Increasing precipitation extremes are one of the possible consequences of a warmer climate. These may exceed the capacity of urban drainage systems, and thus impact the urban environment. Because short‐duration precipitation events are primarily responsible for flooding in urban systems, it is important to assess the response of extreme precipitation at hourly (or sub‐hourly) scales to a warming climate. This study aims to evaluate the projected changes in extreme rainfall events across the region of Sicily (Italy) and, for two urban areas, to assess possible changes in Depth‐Duration‐Frequency (DDF) curves. We used Regional Climate Model outputs from Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment for Europe area ensemble simulations at a ~12 km spatial resolution, for the current period and 2 future horizons under the Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 scenario. Extreme events at the daily scale were first investigated by comparing the quantiles estimated from rain gauge observations and Regional Climate Model outputs. Second, we implemented a temporal downscaling approach to estimate rainfall for sub‐daily durations from the modelled daily precipitation, and, lastly, we analysed future projections at daily and sub‐daily scales. A frequency distribution was fitted to annual maxima time series for the sub‐daily durations to derive the DDF curves for 2 future time horizons and the 2 urban areas. The overall results showed a raising of the growth curves for the future horizons, indicating an increase in the intensity of extreme precipitation, especially for the shortest durations. The DDF curves highlight a general increase of extreme quantiles for the 2 urban areas, thus underlining the risk of failure of the existing urban drainage systems under more severe events. 相似文献
RC structural slender walls under large seismic excitation are expected to reach base moment capacity mainly affected by the first vibration mode. However, the base shear could be affected by higher modes once yielding in flexure has occurred, which might result in base shear underestimation in linear design. In this work, an experimental program is carried out on five RC rectangular walls 1:10 scaled. All five specimens considered irregularities at base, common in construction and one specimen did not consider shear reinforcement or boundary detailing. Tests are carried on a unidirectional shaking table and excitation is based on two Chile earthquake records with different intensities. Damage is concentrated at the wall base for all specimens; primary due to flexure with some participation of shear. For one of the records an average amplification of 1.3 is obtained, and a decrease in height of the resultant equivalent lateral force closes to 0.4 hw. By increasing the intensity of the input record, amplification grows to an average of 1.7, while it decreases drastically when subjected to input records with low frequency content. No significant difference is observed in shear amplification in specimens with a base central opening, nor with setback, even though the cracking and failure mode was different for such specimens. Ductility demand shows no correlation when two different earthquakes are considered, whereas the frequency content and Arias intensity (Ia) of the input record directly affected the shear amplification. 相似文献
This paper analyzes the spatial dynamics of Brazilian regional inequalities between 1872 and 2000 using contemporary tools.
The first part of the paper provides new estimates of income per capita in 1872 by municipality using census and electoral
information on income by occupation. The level of analysis is the Minimum Comparable Areas 1872–2000 developed by Reis et
al. (áreas mínimas comparáveis para os períodos intercensitários de 1872 a 2000, 2007). These areas are the least aggregation
of adjacent municipalities required to allow consistent geographic area comparisons between census years. In the second section
of the paper, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, Markov chains and stochastic kernel techniques (spatially conditioned) are
applied to the dataset. The results suggest that, in broad terms, the spatial pattern of income distribution in Brazil during
that period of time has remained stable. 相似文献
This paper focuses on the shrinkage behavior of soil specimens involving sand, kaolinite, and kaolinite/sand mixtures subjected to desiccation under controlled conditions. Both, free and restrained shrinkage conditions are studied. The experiments show that pure soils do not curl upon unrestrained shrinkage; however, (under the same conditions) kaolinite/sand mixtures exhibited a marked curling. Furthermore, the mixture with the higher sand content broke through the middle of the sample after displaying a significant curling. Soils subjected to restricted shrinkage developed cracks with slight curling. To simulate the observed behavior, a mechanical model able to reproduce the detachment of the soil sample from the mold is proposed in this work and implemented in a fully coupled hydro-mechanical finite-element code. It is concluded that suction and differential shrinkage are key factors influencing the curling behavior of soils. The proposed framework was able to satisfactorily explain and reproduce the different stages and features of soil behavior observed in the experiments.
