Statistical Evaluation of Factors Affecting Indicator Bacteria in Urban Storm-Water Runoff

An urban watershed in Raleigh, North Carolina, was monitored for indicator bacteria during 20 rain events. Results showed elevated levels of E. coli, enterococci, and fecal coliform. Samples were compared based on seasonality and were found to be statistically different (p<0.05), with pairwise comparisons indicating significantly lower concentrations of E. coli and fecal coliform during the winter (p<0.05). Enterococci concentrations were substantially lower in the winter and fall, but no significant differences were found between seasons during pairwise comparisons (p<0.05). Correlation analyses showed multiple significant relationships between antecedent climate parameters, flow characteristics, and indicator bacteria concentrations. More detailed multiple linear regression yielded explanatory variables related to antecedent climate conditions. Variables were generally related to temperature and moisture conditions in the atmosphere and soil. The results of this study show indicator bacteria concentrations significantly vary based on season; however, this variability can partially be explained by antecedent climate data.     

New Paradigm for Sizing Riparian Buffers to Reduce Risks of Polluted Storm Water: Practical Synthesis

Riparian buffers are commonly promoted to protect stream water quality. A common conceptual assumption is that buffers “intercept” and treat upland runoff. As a shift in paradigm, it is proposed instead that riparian buffers should be recognized as the parts of the landscape that most frequently generate storm runoff. Thus, water quality can be protected from contaminated storm runoff by disassociating riparian buffers from potentially polluting activities. This paper reviews and synthesizes some simple engineering approaches that can be used to delineate riparian buffers for rural watersheds based on risk of generating runoff. Although reference is made to specific future research that may improve the proposed methods for delineating riparian buffers, the approaches described here provide planners and engineers with a set of currently available scientifically defensible tools. It is recommended that planners and engineers use available rainfall and stream discharge data to parameterize the buffer-sizing equations and use variable-width buffers, based on a topographic index, to achieve a realistic representation of runoff generating areas.     

Use of the Lorenz Curve to Quantify Statistical Nonuniformity of Sediment Transport Rate

The Lorenz curve and the Gini index are statistical tools that have been widely used to quantify nonuniformity in economics, ecology, and medicine, but have apparently not been previously applied in hydraulic engineering. In this work, the Lorenz curve was applied to the analysis of sediment transport data from several experiments with natural and lightweight solid particles. The distributions of instantaneous sediment transport rate data have been analyzed, leading to some interesting observations: (1) the values are quite nonuniformly distributed, with a significant proportion of zero values at the lowest sediment transport rates; and (2) the distributions of the values considering only samples with nonzero values are still quite nonuniform; yet the variability of the Gini index with the average sediment transport rate is much smaller than that obtained for the complete data samples, indicating a major role of intermittency in determining the nonuniformity of sediment transport.     

Combined Brooks-Corey/Burdine and van Genuchten/Mualem Closed-Form Model for Improving Prediction of Unsaturated Conductivity

The performance of the widely used conventional closed-form models of Brooks and Corey and van Genuchten is restricted to soils characterized by a specific shape form of the water retention curve. Hence, the van Genuchten model more accurately describes “S”-shaped retention curves characterizing finer-textured soils, whereas the Brooks-Corey model is much better adapted for “J”-shaped retention curves characterizing relatively coarse-textured soils. In this work, a new closed-form soil hydraulic model is proposed. The suggested continuous-form function accurately describes soil retention curves irrespective of their specific shape form. New algebraic expressions based on Mualem’s statistical model and another new model that is a combination of the Mualem and Burdine theories were derived for the prediction of the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity function. Comparisons of ten soils known from international bibliography were performed. It is concluded that the proposed water retention curve expression as well as the hydraulic conductivity predictions showed significant improvement over the conventional van Genuchten and Brooks-Corey closed-form models, particularly for conductivity values near the residual water content and saturation.     

Artificial Intelligence Techniques as Detection Tests for the Identification of Shifts in Hydrometric Data

This paper presents the development of tests based on one artificial intelligence technique, the Kohonen neural network, for the detection of shifts in hydrometric data. Two new Kohonen-based detection tests are developed, the classification and mapping tests, and their performance is compared with that of well-known conventional detection tests. The efficacy of the tests is demonstrated with synthetic data, for which all the statistical properties and induced shifts are known. These synthetic data are designed to replicate hydrometric data such as annual mean and maximum streamflow. The results show that all tests, conventional and Kohonen based, may be considered equally reliable. However, no one test should be used alone because all generate false diagnostics under different circumstances. Within a decision support environment, a pool of tests may be used to confirm or complement one another depending on their known strengths and weaknesses. The Kohonen-based detection tests also perform well when applied to multivariate cases (i.e., testing more than one data sequence at a time), and their performance for multivariate cases is better than that for the univariate cases.     

