The Climate Suitability Index (CSI) can increase agricultural efficiency by identifying the high-potential areas for cultivation from the climate perspective. The present study develops a probabilistic framework to calculate CSI for rainfed cultivation of 12 medicinal plants from the climate perspective of precipitation and temperature. Unlike the ongoing frameworks based on expert judgments, this formulation decreases the inherent subjectivity by using two components: frequency analysis and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeavy metals such as arsenic are one of the most important water pollutants and cause many environmental problems. One of the mechanisms for removing arsenic from aqueous media is the adsorption process. In this study, we investigated the efficiency of magnetized multi-walled carbon nanotubes with iron oxide (FeO) nanoparticles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper investigates aggregated risks in aquifers, where risk exposures may originate from different contaminants e.g. nitrate-N (NO-N), arsenic (As), boron (B), fluoride (F), and aluminium (Al).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA critical understanding of the water crisis of Lake Urmia is the driver in this paper for a basin-wide investigation of its Meteorological (Met) droughts and Groundwater (GW) droughts. The challenge is to formulate a data-driven modelling strategy capable of discerning anthropogenic impacts and resilience patterns through using 21-years of monthly data records. The strategy includes: (i) transforming recorded timeseries into Met/GW indices; (ii) extracting their drought duration and severity; and (iii) deriving return periods of the maximum drought event through the copula method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAquifer vulnerability mapping to pollution is topical research activity, and common frameworks such as the basic DRASTIC framework (BDF) suffer from the inherent subjectivity. This paper formulates an artificial intelligence modeling strategy based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to decrease subjectivity. This formulation considers three definitions of intrinsic, specific, and total vulnerabilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBayesian Model Averaging (BMA) is used to study inherent uncertainties using the Basic DRASTIC Framework (BDF) for assessing the groundwater vulnerability in a study area related to Lake Urmia. BMA is naturally an Inclusive Multiple Modelling (IMM) strategy at two levels; at Level 1 multiple models are constructed and the paper constructs three AI (Artificial Intelligence) models, which comprise ANN (Artificial Neural Network), GEP (Gene Expression Programming), and SVM (Support Vector Machines) but their outputs are fed to the next level model; at Level 2, BMA combines ANN, GEP and SVM (the Level 1 models) to quantify their inherent uncertainty in terms of within and in-between model errors. The model performance is tested by using the nitrate-N concentrations measured for the aquifer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe construction of rural wastewater treatment plants (RWTPs) is an effective initiative to achieve sustainable water resources, especially in the rural areas situated upstream of the dams where water and waste substances produced by villages are discharged into the wastewater behind the dams. Neither is the initiative feasible to be launched without the partnership of local people. For this reason, we gained insights into the determinants of villagers' desire and intention to have a share in the construction and management of RWTPs and determined the best place to locate the RWTPs using Fuzzy Catastrophe Scheme (FCS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA capability for aggregating risks to aquifers is explored in this paper for cases with sparse data exposed to anthropogenic and geogenic contaminants driven by poor/non-existent planning/regulation practices. The capability seeks 'Total Information Management' (TIM) under sparse data by studying hydrogeochemical processes, which is in contrast to Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA) by the USEPA for using sample data and a procedure with prescribed parameters without deriving their values from site data. The methodology for TIM pools together the following five dimensions: (i) a perceptual model to collect existing knowledge-base; (ii) a conceptual model to analyse a sample of ion-concentrations to determine groundwater type, origin, and dominant processes (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnplanned groundwater exploitation in coastal aquifers results in water decline and consequently triggers saltwater intrusion (SWI). This study formulates a novel modeling strategy based on GALDIT method using Artificial Intelligence (AI) models for mapping the vulnerability to SWI. This AI-based modeling strategy is a two-level learning process, where vulnerability to SWI at Level 1 can be predicted by such models as Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Sugeno Fuzzy Logic (SFL), and Neuro-Fuzzy (NF); and their outputs serve as the input to the model at Level 2, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn investigation is presented to improve on the performances of the Basic DRASTIC Framework (BDF) and its variation by the Fuzzy-Catastrophe Framework (FCF), both of which provide an estimate of intrinsic aquifer vulnerabilities to anthropogenic contamination. BDF prescribes rates and weights for 7 data layers but FCF is an unsupervised learning framework based on a multicriteria decision theory by integrating fuzzy membership function and catastrophe theory. The challenges in the paper include: (i) the study area comprises confined and unconfined aquifers and (ii) Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to run Multiple Framework (AIMF) in order to map specific vulnerability due to a specific contaminant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProof-of-concept is presented in this paper to a methodology formulated for indexing risks to groundwater aquifers exposed to impacts of diffuse contaminations from anthropogenic and geogenic origins. The methodology is for mapping/indexing, which refers to relative values but not their absolute values. The innovations include: (i) making use of the Origins-Source-Pathways-Receptors-Consequences (OSPRC) framework; and (ii) dividing a study area into modular Risk (OSPRC) Cells to capture their idiosyncrasies with different origins.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis research presents a Supervised Intelligent Committee Machine (SICM) model to assess groundwater vulnerability indices of an aquifer. SICM uses Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to overarch three Artificial Intelligence (AI) models: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Neuro-Fuzzy (NF) and Gene Expression Programming (GEP). Each model uses the DRASTIC index, the acronym of 7 geological, hydrological and hydrogeological parameters, which collectively represents intrinsic (or natural) vulnerability and gives a sense of contaminants, such as nitrate-N, penetrating aquifers from the surface.
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