Eutrophication is considered the most important water quality problem in freshwaters and coastal waters worldwide promoting frequent occurrence of blooms of potentially toxic cyanobacteria. Removal of cyanobacteria from the water column using a combination of coagulant and ballast is a promising technique for mitigation and an alternative to the use of algaecides. In laboratory, we tested experimentally the efficiency of two coagulants, polyaluminium chloride (PAC) and chitosan (made of shrimp shells), alone and combined with two ballasts: red soil (RS) and the own lagoon sediment, to remove natural populations of cyanobacteria, from an urban brackish coastal lagoon. PAC was a very effective coagulant when applied at low doses (≤8 mg Al L?1) and settled the cyanobacteria, while at high doses (≥16 mg Al L?1) large flocks aggregated in the top of test tubes. In contrast, chitosan was not able to form flocks, even in high doses (>16 mg L?1) and did not efficiently settle down cyanobacteria when combined with ballast. The RS itself removed 33–47 % of the cyanobacteria. This removal was strongly enhanced when combined with PAC in a dose-dependent matter; 8 mg Al L?1 was considered the best dose to be applied. The lagoon sediment alone did not promote any settling of cyanobacteria but removal was high when combined with PAC. Combined coagulant and ballast seems a very efficient, cheap, fast and safe curative measure to lessen the harmful cyanobacteria bloom nuisance in periods when particularly needed, such as around the 2016 Olympics in Jacarepaguá Lagoon. 相似文献
Critical rainfall thresholds for landslides are powerful tools for preventing landslide hazard. The thresholds are commonly estimated empirically starting from rainfall events that triggered landslides in the past. The creation of the appropriate rainfall–landslide database is one of the main efforts in this approach. In fact, an accurate agreement between the landslide and rainfall information, in terms of location and timing, is essential in order to correctly estimate the rainfall–landslide relationships. A further issue is taking into account the average moisture conditions prior the triggering event, which reasonably may be crucial in determining the sufficient amount of precipitation. In this context, the aim of this paper is exploiting historical landslide and rainfall data in a spatial database for the derivation of critical rainfall thresholds for landslide occurrence in Sicily, southern Italy. The hourly rainfall events that caused landslides occurred in the twentieth century were specifically identified and reconstructed. A procedure was proposed to automatically convert rain guages charts recorded on paper tape into digital format and then to provide the cumulative rainfall hyetograph in digital format. This procedure is based on a segmentation followed by signal recognition techniques which allow to digitalize and to recognize the hyetograph automatically. The role of rainfall prior to the landslide events was taken into account by including in the analysis the rainfall occurred 5, 15 and 30 days before each landslide. Finally, cumulated rainfall duration thresholds for different exceedance probability levels were determined. The obtained thresholds resulted in agreement with the regional curves proposed by other authors for the same area; antecedent rainfall turned out to be particularly important in triggering landslides. 相似文献
This paper introduces an efficiency improvement to the sparse‐grid geometric sampling methodology for assessing uncertainty in non‐linear geophysical inverse problems. Traditional sparse‐grid geometric sampling works by sampling in a reduced‐dimension parameter space bounded by a feasible polytope, e.g., a generalization of a polygon to dimension above two. The feasible polytope is approximated by a hypercube. When the polytope is very irregular, the hypercube can be a poor approximation leading to computational inefficiency in sampling. We show how the polytope can be regularized using a rotation and scaling based on principal component analysis. This simple regularization helps to increase the efficiency of the sampling and by extension the computational complexity of the uncertainty solution. We demonstrate this on two synthetic 1D examples related to controlled‐source electromagnetic and amplitude versus offset inversion. The results show an improvement of about 50% in the performance of the proposed methodology when compared with the traditional one. However, as the amplitude versus offset example shows, the differences in the efficiency of the proposed methodology are very likely to be dependent on the shape and complexity of the original polytope. However, it is necessary to pursue further investigations on the regularization of the original polytope in order to fully understand when a simple regularization step based on rotation and scaling is enough. 相似文献
Studies on the geomorphological evolution of the South American passive margin have been based on the pediplanation model, which predicts that its morphology is a response to regional uniform uplift and concomitant development of erosion surfaces. We combined remote sensing, geological mapping, lithostratigraphic and facies analyses, and luminescence dating in the Cariatá trough, northeastern Brazil, in order to determine how brittle tectonics and climate influenced colluviation and the shaping of local landforms in the Quaternary. Our work indicates that Cariatá is an asymmetrical trough 40 km long, 25 km wide, 250–550 m deep, and delimited by ENE–WSW-trending faults to the north and south. We recognized an ENE–WSW-oriented compression related to a strike-slip faulting regime, which corresponds to the present-day stress field in the region. This faulting event led to the deposition of colluvial fans, shed from adjacent uplifted crustal blocks, in a tectonically controlled depression. The colluvial succession is 45 m thick and presents two facies assemblages that filled the southern and, in particular, the northern borders of the trough: non-cohesive debrisflow and mudflow deposits. Optically stimulated luminescence dates of the sedimentary infill yielded ages at 224–128 ka and 45–28 ka, dominated by debrisflow and mudflow deposits, respectively. These ages may be over-estimated due to poor bleaching of colluvium, but they and our field data suggest that the margins of the trough were tectonically uplifted and eroded twice in the Late Pleistocene. The spasmodic colluvial accretion reflects the occurrence of high-magnitude, low-recurrence episodes probably associated with climate shifts in a semi-arid hillslope system. It follows that the present-day low-lying piedmont in which the Cariatá trough occurs is a juxtaposition of surfaces of various ages. This trough may have counterparts across the region. These conclusions do not corroborate the application of the cyclical pediplanation hypothesis in the area. 相似文献