Statistical Uncertainty and the Estimation of Log Law Parameters

It is experimentally demonstrated that fitting the log law to the mean velocity profile in turbulent open-channel flow to determine the friction velocity, roughness length, and zero-plane displacement, can lead to relatively high standard errors in these parameters. It is also demonstrated that this approach, where the log law alone is used to estimate these parameters, may yield values of these parameters that are significantly different from those obtained when the friction velocity is determined independently of the log law. Although the statistical estimation of the three log law parameters from mean velocity data alone is frequently necessary, this procedure can lead to inaccurate and imprecise estimates of these quantities.     

Pavement Structures Damage Caused by Hurricane Katrina Flooding

In September of 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and caused sustained flooding. Limited pre- and postflooding tests indicated that the pavement structures tested were adversely impacted by the flood water. Consequently, the Louisiana Dept. of Transportation and Development hired an independent contractor to structurally test approximately 383 km (238?mi) of the region’s federally aided urban highway system both inside and outside of the flooding area. Falling weight deflectometer (FWD) tests were performed every 161 m (0.1?mi) over each selected roadway, along with other field tests. The FWD data were imported into a geographical information system and plotted against a USGS geo-referenced map. Comparative analyses were made possible through the use of extensive flood maps made available through NOAA and FEMA. This arrangement made it possible to classify spatially and graphically all test points on the basis of flooding versus nonflooding, short flooding duration versus longer flooding duration, shallow flooding versus deep flooding, and thin pavements versus thick pavements. Three pavement types, asphaltic concrete, Portland cement concrete, and composite, were considered in this analysis. The statistical inference about the difference in the means of compared data groups was conducted with 95% confidence.     

Case Study: Hydraulic Modeling of Runoff Processes in Ghanaian Inland Valleys

The inland valleys of West Africa are strategic in terms of food security and poverty alleviation, but scientific studies on hydrologic processes happening in these environments have not been well documented. Modeling approaches presented in this paper are an attempt to better comprehend hydraulic phenomena occurring in inland valleys. An inland valley situated in the Northern Region of Ghana is set as the study site. The inland valley comprises well-drained uplands and hydromorphic valley bottoms. There are several earthen dams across the valley bottoms, which are at the same time seasonal wetlands cultivated to rice during the rainy season. A finite volume model for the shallow water equations is developed to numerically simulate surface runoff flows in the valley bottoms during flood events. Innovation is necessitated to handle a series of different hydraulic phenomena. Flux-splitting and data reconstruction techniques are used to achieve stable computation in the complex topography of the valley bottoms. Standard problems of oblique hydraulic jump and dam break flows are used to test the accuracy of the numerical model. The Manning’s roughness coefficient is determined from calibration in another Ghanaian watershed located in the Eastern Region. Using actually observed time series data of rainfall intensity, surface flows during the rainfall events are simulated in the computational domain representing the valley bottoms of the study area. Observed data of water levels in the dams are compared to predictions, and discrepancies between them are examined from the hydrological point of view. In the case of a hypothetical flood event, cascading collapses of the dams and flooding of cultivated fields are reproduced.     

Improvement of Regression Simulation in Fluvial Sediment Loads

In the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, sediment loads from stream runoff generally change more rapidly in the rising limb than in the falling limb of a storm hydrograph. As a result, sediment load reaches its peak prior to flow peak, an observation known as clockwise hysteresis. This dynamic load–flow relationship is poorly reproduced by the existing multivariate linear regression models. This paper explores regressors that attempt to incorporate observed features in a statistical model and thus improve load estimates. These included inverse discharge and flow-change regressors. The load estimates using three regression models for eight rivers are compared, and recommended regression equations are proposed.     

Storm-Water Bioretention for Runoff Quality and Quantity Mitigation

In response to water quality and quantity issues within the Stroubles Creek watershed in Blacksburg, Virginia, a retrofit bioretention cell (BRC) was installed to collect and treat runoff from an existing parking lot. The BRC was completed in July 2007, and 28 precipitation events were monitored between October 2007 and June 2008. For each storm, inflow and outflow flow-weighted composite samples were collected and analyzed for suspended sediment, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus. The inflow and outflow concentrations and loads, as well as total inflow and outflow volumes and peak flow rates, were analyzed to evaluate BRC efficiency. Overall, the BRC successfully reduced flow volumes and peak flow rates leaving the parking lot by 97 and 99%, respectively. Cumulative mass reductions for sediment, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus all exceeded 99% by mass. The findings of this study have significant implications for areas with karst geology: (1)?current design recommendations of lining the bottom of BRCs with clay may not be sufficient to prevent large amounts of water from infiltrating into surrounding soils; and (2)?in areas with significant elevation changes, designing BRCs deeper than the typical 0.6–1.2?m increases the feasibility of retrofits and provides substantial water quality and quantity benefits.     

