆

Abstract The objective of the paper is to review already published scientific papers and other relevant documents to identify hazards, their intensities and probability of occurrence in the Venice territory. In order to achieve the objective, the authors have selected relevant research papers and state of the art documents. Since the Venice and its territory are prone to various hazards, multi-hazard scenarios have been taken into consideration. Hazard impacts are the following: earthquake, tsunami and meteotsunami, flooding/"acqua alta", subsidence, coastal erosion, salt wedge intrusion, pollution. The paper classifies potential impacts and recognises possible combinations of hazards that may occur in case study territory. A multi-hazard scenarios analysis considers impacts which, either occurring at the same time or shortly following each other, are dependent from one another or because they are caused by the same triggering event or hazard, or merely threatening the same elements at risk (vulnerable or exposed elements) without chronological coincidence (EU, 2010). The research presented in the paper serves as a support for cross-border multi-hazard assessment in other North-Eastern Adriatic Sea areas

ANDROID: An Inter-disciplinary Academic Network that Promotes Co-operation and Innovation among European Higher Education to Increase Society's Resilience to Disasters

Using knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels is one of five priorities for action (PFA) that were identified in the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The responsibility for such capacity building resides largely with educators such as higher education institutes, but the complexity of resilience poses a number of challenges. This paper describes ANDROID, an EU funded international partnership of higher education institutes and key actors in disaster resilience, which has been formed to develop innovative European education. ANDROID is based on an inter-disciplinary consortium of partners that comprises scientists from applied, human, social and natural disciplines. ANDROID set out to achieve this aim through a series of inter-linked projects, identified as work packages and led by a sub-group of international partners. This paper describes these projects and highlights key outputs achieved to date: an inter-disciplinary doctoral school; a survey capturing and sharing innovative approaches to inter-disciplinary working; a survey of European education to map teaching and research programmes in disaster resilience; a survey analysing the capacity of European public administrators to address disaster risk; emerging research and teaching concerns in disaster resilience; and, open educational resources

How to Support The Development Of Teachers’ Practical Knowledge : Comparing Different Conditions

Peer reviewe