降雨冲刷对黄土公路边坡植物防护影响的试验研究

通过对裸露黄土公路边坡、厚层基材植草公路边坡、三维网植草公路边坡以及平台植树公路边坡的现场降雨冲刷试验,阐述了不同防护型式的公路黄土边坡在降雨条件下的坡面径流、含泥量以及坡面冲刷情况,得出了"降雨对边坡坡面的侵蚀过程,首先是从雨滴直接打击土体开始,进而引起溅蚀,分散土粒,紧接着发生超渗径流造成坡面冲刷。"以及"对坡面破坏最大的是坡顶上方来水"等重要结论。验证了坡面植物防护以及平台植树等防护方法可以有效降低降雨冲刷对坡面的侵蚀破坏,为黄土地区公路边坡植物防护的设计施工以提供了可靠的依据。     

公路路基黄土湿陷性评价问题

公路工程对湿陷性黄土的研究基本上是采用房建建筑的规范和试验规程进行勘察和设计,由于公路路基的工作环境和受力状态与房建工程地基差异很大,将房建建筑的规范直接应用于黄土地区高等级公路的湿陷性评价与计算存在着盲目性、不合理性,更为重要的是缺乏针对性。本文通过对现有规范在路基黄土湿陷性方面的合理性与实用性研究,结合降雨入渗的分布规律,提出了适合黄土地区高速公路的路基黄土湿陷性评价方法与模型。     

The role of cloud tracking and passive microwave techniques in the short-term prediction of flood hazard on a regional scale

The role of remote sensing in enhancing the monitoring capabilities and the short-term prediction of the risk of flooding on a regional scale is addressed in this paper by means of the application of storm identification and cloud tracking techniques to a few case studies where cluster analysis based on infrared satellite imagery is used as the primary source of information. Polar satellite sensors, which provide passive microwave images, were also proposed in the literature for application in flood forecasting operational problems, though the accuracy of passive microwave techniques is only acceptable when rainfall estimates are integrated over quite large spatial and temporal scales. Climatological studies are well suited to make use of such data while the measure of instantaneous rainfall is still lacking of an adequate validation. A theoretical and numerical framework for the assessment of the reliability of passive microwave estimates of instantaneous rainfall within the typical resolution scales of polar satellite sensors is provided in the paper.

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Sommario Il ruolo delle tecniche di monitoraggio da sensori remoti nell'incrementare le potenzialità di previsione a breve termine del rischio di inondazione a scala regionale è analizzato nel presente lavoro attraverso l'applicazione di tecniche di identificazione ed inseguimento dei corpi nuvolosi ad alcuni casi di studio in cui le immagini satellitarie nella banda dell'infrarosso termico sono utilizzate come principale strumento di monitoraggio. In letteratura viene inoltre proposta l'utilizzazione, in applicazioni operative di previsione delle inondazioni, di sensori alle microonde passive montati su satelliti ad orbita polare: l'accuratezza di tali tecniche è tuttavia accettabile solo quando le stime di precipitazione vengono integrate su ampie scale spaziali e temporali. Mentre l'uso di tali tecniche per studi climatologici è di notevole utilità, la misura della precipitazione alle piccole scale spazio-temporali necessita ancora di un adeguato processo di validazione. Nel presente lavoro viene proposto un approccio teorico per la stima dell'affidabilità di tali stime di precipitazione alle scale tipiche della risoluzione spaziale del sensore.

     

Analytical issues in monitoring drinking-water contamination related to short-term, heavy rainfall events

Heavy rainfall events, increasing in frequency and intensity with climate change, impact on the quality of the water resource used for drinking-water production. Small-scale water suppliers are particularly sensitive because of their management and the related difficulties of adapting treatment to variations. Decision-support systems, based on monitoring and analytical tools, need to be developed to improve crisis-management procedures related to such events. After presenting the issues related to heavy rainfall events, the article summarizes the tools currently used for quality control of drinking water within this framework, the need for developments and other requirements.     

Rainfall forecasting by technological machine learning models

Accurate forecasting of rainfall has been one of the most important issues in hydrological research. Due to rainfall forecasting involves a rather complex nonlinear data pattern; there are lots of novel forecasting approaches to improve the forecasting accuracy. Recurrent artificial neural networks (RNNS) have played a crucial role in forecasting rainfall data. Meanwhile, support vector machines (SVMs) have been successfully employed to solve nonlinear regression and time series problems. This investigation elucidates the feasibility of hybrid model of RNNs and SVMs, namely RSVR, to forecast rainfall depth values. Moreover, chaotic particle swarm optimization algorithm (CPSO) is employed to choose the parameters of a SVR model. Subsequently, example of rainfall values during typhoon periods from Northern Taiwan is used to illustrate the proposed RSVRCPSO model. The empirical results reveal that the proposed model yields well forecasting performance, RSVRCPSO model provides a promising alternative for forecasting rainfall values.     

