Probabilistic flood forecast model based on remote sensing information

This study aims to explore the possibility of employing remote sensing images to build a probabilistic flood extent forecasting model. This model is constructed and tested in two study areas: New Orleans and Miami. Images that recorded flooding events are first performed with segmentation method Seed Region Growing, and segmented images are...

A vine-based approach for defining critical infrastructure loads: Designing a breakwater in Galveston Bay, Texas

The design of offshore and coastal infrastructures, sand nourishment and other ’soft’ coastal interventions require the analysis of environmental variables (e.g. wind, waves, rainfall) that can potentially cause the failure of such structures. Processes such as overtopping, beach erosion, and coastal flooding can result from a combined action of...

A parametric approach to a probabilistic design of rubble mound slope protection

When designing hydraulic structures, engineers follow a structured and predetermined set of design phases, referred to as the design process. Within this process, the preliminary design phase is a highly iterative process, which requires many calculations. From these calculations many different initial designs of the structure are derived....

Reliability Analysis of Railway Concrete Bridges using Expert Judgment Studies

New railway bridges for high-speed trains are being built in a many countries around the world. In addition to the construction of new bridges, existing bridges are ageing. These two factors make the assessment of railway bridges essential. The bridges are designed considering certain predefined reliability criteria to account for the...

Application of Probabilistic Damage Identification to Civil Engineering Structures: A Marriage of Structural Health Monitoring and Bayesian Statistics

The rapid development in statistics, information technology, and computational power have en- abled numerous innovative methods to emerge in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) for structural damage detection, both in practical application and research. The intention of such methods is to use the data obtained from the monitoring system to...

Root-zone storage and snow cover effects: A catchment study on the dynamic behaviour of the root-zone moisture capacity related to changing snow cover patterns

Extreme weather events seem to happen more often nowadays. One of these extreme events was the California Drought between 2012 and 2016. The socioeconomic and environmental impacts of this drought were enormous:<br/>thousands square kilometers of agricultural land fallowed, thousands of lost jobs, salinization problems and forest fires. As a...

Integrating engineering knowledge in logistical optimisation: development of a concept evaluation tool

A strategy for completing a dredging project is called a working method. The goal of a tender study is to find an optimal working method for a specific project. To find the optimal working method, the full range of possible solutions should be investigated. However, the available resources during a tender study are often limited and trends in...

Application of Bayesian Networks to Estimate River Discharges in Ecuador

Ecuadorian cities that are located near banks of rivers or near the sea and that have low elevation respect to sea level are more exposed to floods (MIDUVI, 2015). This research will focus on the study of the Guayas river basin, which encloses the city of Guayaquil, the most populated city of the country with 2’578.201 inhabitants where 993.123...

Tropical Cyclone Statistical Wind Estimation: In Regions with Rare Cyclone Occurrence

Tropical Cyclones (TCs) are in many regions responsible for severe damages and a great number of casualties, resulting from the severe wind speeds, rainfall, wave heights and storm surges. The recent hurricanes Harvey and Irma are examples of the great devastation that can be caused by a single event, and of the insufficient level of...

Probabilistic downtime analysis for complex marine projects: Development of a modular Markov model that generates binary workability sequences for sequential marine operations

A complex marine project consist of series of operations, with each operation subject to a predefined operational limit and duration, depending on the equipment being used. If actual weather conditions exceed the operational limit, then the operation cannot be executed and hence downtime occurs. It is up to contractors, such as Boskalis, to...