Spatio-temporal landscape modelling for natural hazard vulnerability analysis in select watersheds of Central Western Ghats

Natural hazards such as landslides are triggered by numerous factors such as ground movements, rock falls, slope failure, debris flows, slope instability, etc. Changes in slope stability happen due to human intervention, anthropogenic activities, change in soil structure, loss or absence of vegetation (changes in land cover), etc. Loss of vegetation happens when the forest is fragmented due to anthropogenic activities. Hence land cover mapping with forest fragmentation can provide vital information for visualising the regions that require immediate attention from slope stability aspects. The main objective of this paper is to understand the rate of change in forest landscape from 1973 to 2004 through multi-sensor remote sensing data analysis. The forest fragmentation index presented here is based on temporal land use information and forest fragmentation model, in which the forest pixels are classified as patch, transitional, edge, perforated, and interior, that give a measure of forest continuity. The analysis carried out for five prominent watersheds of Uttara Kannada district– Aganashini, Bedthi, Kali, Sharavathi and Venkatpura revealed that interior forest is continuously decreasing while patch, transitional, edge and perforated forest show increasing trend. The effect of forest fragmentation on landslide occurrence was visualised by overlaying the landslide occurrence points on classified image and forest fragmentation map. The increasing patch and transitional forest on hill slopes are the areas prone to landslides, evident from the field verification, indicating that deforestation is a major triggering factor for landslides. This emphasises the need for immediate conservation measures for sustainable management of the landscape. Quantifying and describing land use - land cover change and fragmentation is crucial for assessing the effect of land management policies and environmental protection decisions.

Advances in the Mathematical Modelling of Hepatitis C Virus Dynamics

Mathematical models have provided key insights into the pathogenesis of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in vivo, suggested predominant mechanism(s) of drug action, explained confounding patterns of viral load changes in HCV infected patients undergoing therapy, and presented a framework for therapy optimization. In this article, I present an overview of the major advances in the mathematical modeling of HCV dynamics.

Effect of capillarity and heterogeneity in the numerical modelling of multiphase flow of fluids in unsaturated porous medium

The multiphase flow of fluids in the unsaturated porous medium is considered as a three phase flow of water, NAPL, and air simultaneously in the porous medium. The adaptive solution fully implicit modified sequential method is used for the numerical modelling. The effect of capillarity and heterogeneity effect at the interface between the media is studied and it is observed that the interface criteria has to be taken into account for the correct prediction of NAPL migration especially in heterogeneous media. The modified Newton Raphson method is used for the linearization and Hestines and Steifel Conjugate Gradient method is used as the solver.

3D finite element modelling of a composite patch repair

Composite-patching on cracked/weak metallic aircraft structures improves structural integrity. A Boron Epoxy patch employed to repair a cracked Aluminum sheet is modeled employing 3D Finite Element Method (FEM). SIFs extracted using ''displacement extrapolation'' are used to measure the repair effectiveness. Two issues viz., patch taper and symmetry have been looked into.

Is meridional circulation important in modelling irregularities of the solar cycle?

We explore the importance of meridional circulation variations in modelling the irregularities of the solar cycle by using the flux transport dynamo model. We show that a fluctuating meridional circulation can reproduce some features of the solar cycle like the Waldmeier effect and the grand minimum. However, we get all these results only if the value of the turbulent diffusivity in the convection zone is reasonably high.

Modelling and analysis of new coolstreaming for P2P IPTV

Peer to peer networks are being used extensively nowadays for file sharing, video on demand and live streaming. For IPTV, delay deadlines are more stringent compared to file sharing. Coolstreaming was the first P2P IPTV system. In this paper, we model New Coolstreaming (newer version of Coolstreaming) via a queueing network. We use two time scale decomposition of Markov chains to compute the stationary distribution of number of peers and the expected number of substreams in the overlay which are not being received at the required rate due to parent overloading. We also characterize the end-to-end delay encountered by a video packet received by a user and originated at the server. Three factors contribute towards the delay. The first factor is the mean shortest path length between any two overlay peers in terms of overlay hops of the partnership graph which is shown to be O (log n) where n is the number of peers in the overlay. The second factor is the mean number of routers between any two overlay neighbours which is seen to be at most O (log N-I) where N-I is the number of routers in the internet. Third factor is the mean delay at a router in the internet. We provide an approximation of this mean delay E W]. Thus, the mean end to end delay in New Coolstreaming is shown to be upper bounded by O (log E N]) (log N-I) E (W)] where E N] is the mean number of peers at a channel.