Centimeter and millimeter wave attenuation by atmospheric gases and rainfall at a tropical station

The radiowave attenuation due to oxygen and water vapour has been computed over the frequency range 3–350 GHz making use of the mean surface air pressure, temperature and water vapour at Ile-Ife (geog. lat 7.5°N, long 4.5°E) in Southern Nigeria. It is observed that the attenuation at this tropical location is generally higher than at temperate climates. A similar analysis was performed for rainfall attenuation using rainfall intensity measurements. The results obtained with three different expressions for the rain height showed that a rain height of 3 km is a reasonable assumption for estimating earth-space rainfall attenuation at this location. It is found that for frequencies above 200 GHz, the polarization dependence of the specific attenuation due to rainfal becomes negligible. The computed attenuation is lower that that predicted using the corresponding CCIR rain climate data. The results show that whilst the contribution of oxygen and water vapour to the total atmospheric attenuation could be neglected when compared with rainfall attenuation up to about 150 GHz, the contribution becomes significant for frequencies above 190 GHz.     

Determination of rain attenuation parameters for free space optical link in tropical rain

Free space optics (FSO) is a promising communication technique for various types of services in the optical access network. Single beam FSO system in tropical rainy weather is vulnerable to atmospheric rain attenuation, so it is necessary to have precise power law parameters of rain attenuation in tropical regions. In this study, the power law parameters k, and α are estimated as 2.03 and 0.74, respectively for the FSO applications in tropical South-East Asian weather. These parameters were evaluated by using least square mean equation (LSME) method with Levenberg–Marquardt optimization based on the one year collected heavy rain data. The obtained parameter values for tropical weather are contributed to improve link performance for high-speed networks.     

关于滑坡预测预报方法的思考

滑坡是世界上十大自然灾害之一 ,容易造成极大的经济损失和人员伤亡 ,对社会危害很大。目前有关它的预测预报的效果还不甚理想。滑坡灾害的诱发因素包括自然因素和人为因素 ,而人为因素主要与人类工程活动有关 ;在一定的地质地形条件下 ,自然诱发因素则主要是降雨 ,特别是暴雨。通过对滑坡预测预报方法的哲学思考 ,作者认为今后应该加强“由天预报地” ,即以降雨预报结果来推测区域滑坡发生的概率方法的研究。将该方法与单点滑坡的监测预报法结合起来 ,可望进一步提高滑坡预测预报的水平     

Catastrophic rainfalls in the West Mediterranean area

Meteorological and thermodynamic factors associated with catastrophic flood events affecting the West Mediterranean Area have been studied. First of all, the usually assumed causal connection between cut-off lows aloft and severe storms has been thoroughly investigated. Once identified the general meteorological features, the synoptic- scale pattern and forcing are studied by using objective techniques. The thermodynamic analysis took specific form in the study of stability, precipitable water mass, convective available potential energy, vertical wind shear and bulk Richardson number. The combination of the synoptic and thermodynamic results show a strong quasi-geostrophic forcing for vertical motion at low levels while only a weak forcing at 500 hPa, high values of precipitable water mass produced by a strong convergence of water vapour near surface and convective and latent instability. Composite charts delineating the area covered by each of the indicated factors seem to be an effective tool for delimiting the are where mesoscale focusing mechanisms become effective.

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Sommario Sono stati studiati i fattori meteorologici e termodinamici associati ad eventi catastrofici di piena nell' Area Mediterranea Occidentale. Prima di tutto, la connessione fra depressioni in alta quota e temporali intensi, usualmente assunta come casuale, è stata esaurientemente investigata. Una volta identificati gli aspetti meteorologici generali, le strutture e le forzanti alla scala sinottica sono studiate usando tecniche oggettive. L'analisi termodinamica ha assunto la forma specifica nello studio della stabilità, della massa d'acqua precipitabile, dell' energia potenziale disponibile alla convenzione, del gradiente verticale di vento e del numero di Richardson. La combinazione dei risultati sinottici e termodinamici mostra una forte forzante quasi-geostrofica per lo spostamento verticale ai bassi livelli mentre la forzante a 500 hPa è debole, alti valori di massa d'acqua precipitabile prodotti da una forte convergenza di vapore d'acqua vicino alla superficie e instabilità convettiva e latente. Le carte composite che delineano l'area coperta da ciascuno dei fattori indicati sembrano essere uno strumento efficace per la delimitazione dell'area dove i meccanismi di concentrazione alla meso-scala diventano efficaci.

     

Adaptive Estimation of Distributions Using Exponential Sub-Families

Abstract

An algorithm is presented that, for a large-dimensional exponential family G, finds a lower dimension exponential sub-family of G which contains distributions best fitting groups of identically distributed observations within a set of data. The data are therefore fitted to a family of distributions that has been adaptively chosen as representative of them. The algorithm is implemented in the special case in which G is a logspline family of distributions. An example data set is analyzed using the method.