Papers by Ioana I. Popescu
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2019
This research proposes a modelling framework in which simulation and optimisation tools are used ... more This research proposes a modelling framework in which simulation and optimisation tools are used together in order to obtain optimal reservoir operation rules for the multiobjective Dautieng reservoir on the Saigon River (Vietnam), where downstream salinity control is the main objective. In this framework, hydrodynamic and salinity transport modelling of the Saigon River is performed using the MIKE 11 modelling system. In the first optimisation step this simulation model is coupled with the population simplex evolution (PSE) algorithm from the AUTOCAL optimisation utility (available as a part of MIKE 11) to estimate to estimate the discharge required to meet salinity standards at the downstream location of Hoa Phu pumping station for public water supply. In the second optimisation step, with the use of MATLAB optimisation toolbox, an elitist multiobjective genetic algorithm is coupled with a simple water balance model of the Dautieng reservoir to investigate how the optimised discharges obtained from the first optimisation step can be balanced with the other objectives of the reservoir. The results indicate that optimised releases improve the performance of the reservoir especially on controlling salinity at Hoa Phu pumping station. In addition, the study demonstrates that use of smaller time steps in optimisation gives a closer match between varying demands and releases.
Environmental Engineering and Management Journal, 2015
Along with nowadays growth of urban areas and population, it is more and more important to have b... more Along with nowadays growth of urban areas and population, it is more and more important to have better water resources management, especially regarding drinking water supply. Maintaining a good state of a water distribution network poses challenges that are addressed by research community. Two of the main challenges in management of water distribution systems are the reduction of energy consumption due to the high pumping requirements in some systems and/or reduction of water losses. European Commission is encouraging research in this area and currently has funded the EU FP7 project ICeWATER, that aims at development of new ICT strategies for management and operation of water supply systems. Present article focuses on the presentation of the solution for reducing energy consumption, as it was proposed within the project. The solution is applicable to any water distribution system; therefore the principles and methodology demonstrated herein are general.
In this work we present an application of coupled HEC RAS river model with NSGAII multi-objective... more In this work we present an application of coupled HEC RAS river model with NSGAII multi-objective optimization algorithm, for optimal operations of flood protection storage areas in the downstream part of Huai River in China. During flood, these storage areas are used for decreasing the flood water level downstream in order to protect the important, densely populated city of Bengbu. However, the same storage areas have also been used by local population, as both residential and agricultural zones, with high damage potential in case of flooding. The application investigates optimal operations of opening and closing the gates that connect the storage areas to the main river, which minimize the damage in the storage areas without compromising the protection of Bengbu. Two objectives are formulated related to: 1) downstream risk of flooding in Bengbu, and 2) damages in the storage areas. Decision variables are stage differences between the river and a given storage area, used for contro...
EPiC Series in Engineering
Accurate flood models require large amounts of data inputs which are not always available. Recent... more Accurate flood models require large amounts of data inputs which are not always available. Recently data coming from other sources, such as crowdsourced data, have been increasingly explored in the scientific literature. However, there is no clear methodology showing where willing citizens could go for data collection. Thus, this study proposes an optimization framework to generate and prioritize pathways that citizens could take while collecting data. The proposed framework is tested on the Sontea-Fortuna area, part of the Danube Delta, where water stagnation is threatening the local ecosystems. Among the pathways generated, results analysis showed that pathways closer to the starting point were more effective.
Reviews of Geophysics, 2018
Data are essential in all areas of geophysics. They are used to better understand and manage syst... more Data are essential in all areas of geophysics. They are used to better understand and manage systems, either directly or via models. Given the complexity and spatiotemporal variability of geophysical systems (e.g., precipitation), a lack of sufficient data is a perennial problem, which is exacerbated by various drivers, such as climate change and urbanization. In recent years, crowdsourcing has become increasingly prominent as a means of supplementing data obtained from more traditional sources, particularly due to its relatively low implementation cost and ability to increase the spatial and/or temporal resolution of data significantly. Given the proliferation of different crowdsourcing methods in geophysics and the promise they have shown, it is timely to assess the state of the art in this field, to identify potential issues and map out a way forward. In this paper, crowdsourcing-based data acquisition methods that have been used in seven domains of geophysics, including weather, precipitation, air pollution, geography, ecology, surface water, and natural hazard management, are discussed based on a review of 162 papers. In addition, a novel framework for categorizing these methods is introduced and applied to the methods used in the seven domains of geophysics considered in this review. This paper also features a review of 93 papers dealing with issues that are common to data acquisition methods in different domains of geophysics, including the management of crowdsourcing projects, data quality, data processing, and data privacy. In each of these areas, the current status is discussed and challenges and future directions are outlined.
