Temporal Hydrologic Alterations Coupled with Climate Variability and Drought for Transboundary River Basins

Climate change (CC) and drought episode impacts linked with anthropogenic pressure have become an increasing concern for policy makers and water resources managers. The current research presents a comprehensive methodology but simple approach for predicting the annual streamflow alteration based on drought indices and hydrological alteration indicators. This has been achieved depending on the evaluation of drought severity and CC impacts during the human intervention periods to separate the influence of climatic abnormality and measure the hydrologic deviations as a result of streamflow regulation configurations. As a representative case study, the Lesser Zab River Basin in northern Iraq has been chosen. In order to analyse the natural flow regime, 34 hydrological years of streamflow (1931–1965) prior to the main dam construction were assessed. The Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA) method has been applied to quantify the hydrological alterations of various flow characteristics. In addition, an easy approach for hydrological drought prediction in relatively small basins grounded on meteorological parameters during the early months of the hydrological year has been presented. The prediction was accomplished by implementing the one-dimensional drought examination and the reconnaissance drought index (RDI) for evaluating the severity of meteorological drought. The proposed methodology is founded on linear regression relations connecting the RDI of 3, 6, and 12 months and the streamflow drought index (SDI). The results are critical for circumstances where an early exploration of meteorological drought is obtainable. Outcomes assist water resources managers, engineers, policy makers and decision-makers responsible for mitigating the effects of CC.     

Effect of Extraordinary Large Floods on at-site Flood Frequency

The peak flow of extraordinary large floods that occur during a period of systematic record is a controversial problem for flood frequency analysis (FFA) using traditional methods. The present study suggests that such floods be treated as historic flood data even though their historical period is unknown. In this paper, the extraordinary large flood peak was first identified using statistical outlier tests and normal probability plots. FFA was then applied with and without the extraordinary large floods. In this step, two goodness-of-fit tests including mean absolute relative deviation and mean squared relative deviation were used to identify the best-fit probability distributions. Next, the generalized extreme value (GEV), three-parameter lognormal (LN3), log-Pearson type III (LP3), and Wakeby (WAK) probability distributions were used to incorporate and adjust the extraordinary large floods with other systematic data. Finally, procedures with and without historical adjustment were compared for the extraordinary large floods in terms of goodness-of-fit and flood return-period quantiles. The results of this comparison indicate that historical adjustment from an operational perspective was more viable than without adjustment procedure. Furthermore, the results without adjustment were unreasonable (subject to over- and under-estimation) and produced physically unrealistic estimates that were not compatible with the study area. The proposed approach substantially improved the probability estimation of rare floods for efficient design of hydraulic structures, risk analysis, and floodplain management.     

Assessment of Sustainability in Water Supply-Demand Considering Uncertainties

Water is a vital resource for life on earth; hence its maintenance is very important. Different regions especially in arid and semi-arid areas are facing population growth and subsequent increase in the domestic, industrial and agricultural activities. Planning of water systems in order to be ready for future development conditions needs further studies on the estimation of the sustainable levels of demands based on the sustainable levels of supplies. In this study a threefold approach for estimating sustainability level of supply and demand in Ahachay river basin in northwestern part of Iran as a case study is taken. In the first method, the internal flows and the origins and final uses of the total resources for each subsystem are estimated and planning for sustainability use index is determined by calculating the available water. Second method introduced a simulation model which is utilized to estimate reliability, resiliency, vulnerability and maximum deficit for a river basin to determine a group sustainability index. In the third method, for evaluating the movement toward sustainability, an index is developed. This index includes parameters that are the difference between supply and demand, percentage of the satisfied demand, productivity of water resources and an indicator for evaluating the reduction of aquifer storage. Finally these methods are compared and a hybrid index combining the indices is developed. An uncertainty analysis is also performed to investigate the random nature of variables in estimating water balance and quantifying the water sustainability. This hybrid index can be used for evaluating the planning scenarios and for maintaining and improving the sustainable state of supply-demand for the region.     

A polar-based guided multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to search for optimal solutions interested by decision-makers in a logistics network design problem

In practical multi-objective optimization problems, respective decision-makers might be interested in some optimal solutions that have objective values closer to their specified values. Guided multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (guided MOEAs) have been significantly used to guide their evolutionary search direction toward these optimal solutions using by decision makers. However, most guided MOEAs need to be iteratively and interactively evaluated and then guided by decision-makers through re-formulating or re-weighting objectives, and it might negatively affect the algorithms performance. In this paper, a novel guided MOEA that uses a dynamic polar-based region around a particular point in objective space is proposed. Based on the region, new selection operations are designed such that the algorithm can guide the evolutionary search toward optimal solutions that are close to the particular point in objective space without the iterative and interactive efforts. The proposed guided MOEA is tested on the multi-criteria decision-making problem of flexible logistics network design with different desired points. Experimental results show that the proposed guided MOEA outperforms two most effective guided and non-guided MOEAs, R-NSGA-II and NSGA-II.     

Probing the state of absorbed water by diffusion technique

The diffusion coefficient of water, D_wm, across homogeneous cellulose acetate membranes of graded porosity ε (water content) are measured. At high values of porosity, D_wm varies monotonously as ε is varied. At a certain porosity ε_c, however, there is a sudden change in D_wm; and thereafter the change becomes linear again, but with a different slope. Diffusion coefficients are interpreted, through the Stokes-Einstein relation, in terms of the overall microscopic viscosities η_wm of the membrane matrix. The values of η_wm are then correlated with the equivalent pore size r of the membranes. It is discovered that the sudden change in D_wm (or η_wm) at ε_c correlates with similar changes in other properties such as hydraulic permeability and selectivity of the membrane. All these observations are then attributed to the water structure inside the membranes.     