Fuzzy Analysis of Slope-Area Discharge Estimates

When velocity estimates of channel flows are not available, the slope-area method is widely used to make discharge estimates. The accuracy of such estimates depends on many factors but is generally believed to be low. In this study, fuzzy set analyses were used to compute the distribution of slope-area discharge estimates, with the distribution very similar to that assessed using statistical methods used in hydrology. The effects of errors in channel roughness, channel width, channel side-slopes, and flow depth on the accuracy of discharges were assessed. The large errors possible in channel roughness are a primary source of error in discharge estimates. Channel incision and vegetal growth are shown to significantly influence the accuracy of slope-area discharge estimates and the length of time before a slope-area rating curve should be recalculated. Records as short as 10 years can be seriously biased due to a failure to account for the effects of incision or vegetal growth.     

Statistical Moments of Polynomial Dimensional Decomposition

This technical note presents explicit formulas for calculating the response moments of stochastic systems by polynomial dimensional decomposition entailing independent random input with arbitrary probability measures. The numerical results indicate that the formulas provide accurate, convergent, and computationally efficient estimates of the second-moment properties.     

New Method for Estimation of Discharge

A new technique for drawing isovel patterns in an open or closed channel is presented. It is assumed that the velocity at each arbitrary point in the conduit is affected by the hydraulic characteristics of the boundary. While any velocity profile can be applied to the model, a power-law formula is used here. In addition to the isovels patterns, the energy and momentum correction factors (α and β), the ratio of mean to maximum velocity (V/umax), and the position of the maximum velocity are calculated. To examine the results obtained, the model was applied to a pipe with a circular cross section. A comparison between the profiles of the proposed model and the available power-law profile indicated that the two profiles were coincident with each other over the majority of the cross section. Furthermore, the predicted isovels were compared with velocity measurements in the main flow direction obtained along the centerline and lateral direction of a rectangular flume. The estimated discharge, based on measured points on the upper half of the flow depth away from the boundaries was within ±7% of the measured and much better in comparison to the prediction of one- and two-point methods. The prediction of the depth-averaged velocity values for the River Severn in the United Kingdom shows a good agreement with the measured data and the best analytical results obtained by the depth-averaged Navier–Stokes equations.     

Statistical Modeling of the Serviceability of Sewage Pumps

Sewage pumping stations represent an element of the sewer system, which is directly responsible for affecting serviceability; i.e., failing pumps may result in combined sewer overflows or flooding. However, failures of sewage pumps are not yet incorporated in sewer assessments due to lack of data. This paper presents the analysis of pump failure data provided by two sewer management authorities in The Netherlands. Pump failures have been studied accounting for the nature of the failures, the operation and maintenance procedures of the management authority, the aging of the pumps, and the changes in the environment of pumps. The analysis shows that sewage pumps fail relatively often due to the composition of sewage and the discontinuous operation of the pumps. The interarrival time and the duration of failures are highly variable and independent of the specific function of the pump. Resulting pump failure characteristics are applied in a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the impact of failures on combined sewer overflow volumes. The results indicate that the serviceability of sewer systems is significantly affected by failing pumps. Therefore, including pump availability in sewer system assessments should be considered.     

Statistical Damage Constitutive Model of Quasi-Brittle Materials

Recent studies have shown that statistical damage mechanics is one effective method to study the failure process of quasi-brittle materials. There are two key problems in setting up the statistical damage constitutive model of quasi-brittle materials, namely, determining the microunit strength and the parameters of statistical distribution that the microunit strength obeys. The four-parameter criterion is a failure criterion consisting of four unknown parameters. When the four parameters equal appropriate values, it may become the Drucker–Prager criterion (for rock), Mohr–Coulomb criterion (for rock), and Hsieh–Ting–Chen criterion (for concrete), so the four-parameter criterion may be used to simulate the elastoplastic behavior of rock and concrete quasi-brittle materials. In the paper, microunit strength is determined with the four-parameter criterion, thus the statistical damage constitutive model suits rock and concrete. The deficiencies of existing methods in determining the distribution parameters are investigated, and a new method for determining the distribution parameters is proposed. First, the theoretical relationships between the parameters and the strain and stress at the peak point of material failure curve are derived; second, the approximate relations between the strain and stress at the peak point of material failure curve and confining pressure are established through the curve fitting method; finally, the relations between the parameters and confining pressure are established. The proposed statistical damage softening constitutive model of quasi-brittle materials has universal meaning, the determination of distribution parameters has strict theoretical basis, and the distribution parameters can be conveniently obtained with general triaxial tests. Numerical examples are also presented to validate the model.     