Procedia Engineering, 2016
This study introduces the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for daily and long term ... more This study introduces the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for daily and long term operations of the Water Distribution Network of Milan operated by the utility Metropolitana Milanese S.p.A (MM), developed during the European project ICeWater. The DSS has been developed for the two main problems of the utility by applying multi-objective optimization for pump scheduling and sectorization of the system. The DSS was built based on open source software on the server and the client side, making its applicability to other utilities possible. This paper presents the architecture of the DSS components and shows the advantages in the application of such tool in the operation for MM. A test for validation of the DSS for pump scheduling has been applied in a subsector named Abbiategrasso. Some results are presented showing the benefits for the utility by using the DSS in their daily operations.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2015
Hydrological data collection requires deployment of physical infrastructure like rain gauges, wat... more Hydrological data collection requires deployment of physical infrastructure like rain gauges, water level gauges, as well as use of expensive equipment like echo sounders. Many countries around the world have recorded a decrease in deployment of physical infrastructure for hydrological measurements; developing countries especially have less of this infrastructure and, where it exists, it is poorly maintained. Satellite remote sensing can bridge this gap, and has been applied by hydrologists over the years, with the earliest applications in water body and flood mapping. With the availability of more optical satellites with relatively low temporal resolutions globally, satellite data are commonly used for mapping of water bodies, testing of inundation models, precipitation monitoring, and mapping of flood extent. Use of satellite data to estimate hydrological parameters continues to increase due to use of better sensors, improvement in knowledge of and utilization of satellite data, and expansion of research topics. A review of applications of satellite remote sensing in surface water modelling, mapping and parameter estimation is presented, and its limitations for surface water applications are also discussed.
This publication entitled 'Innovation Sensors for Crowdsourced River Measurements Collection&... more This publication entitled 'Innovation Sensors for Crowdsourced River Measurements Collection' published at the 16th International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology in Rhodes, Greece between 4 and 7 September 2019.
Urban Water Systems & Floods II, May 23, 2018
Flood risk prediction has been traditionally based on models that are developed from time-series ... more Flood risk prediction has been traditionally based on models that are developed from time-series of data collected over long periods of time from expensive and hard to maintain in-situ sensors available only in specific areas. The climate change has made the monitoring of the flood events imperative and has raised the question of whether the development of flood models can be disengaged from the in-situ sensors. The Scent toolbox is based on smart collaborative and innovating technologies that augment costly in-situ infrastructure, enabling citizens to become the "eyes" of the policy makers by monitoring Land Cover/ Land Use (LC/LU) changes in their everyday activities and environmental phenomena like floods by crowdsourcing relevant information. Experts in the field of flood models define areas of interest through a specifically designed tool and ask volunteers to collect specific data needed at these areas using engaging gaming applications. These data may include images that are processed through an Intelligent engine and classified based on a LC/LU taxonomy, video of floating objects and images of water level indicators that allow the automated extraction of the water velocity and the water level and sensor measurements with low-cost portable environmental sensors. It will be described in detail how the volunteers are engaged to collect these data, how the data are validated, and how they are used to create improved LC/LU maps and contribute to the development of improved flood models reducing the cost and infrastructure needed.
Geosciences, 2019
This article addresses the issue of flood management using four flood storage areas in the middle... more This article addresses the issue of flood management using four flood storage areas in the middle section of Huai River in China which protect the important downstream city of Bengbu. The same areas are also used by the local population as residential and agricultural zones. An optimization problem is therefore posed, with two objectives of simultaneously minimizing the downstream flood risk in Bengbu city and the storage areas’ economic damages. The methodology involved development of river flood models using HEC-RAS, with varying complexity, such as 1-dimensional (1D) model with storage areas represented as lumped conceptual reservoirs, and 2-dimensional (2D) models with detailed representation of the terrain, land-use and hydrodynamics in the storage areas. Experiments of coupling these models with global optimization algorithms (NSGA-II, PESA-II and SPEA-II) were performed (using the HEC-RAS Controller), in which the two objective functions were minimized, while using stage diff...