Modelling of metal-slag emulsion

Many industrial processes involve reaction between the two immiscible liquid systems. It is very important to increase the efficiency and productivity of such reactions. One of the important processes that involve such reactions is the metal-slag system. To increase the reaction rate or efficiency, one must increase the contact surface area of one of the phases. This is either done by emulsifying the slag into the metal phase or the metal into the slag phase. The latter is preferred from the stability viewpoint. Recently, we have proposed a simple and elegant mathematical model to describe metal emulsification in the presence of bottom gas bubbling. The same model is being extended here. The effect of slag and metal phase viscosity, density and metal droplet size on the metal droplet velocity in the slag phase is discussed for the above mentioned metal emulsification process. The models results have been compared with experimental data.

Constraining complex aquifer geometry with geophysics (2-D ERT and MRS measurements) for stochastic modelling of groundwater flow

Stochastic modelling is a useful way of simulating complex hard-rock aquifers as hydrological properties (permeability, porosity etc.) can be described using random variables with known statistics. However, very few studies have assessed the influence of topological uncertainty (i.e. the variability of thickness of conductive zones in the aquifer), probably because it is not easy to retrieve accurate statistics of the aquifer geometry, especially in hard rock context. In this paper, we assessed the potential of using geophysical surveys to describe the geometry of a hard rock-aquifer in a stochastic modelling framework. The study site was a small experimental watershed in South India, where the aquifer consisted of a clayey to loamy-sandy zone (regolith) underlain by a conductive fissured rock layer (protolith) and the unweathered gneiss (bedrock) at the bottom. The spatial variability of the thickness of the regolith and fissured layers was estimated by electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) profiles, which were performed along a few cross sections in the watershed. For stochastic analysis using Monte Carlo simulation, the generated random layer thickness was made conditional to the available data from the geophysics. In order to simulate steady state flow in the irregular domain with variable geometry, we used an isoparametric finite element method to discretize the flow equation over an unstructured grid with irregular hexahedral elements. The results indicated that the spatial variability of the layer thickness had a significant effect on reducing the simulated effective steady seepage flux and that using the conditional simulations reduced the uncertainty of the simulated seepage flux. As a conclusion, combining information on the aquifer geometry obtained from geophysical surveys with stochastic modelling is a promising methodology to improve the simulation of groundwater flow in complex hard-rock aquifers. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Modelling the impact of extensive irrigation on the groundwater resources

Drastic groundwater resource depletion due to excessive extraction for irrigation is a major concern in many parts of India. In this study, an attempt was made to simulate the groundwater scenario of the catchment using ArcSWAT. Due to the restriction on the maximum initial storage, the deep aquifer component in ArcSWAT was found to be insufficient to represent the excessive groundwater depletion scenario. Hence, a separate water balance model was used for simulating the deep aquifer water table. This approach is demonstrated through a case study for the Malaprabha catchment in India. Multi-site rainfall data was used to represent the spatial variation in the catchment climatology. Model parameters were calibrated using observed monthly stream flow data. Groundwater table simulation was validated using the qualitative information available from the field. The stream flow was found to be well simulated in the model. The simulated groundwater table fluctuation is also matching reasonably well with the field observations. From the model simulations, deep aquifer water table fluctuation was found very severe in the semi-arid lower parts of the catchment, with some areas showing around 60m depletion over a period of eight years. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Note on modelling directionality in piezoresistivity