SHeRo: Scalable hexapod robot for maintenance,repair, and operations

Improper maintenance, repair, and operations of societal centric structures can lead to catastrophic failures that drastically affect global economy, the environment, and everyday life. Due to the remote, cramped and highly irregular environmental nature of these structures, routine manual procedures and operations can be rather tedious, dangerous, and hazardous for humans. Automating maintenance, repair, and operations removes human workers from having to crawl within highly cluttered and constrained spaces, breathing in stale air mixed with fumes from welding or particulate from repair work, and provides higher reliability and consistency in the repair work. This paper introduces SHeRo, a scalable hexapod robot designed for maintenance, repair, and operations within remote, inaccessible, irregular, and hazardous environments. The scalability of the design enhances traditional hexapod robot designs by incorporating two prismatic joints into each leg. A detailed discussion on the design and realization of SHeRo is provided. An analysis on the stability and workspace of SHeRo is presented and a dynamic criterion is developed to integrate the concepts of robot stability and constant orientation workspace into a stable workspace. The analytical solution of the lateral stable workspace of SHeRo is derived along with a metric for comparing stable workspace between different robot configurations. A simulated demonstration and two physical experimental demonstrations are presented showing the advantage of introducing scalability into the hexapod robot design along with the workspace enhancement and flexibility of the scalable hexapod robot.     

Formal process algebraic modeling,verification, and analysis of an abstract Fuzzy Inference Cloud Service

In cloud computing, services play key roles. Services are well defined and autonomous components. Nowadays, the demand of using Fuzzy inference as a service is increasing in the domain of complex and critical systems. In such systems, along with the development of the software, the cost of detecting and fixing software defects increases. Therefore, using formal methods, which provide clear, concise, and mathematical interpretation of the system, is crucial for the design of these Fuzzy systems. To obtain this goal, we introduce the Fuzzy Inference Cloud Service (FICS) and propose a novel discipline for formal modeling of the FICS. The FICS provides the service of Fuzzy inference to the consumers. We also introduce four novel formal verification tests, which allow strict analysis of certain behavioral disciplines in the FICS as follows: (1) Internal consistency, which analyzes the service in a strict and delicate manner; (2) Deadlock freeness; (3) Divergence freeness; and (4) Goal reach ability. The four tests are discussed and the FICS is verified to ensure that it can pass all these tests.     

PGSW-OS: a novel approach for resource management in a semantic web operating system based on a P2P grid architecture

A web operating system is an operating system that users can access from any hardware at any location. A peer-to-peer (P2P) grid uses P2P communication for resource management and communication between nodes in a grid and manages resources locally in each cluster, and this provides a proper architecture for a web operating system. Use of semantic technology in web operating systems is an emerging field that improves the management and discovery of resources and services. In this paper, we propose PGSW-OS (P2P grid semantic Web OS), a model based on a P2P grid architecture and semantic technology to improve resource management in a web operating system through resource discovery with the aid of semantic features. Our approach integrates distributed hash tables (DHTs) and semantic overlay networks to enable semantic-based resource management by advertising resources in the DHT based upon their annotations to enable semantic-based resource matchmaking. Our model includes ontologies and virtual organizations. Our technique decreases the computational complexity of searching in a web operating system environment. We perform a simulation study using the Gridsim simulator, and our experiments show that our model provides enhanced utilization of resources, better search expressiveness, scalability, and precision.     

Admittance—Frequency Response in Zinc Oxide Varistor Ceramics

The lumped parameter/complex plane analysis technique revealed several contributions to the terminal admittance of the ZnO—Bi₂O₃ based varistor grain-boundary ac response. The terminal capacitance has been elucidated via the multiple trapping phenomena, a barrier layer polarization, and a resonance effect in the frequency range 10⁻²≤ f ≤ 10⁹ Hz. The characterization of the trapping relaxation behavior near ∼ 10⁵ Hz (∼ 10⁻⁶ s) provided a better understanding of a previously reported loss-peak. The possible nonuniformity in this trapping activity associated with its conductance term observed via the depression angle of a semicircular relaxation in the complex capacitance ( C *) plane has been postulated.     

Robust and stable flow shop scheduling with unexpected arrivals of new jobs and uncertain processing times

In real scheduling problems, some disruptions and unexpected events may occur. These disruptions cause the initial schedule to quickly become infeasible and non-optimal. In this situation, an appropriate rescheduling method should be used. In this paper, a new approach has been proposed to achieve stable and robust schedule despite uncertain processing times and unexpected arrivals of new jobs. This approach is a proactive–reactive method which uses a two-step procedure. In the first step an initial robust solution is produced proactively against uncertain processing times using robust optimization approach. This initial robust solution is more insensitive against the fluctuations of processing times in future. In the next step, when an unexpected disruption occurs, an appropriate reactive method is adopted to deal with this unexpected event. In fact, in the second step, the reactive approach determines the best modified sequence after any unexpected disruption based on the classical objective and performance measures. The robustness measure is implemented in the reactive approach to increase the performance of the real schedule after disruption. Computational results indicate that this method produces better solutions in comparison with four classical heuristic approaches according to effectiveness and performance of solutions.