Environmental Modelling & Software, 2016
The dominant processes of sediment transport and morphological changes are different between rive... more The dominant processes of sediment transport and morphological changes are different between rivers and coastal areas. In many situations rivers, estuaries and coasts need to be modelled together in an integrated way. This paper investigates the capability of a freely available, open source, coastal morphodynamic software (XBeach) to estimate sediment transport and morphological changes in fluvial environments. Four benchmark tests were designed to test code performance and included simple unidirectional flow cases, complex topography, fluvial flood flows (hydrographs) and dam break scenarios (fast transient, supercritical flow fields). The results were compared to laboratory experimental results or simulations results from industry standard software. Analysis suggested that the coastal morphodynamic code is able to simulate sediment transport and morphological changes in a fluvial environment, but there are limitations to what can be modelled and the accuracy to which they are modelled. General morphological trends are replicated reasonably well by the code however specific bed forms and rapid erosive responses are less well modelled. Suggestions are made for applicability of the code, code improvement and future work.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2018
Citizen contributions to science have been successfully implemented in many fields, and water res... more Citizen contributions to science have been successfully implemented in many fields, and water resources is one of them. Through citizens, it is possible to collect data and obtain a more integrated decision-making process. Specifically, data scarcity has always been an issue in flood modelling, which has been addressed in the last decades by remote sensing and is already being discussed in the citizen science context. With this in mind, this article aims to review the literature on the topic and analyse the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. The literature on monitoring, mapping and modelling, was evaluated according to the flood-related variable citizens contributed to. Pros and cons of the collection/analysis methods were summarised. Then, pertinent publications were mapped into the flood modelling cycle, considering how citizen data properties (spatial and temporal coverage, uncertainty and volume) are related to its integration into modelling. It was clear that the number of studies in the area is rising. There are positive experiences reported in collection and analysis methods, for instance with velocity and land cover, and also when modelling is concerned, for example by using social media mining. However, matching the data properties necessary for each part of the modelling cycle with citizen-generated data is still challenging. Nevertheless, the concept that citizen contributions can be used for simulation and forecasting is proved and further work lies in continuing to develop and improve not only methods for collection and analysis, but certainly for integration into models as well. Finally, in view of recent automated sensors and satellite technologies, it is through studies as the ones analysed in this article that the value of citizen contributions, complementing such technologies, is demonstrated.
Abstract—As the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has adopted WaterML 2.0 as encoding standard for... more Abstract—As the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has adopted WaterML 2.0 as encoding standard for representing hydro-meteorological time series data, the water community is in need of tools and methods for delivering such data over the web. This article presents experiences with one approach for publishing water-related data over the web based on the OGC WaterML 2.0-GeoServer framework and methods developed by
www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/16/4637/2012/ doi:10.5194/hess-16-4637-2012
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2019
Bangladesh is situated in a low-lying delta of three major rivers: Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna... more Bangladesh is situated in a low-lying delta of three major rivers: Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. A total of 80 % of the country's land is located below 10 m a.m.s.l. (above mean sea level) (Heitzman and Worden, 1989), and it is formed of sediments carried by the above-mentioned rivers. The population of Bangladesh was about 131.5 million by the year 2000 (World Bank, 2018), of which about 49 % were living in coastal zones (Neumann et al., 2015). The coastal areas of Bangladesh are flooded frequently due to cyclone-induced
Environmental Engineering and Management Journal, 2015
Decision support systems (DSS) have been wildly developed in the recent decades, in various areas... more Decision support systems (DSS) have been wildly developed in the recent decades, in various areas of decision making. In the 21 st century, the advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have brought the era of cloud computing, in which network-distributed resources (simulation and optimization models, data, etc.) are integrated in decision support applications. The aim of the present article is to present the application of web-based decision support systems (WBDSS) in the area of water supply networks (WSN). A simplified method to integrate ICT solutions, comprising two multi-objective optimization algorithms, and one hydraulic simulation model, into one WBDSS is described. Details of the architecture, implementation, and the perspective of future development are addressed. The WBDSS is developed for one particular case study that represents one zone of the water distribution network of city of Milan in Italy. This zone, named Abbiategrasso pilot zone, is supplied by pumped water, and has been isolated from the rest of the water distribution network for purposes of testing new operational strategies, leading to increased energy and water efficiency and improved pressure management. The WBDSS has been developed and applied in this zone for pump scheduling optimization. Although the focus of the article is on WBDSS, selected results from this optimization are also presented. This research is part of the ICeWater project, which is funded by EU FP7 Programme.