Comparison of Statistical Deterioration Models for Water Distribution Networks

The use of water main break history as a proxy for condition has become common practice because of the high costs associated with direct assessments. Statistical deterioration models predict future water main breaks on the basis of historical patterns. Many municipalities are beginning to understand the value of utilizing water pipe break histories to manage their noncritical distribution networks via deterioration models. This paper presents a generic IDEF0 process model for developing water main deterioration models. Two common statistical deterioration models for water pipes are compared: rate-of-failure models (ROF) and transition-state (TS) models. ROF models extrapolate the breakage rate for a particular cohort of pipes and do not differentiate between the times between successive failures. On the other hand, transition-state models attempt to model the time between successive failures for pipes. This paper presents a comparison and analysis of ROF models and transition-state models by using a single data set for cast- and ductile-iron pipes in the City of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The paper compares the models’ ability to support breakage forecasting, long-term strategic planning, and short-term tactical planning. Best practices for pipe segmentation in support of water main deterioration models are presented.     

Multislit Weir Characteristics

The slit weir has been recently shown to be effective in measuring very small discharge rates. In this study, the slit weir concept is extended to permit one to measure both very low and very high discharge rates accurately. For this purpose, the hydrodynamic concept of images is adopted to form a bank of multislit weirs in which the individual slit weirs have nearly identical flow characteristics. The discharge coefficient of multislit weirs is determined experimentally using the measured discharges and the corresponding heads causing weir flow. The relationship between the discharge coefficient and the main dimensionless parameters is investigated. It is concluded that the discharge coefficient can be represented solely as a function of the Reynolds number.     

Statistical Analysis of BTEX Surface Soil Regulatory Guidance Values

Residential surface soil regulatory guidance values (RGVs) specify the threshold at which soil contamination requires action. Usually, these are risk-based values based on child ingestion, inhalation, and dermal exposure. Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX) are among the five most commonly regulated soil contaminants in the United States and worldwide. More than 100 regulatory jurisdictions have established surface soil RGVs for BTEX compounds. Analysis of these values indicates that they vary by several orders of magnitude and appear to fit a lognormal random variable model with values well dispersed across the number spans. The RGVs applied to benzene are statistically distinct from those applied to TEX contamination, but the TEX values appear to be statistically indistinguishable. The magnitude of difference between TEX RGVs of different jurisdictions appears to be more significant than differences in the T, E, and X values specified by any one jurisdiction. Although value distributions are dominated by randomness, some contain clusters of points that are unlikely to be random and may represent consensus on appropriate values. Where “consensus clusters” exist, they should be identified and explored. The mechanistic explanations for cluster values may yield methods of reducing RGV variability.     

关于铁路运输号码制统计方法的研究

铁路运输业掌握车辆和统计车辆停留时间有2种方法可供选择：一是号码制,一是非号码制。非号码制比较简单,不精确;而号码制精确,但复杂。可是在今天信息化时代再复杂的问题计算机都能解决。所以在2007年鞍钢铁运公司信息化建设中的ERP系统毅然决然地采用了号码制。号码制首次在鞍钢铁运公司应用,既体现出了它的优点又觉察到它的弱点,甚至是缺陷。通过对缺陷的修复,使号码制变得比较完善了,成为“新号码制”。     

Refined Energy Correction for Calibration of Submerged Radial Gates

The energy-momentum (E-M) method for calibrating submerged radial gates was refined using a large laboratory data set collected at the Bureau of Reclamation hydraulics laboratory in the 1970s. The original E-M method was accurate in free flow, and when the gate significantly controls submerged flow, but for large gate openings with low head loss through the gate, discharge prediction errors were sometimes large (approaching 70%). Several empirical factors were investigated with the laboratory data, including the combined upstream energy loss and velocity distribution factor and the submerged flow energy correction. The utility of the existing upstream energy loss and velocity distribution factor relation was extended to larger Reynolds numbers. The relation between the relative energy correction and the relative submergence of the vena contracta was shown to be sensitive to the relative jet thickness. A refined energy correction model was developed, which significantly improved the accuracy of submerged flow discharge predictions. Although the focus of this work was radial gates, the energy correction concept and these refinements potentially have application to all submerged sluice gates.