When computing the change in electrical resistivity of a piezoresistive cubic material embedded in a deforming structure, the piezoresistive and the stress tensors should be in the same coordinate system. While the stress tensor is usually calculated in a coordinate system aligned with the principal axes of a regular structure, the specified piezoresistive coefficients may not be in that coordinate system. For instance, piezoresistive coefficients are usually given in an orthogonal cartesian coordinate system aligned with the <100> crystallographic directions and designers sometimes deliberately orient a crystallographic direction other than <100> along the principal directions of the structure to increase the gauge factor. In such structures, it is advantageous to calculate the piezoresistivity tensor in the coordinate system along which the stress tensors are known rather than the other way around. This is because the transformation of stress will have to be done at every point in the structure but piezoresistivity tensor needs to be transformed only once. Here, using tensor transformation relations, we show how to calculate the piezoresistive tensor along any arbitrary Cartesian coordinate system from the piezoresistive coefficients for the <100> coordinate system. Some of the software packages that simulate the piezoresistive effect do not have interfaces for calculation of the entire piezoresistive tensor for arbitrary directions. This warrants additional work for the user because not considering the complete piezoresisitive tensor can lead to large errors. This is illustrated with an example where the error is as high as 33%. Additionally, for elastic analysis, we used hybrid finite element formulation that estimates stresses more accurately than displacement-based formulation. Therefore, as shown in an example where the change in resistance can be calculated analytically, the percentage error of our piezoresistive program is an order of magnitude lower relative to displacement-based finite element method.

Average Modelling of a Voltage Source Inverter with Dead-Time in a Synchronous Reference Frame

Voltage source inverters are an integral part of renewable power sources and smart grid systems. Computationally efficient and fairly accurate models for the voltage source inverter are required to carry out extensive simulation studies on complex power networks. Accuracy requires that the effect of dead-time be incorporated in the inverter model. The dead-time is essentially a short delay introduced between the gating pulses to the complementary switches in an inverter leg for the safety of power devices. As the modern voltage source inverters switch at fairly high frequencies, the dead-time significantly influences the output fundamental voltage. Dead-time also causes low-frequency harmonic distortion and is hence important from a power quality perspective. This paper studies the dead-time effect in a synchronous dq reference frame, since dynamic studies and controller design are typically carried out in this frame of reference. For the sake of computational efficiency, average models are derived, incorporating the dead-time effect, in both RYB and dq reference frames. The average models are shown to consume less computation time than their corresponding switching models, the accuracies of the models being comparable. The proposed average synchronous reference frame model, including effect of dead-time, is validated through experimental results.

Modelling the effects of chorus species composition and caller density on acoustic masking interference in multispecies choruses of crickets and katydids

Natural multispecies acoustic choruses such as the dusk chorus of a tropical rain forest consist of simultaneously signalling individuals of different species whose calls travel through a common shared medium before reaching their `intended' receivers. This causes masking interference between signals and impedes signal detection, recognition and localization. The levels of acoustic overlap depend on a number of factors, including call structure, intensity, habitat-dependent signal attenuation and receiver tuning. In addition, acoustic overlaps should also depend on caller density and the species composition of choruses, including relative and absolute abundance of the different calling species. In this study, we used simulations to examine the effects of chorus species relative abundance and caller density on the levels of effective heterospecific acoustic overlap in multispecies choruses composed of the calls of five species of crickets and katydids that share the understorey of a rain forest in southern India. We found that on average species-even choruses resulted in higher levels of effective heterospecific acoustic overlap than choruses with strong dominance structures. This effect was found consistently across dominance levels ranging from 0.4 to 0.8 for larger choruses of forty individuals. For smaller choruses of twenty individuals, the effect was seen consistently for dominance levels of 0.6 and 0.8 but not 0.4. Effective acoustic overlap (EAO) increased with caller density but the manner and extent of increase depended both on the species' call structure and the acoustic context provided by the composition scenario. The Phaloria sp. experienced very low levels of EAO and was highly buffered to changes in acoustic context whereas other species experienced high FAO across contexts or were poorly buffered. These differences were not simply predictable from call structures. These simulation-based findings may have important implications for acoustic biodiversity monitoring and for the study of acoustic masking interference in natural environments. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.