38th IAHR World Congress - "Water: Connecting the World"
Flood risk exist when assets are vulnerable and exposed to a potential harm, losses or damage fro... more Flood risk exist when assets are vulnerable and exposed to a potential harm, losses or damage from a likely flood event. Apart from being the most frequent natural disaster worldwide, flood hazard has been reported to account for about one third of all natural disasters. There is an expected rise in future flood events due to climate change, urbanization and rapid population growth, according to the 2013 IPCC report. Climate change brings more flood risk due to increase frequency of heavy rainfall, increased soil saturation leading to higher runoff and sea level rise. Romania is one of the countries committed to fight climate change, by aligning to the "Europe 2020 Strategy" objective, which is an EU framework for moving towards a greener, low carbon and climate risk resilient economy for its member states. Integration of mitigation and adaptation actions into Romania's national strategies, policies, and programs are important steps to achieve the stated goals. Dams are one of the important country's infrastructure which are also used for flood risk management. Due to their importance they are checked for safety regularly. However in the context of climate change and new sustainable flood risk management strategies, policies defining key performance indicators for dam safety evaluations needs to be reevaluated. Present paper presents an evaluation of the dam safety strategies for three different types of dams in the Mures basin in Romania. Mures river is the 3rd longest river in Romania draining a basin area of 27890 km 2. Three different dams will be evaluated against key performance indicators in actual conditions and in conditions of high flood risk. Evaluation of the validity of the indicators will be assessed. The three dams are: Zetea, which is a permanent storage; Vanatori, which has a temporarily storage ; and a barrage dam and water intake, Copsa Mica.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2014
During winter the Yellow River in China is frequently subjected to ice flood disasters. Possible ... more During winter the Yellow River in China is frequently subjected to ice flood disasters. Possible dike breaking due to ice floods poses a serious threat to the part of the region located along the river, in particular the Ning–Meng reach (including Ningxia Hui and the Inner Mongolia autonomous regions). Due to its special geographical location and river flow direction, the ice dams and jams lead to dike breaking and overtopping on the embankment, which has resulted in huge casualties and property losses throughout history. Therefore, there is a growing need to develop capability in forecasting and analysing river ice floods. Research into ice floods along the river is taking place at the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC). A numerical model is one of the essential parts of the current research going on at the YRCC, which can be used to supplement the inadequacies in the field and lab studies which are being carried out to help understand the physical processes of river ice on...
Environmental Engineering and Management Journal
Localized ENVironmental and health Information Services for all (Lenvis) is a European Union FP7 ... more Localized ENVironmental and health Information Services for all (Lenvis) is a European Union FP7 research project aimed at developing an innovative collaborative decision support network for exchange of location-based environmental and health services between all stakeholders, for enhanced capacity to assess population exposure and health risks, and better management of the concerned ecosystems. Lenvis includes health indicators as integral part of the environmental management. In Lenvis data are treated as metadata improving the interoperability among different components. The information provided by Lenvis is accessible to different groups of users: citizens and professionals in water and air area, as well as to local health authorities and health care providers. This paper presents the research results of Lenvis project, the system which is the main outcome of the project, and the advantages of using the results of the project by local authorities' practitioners and the public.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions
During winter the Yellow River in China is frequently subjected to ice flood disasters. Possible ... more During winter the Yellow River in China is frequently subjected to ice flood disasters. Possible dike-breaking due to ice floods poses a serious threat to the part of the region located along the river, in particular the Ning-Meng reach (including Ningxia Hui and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). Due to its special geographical location and 5 river flow direction, the ice dams and jams lead to dike-breaking and overtopping on the embankment, which has resulted in huge casualties and property losses throughout history. Therefore, there is a growing need to develop capability in forecasting and analysing river ice floods. Research into ice floods along the river is taking place at the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC). A numerical model is one of the 10 essential parts of the current research going on at the YRCC, which can be used to supplement the inadequacies in the field and lab studies which are being carried out to help understand the physical processes of river ice on the Yellow River. Based on the available data about the Ning-Meng reach of the Yellow River, the YRCC River Ice Dynamic Model (YRIDM) has been tested for capabilities to conduct ice flood forecasting.
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Papers by Ioana I. Popescu